Rationalizing Air Pollution Regulation

On Valentine's Day, President Bush proposed new air pollution standards that would cut sulfur dioxide emissions from their the current level of 11 million tons per year to three million, nitrogen oxide emissions from five million tons to 1.7 million, and mercury emissions from 48 tons to 15 tons, all by the year 2018. At the same time, the Bush administration continues to advocate suspending the New Source Review (NSR) program, which critics have chastised for encouraging energy companies to continue operating "grandfathered" refineries and generation plants that are outmoded and minimally maintained, instead of refurbishing them or replacing them with new facilities. Clearly, environmentalist lawmakers and the White House have an opportunity to forge a sensible compromise that would enable the passage of new sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and mercury caps while dumping NSR. But that process will not yield legislation that can be implemented in an economically sound manner unless Congress and the administration pay attention to a few basic economic issues.Environment, Technology and Industry, Regulatory Reform

An Analysis of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Proposal to Allow Irradiation of Meat

Foodborne pathogens in the United States kill thousands and sicken millions each year, despite major efforts by federal agencies and industry to combat the problem. Food irradiation could safely prevent a substantial part of those deaths and illnesses and has been endorsed by all major public health organizations. Yet federal regulations prohibit the use of irradiation to kill pathogens on meat, eggs, and seafood and restrict its use on poultry, and so contribute to avoidable deaths and illnesses. The U.S. Department of Agriculture should expedite its rulemaking to allow irradiation of meat, and it should not require that food labels mention irradiation more prominently than they identify food additives. Most importantly, to boost food irradiation in the marketplace, the Food and Drug Administration should promptly determine that irradiation of any food, including precooked meats, eggs, and seafood, is generally recognized as safe.

Is EPA's Ozone Standard Feasible?

The Environmental Protection Agency's estimate of the cost of meeting the new health-based ozone standard is likely to underestimate substantially the actual cost. EPA's cost estimates unrealistically assume that pollution control costs are capped at $10,000 per ton. Yet the required emission reductions in some cities exceed total motor vehicle emissions. By dropping EPA's assumption that control costs are constant, I show that meeting the standard in 2010 would cost nearly$5 trillion in one city, and $70 billion in seven other cities. These cost estimates exceed EPA's estimates of$10 billion per year by orders of magnitude. I also find that the incremental costs of control are likely to far exceed any estimates of incremental benefits. The high cost of meeting the ozone standard strongly suggests that it is likely to be infeasible in several cities. To avoid having EPA set such infeasible standards, Congress should amend the Clean Air Act to require the agency to balance the benefits and costs of regulation.

An Analysis of the Use of EPA's Clean Air Benefit Estimates in OMB's Draft Report on the Costs and Benefits of Regulation

Many advocates of regulatory reform recommend more and better benefit-cost analyses. Perhaps the single most ambitious and sophisticated such analysis ever conducted is the retrospective report on the benefits and costs of clean air recently completed by the Environmental Protection Agency. But EPA's estimates of trillions of dollars in benefits from the Clean Air Act depend on a few arbitrary assumptions about the nature and value of health improvements. Although a panel of well-respected scientists and economists reviewed the EPA's report, the Office of Management and Budget should not include it in its own report to Congress without more extensive discussion of key limitations. In particular, OMB should include a quantitative illustration of how alternative assumptions as plausible as those in the EPA report could shrink the expected value of benefits to a fraction of those reported.

Perspectives on training for the local café industry : how well does the hospitality training provided by institutional providers meet the expectations of local café stakeholders? : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master in Education (Adult Education) at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

The researcher holds a hypothesis about tacit differences in motivation behind training for the hospitality industry in New Zealand. Trainees have long held that there are differences between the experience of training in a tertiary institute and the realities of the workplace. These perceptions prompted this study of the values placed upon formal institutional training among a sample of owners, managers, and supervisors in the local café sector. The local café sector is known for its vibrancy, informality and unregulated approach to hospitality. The sector is a proliferation of small businesses which operates in a competitive environment. This study explores the relationship between small locally operated cafes and formal training of the kind fostered by polytechnics and similar institutions. The findings show there is little reliance on formal training or qualifications in the sector. There is a mixed attitude towards the hiring of staff members who have formal training. Some local café management views the qualifications and formal training with indifference. The main factor in employing new workers in the sector is 'experience' and in some cases, intrinsic qualities like 'personality' are important. This sector is largely made up of small business run by independent owner-operators. Competition in the sector is intense, and profit margins are small. Café employees are not generally well rewarded for their qualifications, and there is little in the workplace culture that may distract or inhibit the desire of workers to train formally. There is more evidence of formal institutional training and gaining of qualifications among cooking staff in cafes than front-of-house areas, signifying that cookery is an area of speciailised skill and features more as a career choice. While the management of local cafes will sometimes seek to hire qualified staff, they accept the lack of them. Management of local cafes who have themselves in the past been trained in formal institutional programmes are more likely to see benefits in employing people who have undergone similar training. This study concludes that formal institutional training is not a necessity in the local café sector, and that generally this sector views formal training to be of lesser relevance. As in most small businesses, cafes show that the need to survive commercially over-rides the propensity employers may have to improve the professional standing of their employees. Many employers will train employees on-the-job with the skills immediately necessary for the commercial well-being of their cafe. Local café managers have little energy or time to promote formal training programmes, and are content to accept that many of their employees will not be formally trained. The relationship between the content of traditional institutional training programmes and the skills required in the informal environment of the local café industry is somewhat incompatible

Clean Air For Less: Exploiting Tradeoffs Between Different Air Pollutants

The Administration's Clear Skies initiative and all competing legislative proposals take a pollutant-by-pollutant approach to address air pollution problems caused by emissions of both nitrogen oxides (NOx) and sulfur dioxide (SO2). Randall Lutter and Dallas Burtraw argue that as a result they miss an important opportunity to cut compliance costs without reducing expected environmental protection. For a scenario where firms could use permits to emit three tons of NOx instead of one ton of SO2, we estimate that compliance costs would fall by more than $1 billion per year relative to emissions caps like those in Clear Skies. Yet expected environmental damages would not increase because the projected damages from three tons of NOx are roughly the same as from one ton of SO2. To ensure that new air pollution legislation is cost-effective, Congress should allow firms to exchange NOx and SO2 permits at a rate that reflects relative environmental damages.

Unacknowledged Health Benefits Of Genetically Modified Food - Salmon And Heart Disease Deaths

Randall Lutter and Katherine Tuckerargue that the marketing of GM salmon will lower salmon prices and increase consumption of salmon, an exceptionally good source of omega-3 fatty acids linked to lower risk of heart disease.The authors estimateestimate that the resulting increase in omega-3 intake will prevent between 600 and 2600 deaths per year in the U.S.Environment, Health and Safety

The OPERA experiment: Preliminary results from the 2008 run

The neutrino flavour oscillations hypothesis has been confirmed by several experiments, all are based on the observation of the disappearance of a given neutrino flavour. The long baseline neutrino experiment OPERA (Oscillation Project with Emulsion tRacking Apparatus) aims to give the first direct proof of the tau neutrino appearance in a pure muon neutrino beam (CERN Neutrinos to Gran Sasso beam). In 2008 the OPERA experiment has started full data taking with the CNGS beam and around 1700 interactions have been recorded. The experiment status and the first results from the 2008 run are presented.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures Lake Louise Winter Institute 2009 conferenc

An Analysis of the EPA's Proposed Lead Hazard Standards For Homes

Exposure to lead in homes poses such large risks to children's health that reducing it is a major public health priority. To limit these risks, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently proposed national standards to identify hazardous levels of lead dust and lead in soil, as well as hazardous conditions for lead-based paint. Meeting those standards would require controls that would cost an average of thousands of dollars per home in 21 million homes where lead-based paint is present, according to the EPA. Although the EPA believes its proposed standards reflect an appropriate balancing of benefits and costs, a proper assessment of its proposal suggests otherwise. Each of the EPA's proposed standards for paint, soil and dust would result in measures to control lead that have costs in excess of benefits. Together those costs, less the associated benefits, are likely to exceed $20 billion. Estimates of net costs would be still greater if based on an analysis that corrects remaining deficiencies in the EPA's work. The EPA's proposal would likely increase unnecessarily the premature abandonment of housing in instances where control costs are large relative to the market value of homes. Such abandonment is especially undesirable because it will occur mostly in low-income neighborhoods of older homes. Standards with lower costs would result in less abandonment. The EPA's media-specific, national standards would have other undesirable consequences. Perversely, about half of all the homes that do not meet the standards have risks of elevated blood-lead less than at other homes in full compliance with the standards. In addition, all homes built before 1978 would be subject to the same national standards, although exposure, risk and the cost of controls vary substantially among different households. As a consequence, the EPA's standards would result in controls in homes of more than one million middle-income families whose children face risks lower than the risks for children of poor families living in homes that meet the standards. Controls to reduce low risks are not likely to be cost-effective and are unfair to families facing lower risks who would bear the brunt of the control costs. The EPA can set standards that would offer greater net benefits and avoid controls in lower-risk homes. To provide greater net benefits, the EPA should set less stringent standards based on a more careful reappraisal of the benefits and costs of controlling residential lead hazards. To avoid control measures in lower-risk homes, the EPA should set standards based on lead levels in all media and establish a range of lead levels where recommendations to control lead depend on risk factors specific to individual homes.

Health Risks From Mercury-Contaminated Fish: A Reassessment

Several Congressional bills and a pending EPA regulation would significantly cut mercury emissions from power plants, so as to reduce mercury-related neurological effects among children. There is, however, no estimate of the number of cases of neurological deficiencies that might be avoided by such emissions cuts. To inform policymakers, we develop estimates of the annual number of cases of neurodevelopmental effects among children in the United States, based on existing estimates of the exposure and dose-response relationships for prenatal exposure to methylmercury. Using data on emissions and deposition, we show that eliminating mercury emissions from U.S. power plants would prevent on the order of 10,000 cases of subtle neurological deficiencies per year. For a related paper, see Regulating Mercury Emissions: What Do We Know About Costs and Benefits?Environment, Health and Safety, Regulatory Reform