Recent Projects

Today the EPA released a new proposal to curb air pollution from industrial boilers. It’s an update on a version released in March of 2010, but never finalized.

Mayor Bloomberg recently announced that the city will phase out the use of unrefined oil sludge and the most-polluting grades of heating oil, to be completed by 2030. The new rules target the airborne fine particulate matter from two grades of heating oil that when burned by buildings create more than 85% of the city’s heating oil soot emissions. It’s expected that 10,000 buildings will be affected, as the black smoke billowing from smokestacks that the city says is responsible for killing 3,000 residents each year is eliminated.

The EPA released the third report in its series of cost-benefit analyses of the Clean Air Act today. Titled the Second Prospective Study, this report focuses on the effects of programs implemented after the 1990 amendments to the act.

Today, the city is conducting hearings on a regulation that the Bloomberg administration released last month to address the soot pollution from residual oil.

Yesterday, the courts denied EPA’s request to delay on rules that would restrict certain types of air pollution from industrial boilers. We think the message is clear: after two decades of work on this issue, the time for analysis is over.

In many places around the nation the toxic sludge leftovers of the coal combustion process are stored in vast unlined pools where poisons can leak into groundwater. Sometimes, like in Kingston, Tennessee, these holding pens break letting loose an avalanche of black poisonous muck.

Today, Policy Integrity offered suggestions on the EPA’s plans to reduce certain kinds of air pollutants that waft across state lines.

The exhaust from the boilers of industrial and commercial buildings, and incinerators can be particularly poisonous; consistent inhalation can lead to heart and lung disease and cancer.