Cleaner Fuel = Cleaner Air

Clean Air Agency Supports New EPA Rules to Clean Up Northwest Gasoline

 

Feb. 9, 2007 – The Puget Sound Clean Air Agency today applauds the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for issuing new federal rules to reduce hazardous air pollutants from mobile sources. Among their provisions, the new Mobile Source Air Toxic regulations tighten national benzene content standards for gasoline. The Clean Air Agency and other northwest partners were very active in advocating for these rules, which will reduce the average benzene limit to 0.62 percent from 0.97 percent by 2011.

“Cleaner fuels equal cleaner air for the people of the Pacific Northwest,” says Dennis McLerran, executive director of the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency. ”Northwest refineries currently have the highest benzene content in the country. The new EPA rules will significantly reduce benzene levels in our region, making them more consistent with those in other parts of the country and more protective of human health.”

Benzene is an air toxic and known carcinogen. It occurs naturally in petroleum, and is released into the air through evaporation and combustion. Refineries in the Northwest have the highest benzene content in the country because the crude oil received from Alaska has higher naturally-occuring levels of benzene.

The U.S. EPA estimates that a result of this rule, gasoline will have 38 percent less benzene overall.

“This rule is a significant improvement for the Northwest and other areas of the country that have disproportionately higher gasoline benzene content,” says McLerran. “It is also a ‘win’ for areas of the country with low benzene content, as they will continue to be low.”

For more about the rule, visit the EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality at http://www.epa.gov/otaq/toxics.htm#regdocs .

The Puget Sound Clean Air Agency is an air quality management agency serving King, Kitsap, Pierce and Snohomish counties. Created as a result of the 1967 Washington Clean Air Act, the agency protects public health and improves air quality by adopting and enforcing air quality regulations, educating individuals and businesses about clean-air choices and sponsoring voluntary initiatives to improve air quality.