By Carol McCracken (Post # 634)

The Natural Resources Council of Maine and five state health organizations have joined a national call to Washington, D.C. to protect the Clean Air Act and allow EPA to start addressing climate changing pollution, as the law requires.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is working to set urgently needed new limits for global warming pollution, but due to intensive lobbying by the coal and oil industries, some members of Congress are trying to block EPA’s ability to act, said a press release issued this am by NRCM.

Five Maine health organizations have signed on to the letter sent to President Obama and the U.S. Congress. They include the Maine Medical Assocation, American Lung Association of Maine, Maine Public Health Association, Physicians for Social Responsibility-Maine and the Maine Nurse Practitioner Association. Furthermore, fifty individual Maine health providers have also joined the effort. A number of national health organizations have signed on to the letter as well.

“All of us depend on the EPA to apply the best science to keep our air healthy. But for those millions of people with asthma and other lung diseases, the EPA is their best hope that the air they breathe will not send them to an emergency room or doctor’s office,” said Edward Miller, VP for Health Promotion and Public Policy for the American Lung Association in Maine. “We need to do all we can to reduce health care costs and keeping our air healthy is critical.”

The joint letter urges Congress and President Obama to fully support the EPA in fulfilling its responsibilities and to oppose any efforts to weaken, delay, or block the EPA in its efforts to protect public health from climate change.