Clean air, less carbon has health benefits

CHICAGO, March 8 (UPI) -- A U.S. researcher says legislation reducing air pollution such as carbon pollution has immediate health benefits.

Dr. Dean E. Schraufnagel, president of the American Thoracic Society and a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is speaking out against a bill introduced by Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., and Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., to prohibit the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from issuing rules on carbon pollution and other greenhouse gases.

"The Clean Air Act is one of the best public health success stories of the past four decades and has saved thousands of American lives," Schraufnagel said in a statement.

"In 2010 alone, the air quality improvements under the Clean Air Act will prevent 160,000 premature deaths, 130,000 heart attacks, 1.7 million asthma attacks and 3.2 million missed school days," Schraufnagel said. "Any effort to revise the Clean Air Act should be carefully considered and focused on enhancing the public health benefits -- not on granting big polluters a free pass to increase the amount of carbon pollution they pump into the air."

The legislation would, among other things, prevent the EPA from issuing any rules of limit carbon pollution or public reporting of carbon emissions emitted by major industrial sources.