EPA finalizes greenhouse gas emission standards for heavy-duty vehicles
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Key takeaways:
- The newly finalized greenhouse gas emission limits for heavy-duty vehicles complete the EPA’s Clean Trucks Plan.
- These standards will particularly benefit those who live/work near highways.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has finalized stricter greenhouse gas emission limits for model year 2027 through 2032 heavy-duty vehicles, according to an agency press release.
Laura Kate Bender, national assistant vice president of healthy air at the American Lung Association, called the announcement “the next step in that long road toward cleaner air” during a roundtable discussion on this ruling.
“Today’s trucks are cleaner, but they’re not clean enough, and my colleagues, patients, anyone who lives near a truck stop or a big highway can tell you that,” Bender said.
According to the EPA, expected benefits with this final rule on pollution from trucks, buses, tractors and other heavy-duty vehicles include $13 billion in annualized net benefits and avoidance of 1 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions.
The greenhouse gas emission limits differ based on heavy-duties vehicle class.
Last month, the EPA also finalized stricter limits on emissions from model year 2027 through 2032 passenger cars, light-duty trucks and medium-duty vehicles.
The new limits, along with the recent above limits and the standards to lower smog- and soot-forming emissions from trucks made in December 2022, complete the EPA’s Clean Trucks Plan, according to the release.
Roundtable discussion
In response to this finalization, the American Lung Association hosted a roundtable discussion with representatives from the American Thoracic Society, Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments and the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health.
During this discussion, the speakers emphasized how important these new limits designed to clean up the air are for patients with asthma, as well as their families.
As the weather gets warmer and summer approaches, people want to spend time outdoors, but this is not possible for some patients with asthma because of heightened ozone levels, Franziska Rosser, MD, MPH, pediatric pulmonologist and member of the American Thoracic Society Environmental Health Policy committee, said.
“I personally applaud the EPA rule,” Rosser said. “I think in the short term, my patients who are children are going to enjoy reductions in air pollution.”
Milagros Elia, MA, APRN, ANP-BC, of the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, also conveyed the importance of this new EPA ruling for those with asthma but from the perspective of a mother with a teenage son with this condition.
"As a young teenager, you would expect him to be as active as ever during the spring and summer months, and that is when he is at his worst and has to stay inside,” she said. “From a very personal — as well as a professional — view, I can really speak to what these standards mean for public health.”
The EPA noted in the release that heavy-duty vehicle pollution adds to climate change, and Marc Futernick, MD, emergency physician and steering committee chair for the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, further discussed how heatwaves as a result of climate change negatively impact individuals, especially pregnant women.
“Among insured women who were pregnant, who have a hospital to go to, can get into the air conditioning, can get medications/IV/fluids, when there’s a heatwave, we still have more preterm births with a lifetime of medical consequences purely from the heat,” Futernick said.
“We’ve got to address the root cause,” he continued. “We’ve got to bring down our greenhouse gas emissions. We’ve got to stop global warming, and this rule will really help us do that.”
In addition to combating climate change, the new EPA standard is especially beneficial for individuals living and working near highways and touches on a disparity in who is exposed to more pollution, Elia said.
“When you have outdoor workers, when you have communities — particularly of color —that are exposed to these heavy-duty vehicles through highways that run through their neighborhoods in historically redlined communities, to them, this isn’t enough,” she said.
“We need to acknowledge the systemic racism that persists and begin to make movements to change what has always been,” Elia added.
In terms of industry and finances, this standard will not incite more costs, Bender said during the roundtable.
“EPA’s own analysis shows that the new standard will actually result in savings over the lifetime of the vehicles thanks to lower operating costs and lower maintenance costs,” Bender said.
Next steps
Moving forward, roundtable participants highlighted the importance of showing support for changes made by the EPA designed to clean up the air.
“The changes are coming incrementally, but they are coming, and we need to support that incremental change as much as possible while championing the EPA to even continue forward,” Elia said.
“The EPA has been very careful and deliberate about the pace of change and matching it to the technology that is available,” Futernick said.
Bender said next steps for the EPA include finalizing the approval of California’s waivers of preemption and finalizing standards on carbon emissions from power plants and air toxins.
References:
- American Lung Association roundtable on EPA’s final cleaner trucks standards. Presented March 29, 2024. Accessed March 29, 2024.
- New EPA rule to clean up truck pollution will improve public health, advance health equity and address climate change. https://www.lung.org/media/press-releases/2024-clean-trucks-rule-statement. Published March 29, 2024. Accessed March 29, 2024.