This morning Reg•Watch blogged about EPA's revision to the national air quality standard for lead. The new regulation is significantly better than the current standard which had not been revised since 1978. But another part of the new regulation raised Reg•Watch's suspicion. Currently, the network EPA uses to monitor concentrations of airborne lead has some serious problems. According to Felicity Barringer at The New York Times, "Currently, 133 monitors are in operation nationwide, down from about 800 in 1980, an E.P.A. spokeswoman, Cathy Milbourn, said." That's a problem because, after all, you can't enforce an air quality regulation if you don't know how much pollution is in the air. Recognizing this, EPA proposed some new requirements for monitoring lead particles suspended in the air. In its proposed rule, released in May, EPA announced that it would set emissions thresholds as one criterion to determine whether monitoring is needed. The air around any facility emitting amounts of lead above the threshold would have to be monitored. EPA proposed a range for the threshold: 200 kg - 600 kg per year. A draft of the final rule circulating among officials at EPA and OMB just days ago showed that EPA had settled on ½ ton per year as the final threshold. But the final rule, published yesterday, set the emissions threshold at 1 ton per year. What gives? Well, the White House Office of Management and Budget may be responsible for the decision to water down the emissions threshold requirement. On Oct. 14, just one day before EPA administrator Stephen Johnson signed the final version of the rule, an EPA employee sent an email to an OMB employee saying, "[I]f OMB wants a 1 ton threshold, it would have to provide a rationale for that point of view." The officials named in the email are the same who squared off during EPA's recent revision to the national standard for ozone, or smog: EPA deputy administrator Marcus Peacock and Susan Dudley, head of OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Apparently, OMB was able to provide some kind of rationale that satisfied EPA. According to EPA estimates, the ½ ton threshold would have swept in about 259 lead polluting facilities while the 1 ton threshold will apply to 135 facilities. Reg•Watch is not well versed in air quality monitoring, but something sure smells fishy. Feel free to email with thoughts or insight.