EPA Admits Findings Faulty

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is having to completely recalculate the numbers of people it alleges are harmed by fine-particulate air-pollution emissions due to a flaw in computer programs it used to produce its estimates.

Only half as many deaths can be attributed to short-term “spikes” in the amount of emissions in the air as earlier thought, EPA admitted last week in a finding that could further delay a fine-particulate standard the agency has been trying to set since 1997.

EPA said computer software used to analyze the effect of spikes in emissions from industrial and mobile sources overestimated the rise in mortality rates for 90 cities in an eight-year study.

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