A victory for clean air?

Global warming isn't the only issue where science, politics and media coverage live in different worlds. Take, for example, the lead of this story from last Friday's Washington Post, which ran under the headline "EPA Cuts Soot Level Allowable Daily in Air":

The Bush administration imposed stricter standards on the nation's air quality yesterday for the first time in nearly a decade, ruling that communities across the country must cut back on the amount of soot in the air on any given day.

After this upbeat start, reporter Juliet Eilperin goes on to admit there was controversy, but she suggests that the Bush administration's EPA successfully navigated a middle-of-the-road position between the extremes of environmental activists and industry executives:

The agency did not go as far as its own scientists had urged in curbing soot, which is linked to heart and lung disease as well as childhood asthma. The decision sparked complaints on both sides of the pollution debate, with public health experts saying it was inadequate and industry officials calling it too stringent.

But nowhere does the Post tell you that the EPA's own Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee -- the experts tasked with evaluating EPA rules with real science -- strongly supported tougher rules on soot pollution. As the San Francisco Chronicle reports:

The EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, which includes scientists from environmental and industry groups and EPA staff, had pushed [EPA administrator Stephen] Johnson to lower the annual [soot pollution] limits set in 1997. [...]

Rogene Henderson, chairwoman of the science panel, said 20 of the 22 members [of the Scientific Advisory Committee] wanted the more stringent annual standard. [...]

Each of the seven EPA staff members on the committee agreed that a lower limit was preferred, documents show.

In other words, 91% of the EPA's own experts -- including industry representatives and EPA officials -- agreed that tougher rules on soot pollution was the right policy. To see going against the expert consensus on this issue as a legitimate compromise in the clean air "debate," one has to leave the world of science and facts, and enter the world of politics and media spin.