Apple has had a complicated relationship with environmentalists. The company prides itself on its greenness in many ways, having been a leader in eliminating lead, bromides, PVC, and excess packaging from its products and building renewable energy sources for its North Carolina data center. But it has tangled frequently with environmental groups, especially Greenpeace.

Some of Apple’s clashes appear to result from tension between a narrow, regulation-based view of environmentalism and the demands of product innovation. Apple ignited the latest round in a running battle this week by pulling out of EPEAT, a organization dedicated to, as its mission statement says, “a world where the negative environmental and social impacts of electronics are continually reduced and electronic products are designed to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainability.” Not only will Apple not submit new products for EPEAT certification, but it asked to remove 39 already certified products from the EPEAT registry.

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Frances Beinecke is the president of NRDC, served on the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, and holds a leadership role in several environmental organizations. This article is adapted from a recent post to Switchboard. She contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Toxic chemicals touch our lives every day through our furniture, shampoos, food, the air we breathe and in countless other ways. My own family recently had an alarming experience with a synthetic chemical commonly found in paint strippers — methylene chloride.

My daughter and her husband became extremely sick, with effects lasting several weeks. After multiple doctor visits, days lost from work and an exhaustive review of possible contributing factors, my daughter and her husband learned that methylene chloride paint stripper had been used in an apartment below theirs, and the fumes were seeping upwards through vents and fireplaces until it was contaminating their air at measurable levels and making them sick.

About the same time my family was suffering from methylene chloride poisoning, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was asking for public comments on draft risk-assessments for several chemicals, including methylene chloride.

The EPA's risk assessment found that workers chronically exposed to paint strippers are at risk for liver damage and cancer. Fourteen workers have died from acute exposure to methylene chloride paint strippers since 2000. And, consumers who use paint strippers in homes are at risk for problems with the central nervous system. Clearly, my daughter's experience was not unique.

No one should get sick because they work with paint strippers on the job or in the home. Based on the EPA's own risk assessment, it's time for the agency to ban the sale and use of methylene chloride-based paint strippers. That is exactly what NRDC called for in the comments we submitted.

Even if the EPA responds to its own science and bans methylene chloride, a one-at-a-time approach to toxic chemicals is no real solution. There are more than 80,000 synthetic chemicals available for use in commercial and consumer products, manufacturing, schools and the workplace — and for the vast majority, EPA has not required that they be fully tested for their impact on our health.

That's why NRDC is supporting comprehensive reform of chemical oversight, much-needed legislation that would fix our nation's broken approach to toxic substances. Right now, potentially hazardous chemicals are considered innocent until a mountain of data proves them guilty of causing "unreasonable" harm to human health or the environment. And even when we know a substance is deadly — like asbestos — the EPA has been unable to adopt meaningful controls to protect workers and consumers.

Strong reform legislation would require chemical manufacturers to demonstrate their materials are safe for the market, and ensure that EPA can take fast action to protect the public from chemicals — like methylene chloride — that we already know are unsafe.

Consumers want nontoxic products, and entrepreneurial businesses are excited about meeting that demand. The safer products are spurring innovation, decreasing legal liability and increasing shareholder value, along with expanding into new markets and creating new jobs. The American Sustainable Business Council— a national partnership representing over 165,000 businesses and 300,000 entrepreneurs, managers, investors, and others — is supporting comprehensive reform of chemical regulations. So are nurses' organizations, the American Academy of Pediatrics, Vietnam veterans, the American Public Health Association and other health and disease awareness organizations.

Unfortunately, the most recent bill on toxic chemicals misses the mark. Just before he passed away, Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) worked with Senator David Vitter (R-LA) to introduce a bill that aims to break the longtime stalemate on the issue. They deserve credit for the effort, but in its current form the bill could leave the public with fewer protections than we have now. NRDC is committed to trying to fix the bill so that real reform can move forward.

While my family is thankfully feeling better now that the paint-stripping job is over, millions of Americans are continuing to be exposed to harmful chemicals, often from unavoidable or unknown sources, such as contaminated air, drinking water and consumer products. That's why NRDC is fighting for chemical laws that will keep our families safe.

You can get more information on how to Take Out Toxics in your own home here.

Beinecke's most recent Op-Ed was Why the Bering Strait Is Under Siege. This article first appeared as My Family's Brush with a Toxic Chemical and Why It's Time to Protect All Families from Known Hazards on the NRDC blog Switchboard. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This article was originally published on LiveScience.com.

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The Senate gave grudging approval on Thursday to the key executor of Barack Obama's sweeping new climate change plan, voting to confirm Gina McCarthy as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

The 59-40 vote, after a four-month standoff by Republicans, puts McCarthy in direct charge of implementing Obama's strategy of using the agency's powers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.

The prospect – centred on plans to cut emissions from existing power plants – has brought ferocious protests from Republicans and industry associations, and accusations that Obama and the EPA was waging a "war on coal".

"The EPA will play a pivotal role in the execution and implementation of the president's recently announced climate plan," David Vitter, the Louisiana Republican who led the boycott of McCarthy said in a speech on the Senate floor on Thursday. He called the climate plan "dramatic and draconian".

McCarthy spent the last four years at the EPA, as right-hand woman to then-administrator Lisa Jackson, in charge of clean air and climate policy.

That made McCarthy a target for Republicans who oppose curbs on polluters – despite her 30-year record of working effectively with industry and Democrats as well as Republicans. She worked for Mitt Romney when he was the Massachusetts governor.

"It isn't about her. It's about the fact that they don't like the Environmental Protection Agency," said Democrat Barbara Boxer, who heads the Senate's environment and public works committee.

The standoff on McCarthy's nomination left the agency without an administrator for four months, putting climate rules on hold.

McCarthy's elevation now makes her an even bigger target for Republicans, as Obama bypasses Congress and tasks the EPA with carrying out the work of cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

In the hours before the confirmation vote on Thursday, Republican members of the Senate's environment and public works committee accused McCarthy of serving as Obama's "field general" in the war on coal.

They also accused the agency of over-reaching its authority, and Obama of seeking to exert centralised control over the economy.

"The EPA has been a jobs killer," Vitter said.

Other Republicans on the committee lashed out at Obama for affirming the science underlying climate change. The president in his speech last month offered a summary of recent extreme weather events, such as heat waves, droughts, wildfires and hurricanes.

That was uncalled for, Alabama's Jeff Sessions told the committee – despite 105F measured temperature in Washington DC. "The president has been misleading the public on this subject," the senator said.

Roger Wicker of Mississippi took issue with Obama for saying last month he had run out of patience for "flat earthers" who deny the science underlying climate change.

"At the very least, I think it's time for some tolerance in the public discourse regarding the many scientific viewpoints on climate change," Wicker complained to the hearing. "Respect should be shown."

With her confirmation, McCarthy will now oversee the ambitious work of writing new regulations to reduce emissions from the country's fleet of coal-fired power plants. Obama has said he wants to see the EPA propose the new rules by next June, with final regulations in place by June 2015.

McCarthy during her confirmation hearings last April called climate change the challenge of a generation. "We must take steps to combat climate change," she said at the time. But she added: "I am convinced that those steps can and must be pursued with common sense."

The coming curbs on power plants are at the heart of Obama's renewed pledge to cut America's emissions by 17% from 2005 levels by the end of the decade. Such plants make up about a third of America's greenhouse gas emissions.

McCarthy, 58, a Massachusetts native with a strong local accent, had earned a reputation over the years for being "tough but fair" with industry.

She will need those allies now as the EPA moves ahead on the president's climate plan.

McCarthy did win the support of a handful of Republican senators, including Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Susan Collins of Maine, Jeff Flake of Arizona, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, and John McCain of Arizona.

However, Joe Manchin, a Democrat from the coal-heavy state of West Virginia, voted against McCarthy and then took to the Senate floor to deliver a speech on coal's important role in US history. "You can't tell the history of America without telling the history of coal," he said. "And you can't plan an energy future for America without planning for coal."

This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk

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Last summer, the Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] ended an investigation into the potential contamination of water near natural gas wells in the town of Dimock, Penn. and determined the water was safe.

Now, the Scranton Times-Tribune is calling on the EPA to reopen the investigation.

An undated PowerPoint presentation uncovered by the LA Times' Neela Banerjee last week shows that some EPA staff maintained concerns that aquifers near Dimock were contaminated by methane.

"Methane and other gases released during drilling (including air from the drilling) apparently cause significant damage to the water quality," the report said.

DeSmogBlog has obtaineda copy of the PowerPoint [PPT], which focuses on the possibility of methane leaks. The problem? The Times-Tribune says the EPA's initial investigation did not test for that compound.

The discrepancy has rankled the paper's editorial board:

...the EPA PowerPoint presentation identified five water wells where the chemical composition of the methane was the same as that of the gas extracted from deep underground. And a separate Duke University study also showed that the chemical signature of methane in some water wells was the same as that of the deep methane.

The PowerPoint presentation is not a definitive contradiction of EPA's decision. But it does raise questions that the EPA is in business to answer. It should return to Dimock and use all of the technology at its disposal to do just that.

An EPA representative told the LA Times' Banerjee that the presentation represented the preliminary views of a single employee, and that the levels of contaminants they ultimately found did not warrant further action.

Fred Baldassare, a geologist and former official at the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection who worked on Pennsylvania's own study of Dimock, told Banerjee he disagreed with the presentation's assertion that some wells contained methane:

Now a consultant for industry and homeowners, Baldassare said there was not enough information about the composition of the methane in the wells to draw conclusions about the origin. "It's dangerous and inappropriate to interpret this data in a vacuum," he said.

Gas driller Cabot has maintains that the methane in the waters was naturally occurring. The area is known for having shallow methane pits.

We visited Dimock and surrounding Susquehanna County earlier this year, and found a husband and wife with a gas well in their backyards whose water was clean, but also some (possibly) major water contamination in other nearby homes that had gas wells all around them.

SEE ALSO: How The Gas Boom Affects Rural Pennsylvania Residents

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was criticized in an internal report for dropping charges that Range Resources Corp was polluting drinking water while "fracking" for natural gas.

Range is using the hydraulic fracturing technique in Parker County, Texas where one homeowner complained in August 2010 that he could set his drinking water on fire.

Six U.S. senators had asked the agency's internal watchdog - the Office of the Inspector General - to evaluate a 2012 decision to drop an order that had forced Range to provide drinking water to residents, and stop contamination.

The EPA withdrew its order in March of that year after legal action by the company.

That decision was in line with its own rules, the report said, but the agency should have been tougher with the company, and more critical of the data it used.

Tests of 20 wells near the drilling site should have been conducted more broadly, and the EPA should have gone to greater lengths to make sure it trusted Range's data.

The report issued a number of formal recommendations for the agency which the EPA has already agreed to act upon them.

"The EPA agreed with and provided corrective actions that address our recommendations. All recommendations are resolved with corrective actions underway," the report said.

In fracking, companies blast large amounts of sand and water laced with chemicals underground to free oil and natural gas. Environmentalists say this can pollute water and air.

The report, which was released late on Tuesday, was dated December 20.

(Reporting by Douwe Miedema; Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)

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On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed the first rule to cut greenhouse gas emissions from the nation's nearly 1,000 existing power plants. Specifically, the new regulation calls for cutting carbon pollution by 30% from 2005 levels by the year 2030.

Under the rule, states will be given a flexible timeline to create a plan for reducing carbon pollution, with plans due by June 2016. The program for reducing emissions will vary by state, depending on their unique situations. For example, states can make improvements at power plants by generating more electricity from clean energy, such as wind or solar, or by increasing energy efficiency.

"States can choose the right mix of generation using diverse fuels, energy efficiency and demand-side management to meet the goals and their own needs," the EPA said.

Each state will also have different targets. "States that burn a lot of coal would begin their reductions from a higher emissions level than those that burn natural gas, which emits less carbon dioxide,"the Los Angeles Times explains.

In addition to cutting carbon emissions by 30%, the Clean Power Plan aims to reduce other pollutants, like nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide by 25%.

The EPA estimates that the plan will save up to $93 billion in energy and health costs by preventing more than 6,000 premature deaths, 150,000 asthma attacks, and 490,000 missed work or school days.

The agency also said the new rule will lower electricity bills roughly 8% by increasing energy efficiency.

The EPA will be listening to feedback on the proposal over the next year. The agency plans to finalize the regulations by next June.

The regulation is significant since power plants are the the largest source of carbon pollution in the United States, accounting for around one-third of the nation's greenhouse emissions.

Here's a handy chart from the EPA, laying out what greenhouse gas pollution includes.

SEE ALSO: Shocking Before And After Pictures Of How Climate Change Is Destroying The Earth

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This week, the Heartland Institute is holding a conference on climate change in Las Vegas, which they've dubbed "the biggest gathering of global warming skeptics in the world." If ever there was an event perfect for a mockumentary, it's this disinformation party.

It reminds me of John Oliver's recent take on climate change on Last Week Tonight. In response to an opinion poll on climate change, he said, "You don't need people's opinions on a fact. You might as well have a poll asking which number is bigger — 15 or five? Or, do owls exist? Or, are there hats?"

Thankfully, public opinion is largely on the side of fact. A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 70 percent of Americans accept climate change as real, and perhaps more importantly, want their leaders to combat it. This includes a majority of Republicans.

Many of the Americans with whom I speak want to combat climate change because they view it as a moral obligation — they want to protect generations to come. They also want action, of course, because the facts on global warming are clear: After decades of warnings, climate change is here and now, and doing serious damage.

It's leading to heat waves, drought, sea-level rise, floods, superstorms, and other types of destructive, costly, and deadly extreme-weather events. In 2012 alone, extreme weather cost our country more than $140 billion; taxpayers picked up nearly $100 billion of the cost of cleanup, according to an NRDC analysis.

And we've identified the No. 1 culprit: carbon pollution from the burning of fossil fuels. Here in the US, power plants kick out 40 percent of the country's carbon pollution, making them its single largest source.

Right now we limit mercury, arsenic, lead, and other dangerous pollutants from power plants, but somehow there has been no national limit to how much carbon pollution these plants may spew into our air. That's just wrong. It's time to close the pollution loophole and put in place the common-sense safeguards we need to reduce the dangerous carbon pollution that's warming the planet and threatening our future.

Thankfully, President Barack Obama is doing just that. He instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to create the first-ever limits on carbon pollution from power plants.

In response, EPA released the "Clean Power Plan," which will accelerate the move to a modern, clean energy system to power our future — one that relies on wind, solar, and other forms of renewable energy. It also means new investment in efficiency, so we can do more with less, save money, and make our workers more competitive.

This effort will protect our communities, our air, our water, and our health. It also creates an opportunity to drive innovation, investment, and jobs. Done right, cutting carbon pollution from power plants could stimulate $52 billion to $121 billion in cost-effective energy efficiency and renewable energy between now and 2020, and could save US families and businesses more than $37 billion on their electricity bills by the same year. That's about $100 a year in savings for the average household.

Get ready for more false claims by big polluters. Read more here.

So it's no wonder that the support for this is broad and growing. That 70 percent of Americans who believe climate change is real includes all sorts of people — from business to labor to military to religious groups. We're talking about everyone from the Hip Hop Caucus to the Garden Club of America. Everyone is involved.

As for the last remaining climate skeptics, they can have their fun in Las Vegas this week — it looks like temperatures could reach 110 degrees, so I hope they stay hydrated — but the fact is that their numbers are dwindling swiftly. And I can only hope the media covers it the way John Oliver advises, by reporting that the skeptics are wrong, not just opinionated.

Despite the Heartland Institute's best efforts, America is no longer debating climate change. We're now working to solve it. Folks can help make sure what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas by voicing their support for EPA's Clean Power Plan today.

Frances Beinecke is the president of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

SEE ALSO: John Oliver Hosts A 'Statistically Representative' Climate Debate

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You know an invention has its drawbacks when even the guy who invented it says he's sorry he did so.

That would be John Sylvan, inventor of the easy-to-use Keurig coffee maker — an invention deemed “the most wasteful form of coffee” on the planet.

Sylan says he regrets the creation largely due to its severe ecological impact. The Keurig uses disposable plastic coffee pods, called "K-Cups," which are not easily recyclable or biodegradable.

“I don’t have one," Sylvan said of the Keurig. "They're kind of expensive to use. Plus it's not like drip coffee is tough to make.”

Convenience-obsessed America is the world's largest coffee consumer. Nearly 85 percent of adults in America drink coffee. According to the National Coffee Association, nearly 1 in 5 adults drink single-cup-brewed coffee in a single day.

Last year, Keurig Green Mountain sold a whopping 9.8 billion K-Cups — enough to circle the Earth more than a dozen times. Keurig says it wants all K-Cups to be recyclable by 2020, but by then it could be too late.

Egg Studios CEO Mike Hachey created the viral video “Kill the K-Cup” last month, which highlights the fact that 13 billion K-Cups went into landfills last year.

"Do you feel OK contributing to that?” Hachey asks.

K-Cups are not the only culprits affecting the environment. America represents only 5 percent of the world’s population, but generates nearly a quarter of the world’s trash.

Many everyday items that we take for granted have a significant impact on Mother Earth. Here are a few humble household supplies that hurt the environment more than you'd expect:

1. Anti-bacterial soap

Nearly 75 percent of anti-bacterial liquid soaps and body washes in the US include an ingredient called triclosan. Research shows that small quantities of triclosan persist after being flushed down the drain, and even after water is treated at sewage plants.

These small quantities then end up in streams and other bodies of water. They can disrupt algae’s ability to perform photosynthesis and build up in fatty tissues of animals higher up in the food chain.

2. Lawn mowers

Mowing the lawn is actually terrible for the environment. According to a Swedish study, a lawn mower produces nearly the same amount of oily air pollution as a 100-mile car trip.

“Lawn and garden equipment really does add to air pollution,” Cathy Milbourn, spokeswoman for the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), told ABC last year. "People can reduce the impact it has by using [lawn equipment] in the early morning or in the late afternoon. Or perhaps not at all.”

3. Tea bags

Most of the tea brewed in America is made with tea bags, which means that an average tea drinker consuming 5 cups a day gets through about 13 sq meters of perforated paper every year.

According to a report by Which? Gardening, teabags produced by the some of the top tea manufacturers — including Twinnings, Tetley and PG Tips — are only about 75 percent biodegradable.

While most teabags are made with paper fiber, they also include plastic polypropylene — an ingredient that makes teabags heat-resistant but is not fully biodegradable.

Whitney Kakos, the sustainability manager for Teadirect, says the use of polypropylene is an “industry-wide practice.” There are also the luxurious silken (basically plastic) tea bags. Supposedly of higher quality and visually appealing, these bags are actually harmful to consumers and contribute to landfill waste.

4. Plastic bottles

About 50 billion bottles of water are consumed every year, 30 million of which are consumed in the US alone. Nearly 1,500 water bottles are consumed per second in America. About 17 million barrels of oil are used every year to produce these bottles.

The national recycle rate for PETs, or bottles made with polyethylene terephthalate, is only 23 percent — which means 80 percent of plastic water bottles end up in landfills. And even if we were on our environmentally best behavior, not all plastic bottles placed in designated containers are recycled because only certain types of plastic can be recycled in limited municipalities.

5. Microbeads

Found in everything from toothpaste to exfoliating face washes and body scrubs, microbeads actually wreak havoc on the environment.

According to a recent study by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University, these tiny pieces of plastic find their way down our drains through filtration systems to the ocean. Soaking up toxins like a sponge, they then contribute to the plastic pollution of water bodies, potentially starve coral reefs of proper food and negatively affect other marine organisms.

6. Disposable razors

Single-use razor made of polystyrene. (Hispalois/Wikimedia Commons)
According to the EPA, about 2 billion razors are thrown away every year. Although you can recycle the steel blades, your good ol’ disposable razor most likely makes its way to the landfill.

Add that to the higher environmental cost of production using raw materials and the water used while actually shaving and you’ve got one of the most wasteful bathroom products around.

7. Paper cups

If you think your morning paper cup of coffee is recyclable and environmentally friendly, think again.

Every year, Americans toss out more than 80 billion single-use cups, thanks to our morning coffee runs. These cups are also coated with low-density, heat-resistant polyethylene that is not biodegradable. In addition to these cups' heading for a landfill and taking more than 20 years to decompose, the very process of making them is extremely harmful to the environment. Production consumes forests and large volumes of water, and expels dirty water.

8. Wooden chopsticks from restaurants

About 3.8 million trees are torn down to produce a staggering 57 billion disposable pairs of chopsticks every year, half of which are used within China. About 77 percent are exported to Japan, 21 percent to South Korea and 2 percent to America.

But despite taxes levied in 2006 and warnings of government regulations to monitor production in 2010, disposable chopstick use, production and discard is on the rise and continues to devastate forests in China at an alarming rate.

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A seemingly divided Supreme Court weighed the Obama administration's first-ever regulations aimed at reducing power plant emissions of mercury and other hazardous air pollutants that contribute to respiratory illnesses, birth defects and developmental problems in children.

The rule, known as Mercury and Air Toxic Standards (MATS), was the first federal limit on the amount of these types of toxic air pollutants.

The justices heard arguments Wednesday in a challenge brought by industry groups and Republican-led states arguing the EPA should have considered costs, which could reach $9.6 billion a year, when limiting emissions.

But the benefits are much greater, $37 billion to $90 billion annually, the EPA said. The savings stem from the prevention of up to 11,000 deaths, 4,700 nonfatal heart attacks and 540,000 lost days of work, the EPA said. Mercury accumulates in fish and is especially dangerous to pregnant or breastfeeding women, and young children, because of concern that too much could harm a developing brain.

The dispute stems from a sentence at the heart of the Clean Air Act: "The Administrator shall regulate electric utility steam generating units under this section, if the Administrator finds such regulation is appropriate and necessary after considering the results of the study required by this subparagraph."

The petitioners —which include Michigan and 20 other states as well as organizations like the National Mining Association — think the EPA misinterpreted the words "appropriate and necessary." 

In their most recent petition to the court, they state the EPA "treats the word 'appropriate' as meaningless and ignores a factor — costs — that Congress intended [the] EPA to consider." The EPA also "unreasonably fail[ed] to give 'appropriate' any meaning beyond that already ascribed to 'necessary.'"

Several conservative justices questioned whether EPA should have taken costs into account when it first decided to regulate hazardous air pollutants from power plants, or whether health risks are the only consideration under the Clean Air Act. The EPA did factor in costs at a later stage when it wrote standards that are expected to reduce the toxic emissions by 90 percent.

Justice Antonin Scalia was critical of the agency's reading of the provisions of the anti-air pollution law at issue in the case throughout 90 minutes of arguments. "It's a silly way to read them," Scalia said.

The court's four liberal justices appeared more comfortable with EPA's position, leaving Justice Anthony Kennedy as the possible decisive vote.

Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. said EPA followed the same process in deciding whether to regulate other sources of emissions, including from motor vehicles.

The case is the latest in a string of attacks against the Obama administration's actions to rein in pollution from coal-burning power plants that harms health and contributes to global warming. The administration is seeking to use the Clean Air Act for the first time to control mercury and carbon pollution from the nation's power plants.

But numerous states have already filed challenges to a proposed rule to curb the pollution linked to global warming from the nation's coal-burning power plants. And Congress is working on a bill that would allow states to opt out of any rules clamping down on heat-trapping carbon dioxide.

The legal and political challenges ahead could undermine US efforts to inspire other countries to control their emissions, as they head into negotiations in Paris on a new international treaty later this year.

A disproportionate share of the 600 affected power plants, most of which burn coal, are in the South and upper Midwest. Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, representing 21 states at the Supreme Court, said the law requires the EPA to take account of costs before deciding whether to step in. The states and industry groups also said the agency overstated the benefits of reducing mercury emissions.

Shuttering older plants or installing pollution-control equipment also will reduce emissions of particulate matter, such as dust, dirt and other fragments associated with a variety of respiratory ailments. The administration said it properly took those benefits into account, but the challengers argued that they are not relevant to the case.

Chief Justice John Roberts called the inclusion of those other benefits an "end run" around more stringent procedures EPA would have to follow to try to reduce emissions of particulate matter.

Several utilities that already have installed the equipment or that primarily rely on natural gas and nuclear power to make electricity said the EPA rules are economically practical. Moreover, they said that until the rules take effect their competitors who haven't yet complied with the rules have an unfair advantage. Another 16 states and several large cities also are backing the administration.

Congress first ordered the EPA to study the release of mercury among 180 toxic substances in 1990. The agency initially decided to go ahead with the limits on power plant emissions in 2000, the final year of the Clinton administration.

After President George W. Bush took office in 2001, the EPA tried to undo its earlier decision, but the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington blocked that attempt. When Barack Obama became president in 2009, the agency again decided to move forward. It issued final rules in 2012, and the appeals court upheld them last year.

A decision is expected by the end of June.

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GOLETA, Calif. (AP) — An oil spill that fouled beaches and threatened wildlife along a scenic stretch of the California coast spread across 9 miles of ocean Wednesday as cleanup efforts began and federal regulators investigated how the pipeline leaked.

The company that owns a pipeline that spewed oil into California coastal waters says that under the worst-case scenario, up to 105,000 gallons of crude leaked in the spill.

Workers in protective suits raked and shoveled stinky black goo off the beaches, while boats towed booms into place to corral the two slicks off the Santa Barbara coast where a much larger spill in 1969 — the largest in U.S. waters at the time — is credited with giving rise to the American environmental movement.

The pipe was carrying 84,000 gallons an hour before the leak was detected, suggesting more oil escaped than the 21,000 gallons initially estimated.

It took three hours to shut down the pipe Tuesday, but officials didn't say how long it leaked beforehand or discuss the rate at which oil escaped the pipe.

Federal regulators from the Department of Transportation, which oversees oil pipeline safety, investigated the leak's cause, the pipe's condition and the potential regulatory violations.

The 24-inch pipe built in 1991 had no previous problems and was inspected about two weeks ago, though results of that inspection had not been analyzed yet, said Darren Palmer, a district manager with the company that owns the pipe, Plains All American Pipeline LP.

"Plains is taking responsibility and paying for everything associated with this spill," Palmer said.

A combination of soiled beaches and pungent stench of petroleum caused state parks officials to close to Refugio State Beach and El Capitan State Beach, both popular campgrounds west of Santa Barbara, over the Memorial Day weekend.

Still, tourists were drawn to pull off the Pacific Coast Highway to eye the disaster from overlooking bluffs.

"It smells like what they use to pave the roads," said Fan Yang, of Indianapolis, who was hoping to find cleaner beaches in Santa Barbara, about 20 miles away. "I'm sad for the birds — if they lose their habitat."

Environmental damage was anticipated, but dead fish and oily birds had not been found in the calm seas or rocky coast by late morning, said Capt. Mark Crossland of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The department closed fishing and shellfish harvesting for a mile east and west of Refugio beach and it deployed booms to protect the nesting and foraging habitat of the snowy plover and the least tern, both endangered shore birds, a spokeswoman said.

Members of the International Bird Rescue were prepared to clean any birds covered with oil.

Environmental groups used the spill as an opportunity to take a shot at fossil fuels and remind people of the area's notoriety with oil spills.

"Big Oil comes with big risks — from drilling to delivery," said Bob Deans, spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Santa Barbara learned that lesson over 40 years ago when offshore drilling led to disaster."

Large offshore rigs still dot the horizon off the coast, pumping crude to shore. The leak occurred in a pipe that was carrying crude from an onshore facility to another point in the chain of production that eventually leads to a refinery.

The oil spilled into a culvert running under a highway and into a storm drain that emptied into the ocean.

The spill was not expected to affect gas prices, even though the pipeline was out of operation for now, said Tom Kloza, global head of energy at the Oil Price Information Service.

In fact, Californians probably will see high prices drop a bit because the price of crude has dropped 60 cents in the past week, Kloza said.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — The pipeline that leaked thousands of gallons of oil on the California coast was the only pipe of its kind in the county not required to have an automatic shut-off valve because of a court fight nearly three decades ago, a county official said.

The original owner of the pipeline skirted the Santa Barbara County requirement before.

It successfully arguing in court in the late 1980s that it should be subject to federal oversight because the pipeline is part of an interstate network, said Kevin Drude, deputy director of the county's Energy and Minerals Division. Auto shut-off valves are not required by federal regulators.

"It's the only major pipeline that doesn't have auto shut-off," Drude said. "For us, it's routine."

Federal regulators are investigating the cause of Tuesday's leak that spilled up to 105,000 gallons of crude oil from an underground pipe into a culvert and as much as 21,000 gallons into the ocean at Refugio State Beach. The spill killed untold numbers of fish, at least five pelicans and a sea lion. It also mired other wildlife, including an elephant seal, in the muck.

Plains All American Pipeline was still draining the pipe and trying to locate the leak Saturday. Federal regulators ordered the company to remove the damaged section and send it to a lab for tests on the metal, along with a series of other steps before it could resume pumping oil through the pipe to inland refineries.

Plains said the pipeline had one valve to shut it down if oil flowed in the opposite direction and three valves controlled by operators in its Midland, Texas, control room.

Plains defended its people approach to manually shutting down the system, saying it's the standard across the country for liquid pipelines.

"It is much safer for operators who understand the operations of the pipeline to shut it down following a planned sequence of steps than for computer to automatically close a valve on oil that is traveling in confined space at high pressure," Patrick Hodgins, the company's senior director of safety, said Saturday. "This is all standard operating procedures within our industry."

While it's not known if an auto shut-off valve would have detected the leak and reduced the size of the spill, environmentalists have criticized the lack of such a device, saying it could have averted or minimized the disaster.

"Everyone is pretty mystified why the pipeline didn't automatically shut down when the leak occurred," said Linda Krop, chief counsel of the Environmental Defense Center.

Santa Barbara County regulations sometimes exceed state and federal standards, requiring additional environmental analysis or imposing conditions to further protect health and the environment, Drude said. One additional requirement is a valve that can detect changes consistent with a leak and automatically shut down.

The county successfully fought another operator that didn't want to install automatic shutdown valves on a pipeline from an offshore drilling platform, Drude said.

However, when there was a leak on that line in 1997, an operator overrode the automatic shutdown, and it continued spewing crude into the Pacific Ocean a couple miles from shore. The 10,000 gallon spill fouled 21 miles of shoreline and killed more than 150 birds.

Richard Kuprewicz, president of Accufacts Inc., which investigates pipeline incidents, said such valves aren't always effective, though newer, more sophisticated "smart" models provide more accurate signals that can trigger shutdowns.

A Plains employee discovered the leak early Tuesday afternoon, about three hours after mechanical issues with the pipeline, according to the company. The pipe was restarted for about 20 minutes before a pump failed and then it was shut down because of changes in pressure.

The company said it was looking into whether those earlier problems led to the leak.

A surge in pressure from starting up a system could cause a leak or exacerbate one, but it's too soon to tell, Kuprewicz said.

"In the past, surge pressures have caused pipes to rupture. But there were other failures, too," he said, speaking in general and not about the Plains incident. "If that were the case, that would become fairly evident ... pretty quickly."

Plains All American subsidiaries have reported at least 223 accidents along their lines and spilled a combined 864,300 gallons of hazardous liquids since 2006, according to federal records. The company has been subject to 25 enforcement actions by federal regulators and tallied damages topping $32 million.

The company has defended its record, saying accidental releases have decreased as its pipelines have increased to 17,800 miles.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration says a new federal rule regulating small streams and wetlands will protect the drinking water of more than 117 million people in the country.

Not so, insist Republicans. They say the rule is a massive government overreach that could even subject puddles and ditches to regulation.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., is promising to "rein in" the government through legislation or other means.

It's a threat with a familiar ring.

What else are Capito and other Republicans pledging to try to block?

— the administration's plan to curb carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants.

— its proposal for stricter limits on smog-forming pollution linked to asthma and respiratory illness

— a separate rule setting the first national standards for waste generated from coal burned for electricity.

The rules are among a host of regulations that majority Republicans have targeted for repeal or delay as they confront President Barack Obama on a second-term priority: his environmental legacy, especially his efforts to reduce the pollution linked to global warming.

WHAT HAS OBAMA PROPOSED?

Last June, Obama rolled out a plan to cut earth-warming pollution from power plants by 30 percent by 2030, setting in motion one of the most significant U.S. actions ever to address global warming. Once completed this summer, the rule will set the first national limits on carbon dioxide from existing power plants, the largest source of greenhouse gases in the U.S.

The administration says the rule is expected to raise electricity prices by about 4.9 percent by 2020 and spur a wave of retirements of coal-fired power plants.

The administration also has moved forward on other rules, including the water plan announced last Wednesday. Officials say it will provide much-needed clarity for landowners about which small waterways and tributaries must be protected against pollution and development.

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Gina McCarthy, said the rule only would affect waters with a "direct and significant" connection to larger bodies of water downstream that already are protected.

The administration has proposed stricter emissions limits on smog-forming pollution linked to asthma and respiratory illness. Rather than settling on a firm new ozone limit, the EPA is proposing a range of allowable ozone levels that cut the existing level but do not go as far as environmental and public health groups want. The rule is expected to be completed later this year.

In December, the administration set the first national standards for waste generated from coal burned for electricity, treating it more like household garbage than a hazardous material. Environmentalists had pushed for the hazardous classification, citing hundreds of cases nationwide in which coal ash waste has tainted waterways or underground aquifers, in many cases legally.

The coal industry wanted the less stringent classification, arguing that coal ash is not dangerous, and that a hazardous label would hinder recycling. About 40 percent of coal ash is reused.

WHAT DO REPUBLICANS SAY ABOUT THE RULES?

GOP lawmakers criticize the rules as anti-business job killers that go further than needed to protect the nation's air and water supplies and other natural resources.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the new water rule will send "landowners, small businesses, farmers and manufacturers on the road to a regulatory and economic hell."

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said Obama and the EPA are "aggressively pushing an extreme and costly regulatory agenda" that will harm the U.S. economy and everyday life of Americans. His committee "continues to pursue legislation to take aim at EPA's costly and harmful regulations," Inhofe said.

WHAT OPTIONS ARE AVAILABLE TO CONGRESSIONAL OPPONENTS?

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has led the charge against the power plant rule, which he says amounts to a declaration of war against his home state, a longtime leader in coal production.

McConnell wrote the 50 governors in March urging them not to comply with the rule, which requires implementation by the states. McConnell has encouraged legal challenges to the rule and recently announced a new wrinkle, telling the EPA's McCarthy that Congress could block the plan by using an obscure section of the Clean Air Act requiring congressional consent for agreements among states.

"The law reads: 'No such agreement or compact shall be binding or obligatory upon any state ... unless and until it has been approved by Congress,'" McConnell told McCarthy at an April hearing. "Doesn't seem ambivalent to me. I can assure you that as long as I am majority leader of the Senate, this body will not sign off on any backdoor national energy tax."

WHAT'S NEXT?

Obama, McCarthy and officials are not backing down. At the April hearing, McCarthy told McConnell that the EPA guidelines are reasonable and give states "tremendous flexibility."

The EPA will produce a rule "that will withstand the test of time in the courts," McCarthy said.

"You're going to have to prove it in court," McConnell said.

"As we most often do," McCarthy replied.

Lawmakers in the House and Senate will continue to hold hearings on the administration's plans and push bills to block the rules or curb spending on them. The GOP-controlled House passed a bill blocking the EPA water rule on May 12 — two weeks before it was officially announced. Bills to block the power plant rule, ozone limits and coal ash regulation have been filed in both chambers.

"We are going to pursue all avenues," McConnell told The Associated Press. "The solution is not right here (in Congress), it's out there — either in the courts or the governors refusing to file plans."

This week, the EPA is expected to propose regulations to cut greenhouse gas emissions from heavy-duty trucks, cutting millions of tons of carbon dioxide pollution while saving millions of barrels of oil.

EPA spokeswoman Liz Purchia said in all its actions, the agency is merely fulfilling its mission to protect the environment.

"Clean air and clean water should not be a political issue," she said. "All sides of the aisle want a clean and safe planet for their children and future generations. We are just doing our jobs — as Congress has directed us, and as courts have affirmed for us — to protect public health and the environment."

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DETROIT (AP) — Volkswagen became the world's top-selling carmaker trumpeting the environmental friendliness, fuel efficiency and high performance of diesel-powered vehicles that meet America's tough Clean Air laws.

VW's success story was so good that pollution-control advocates did their own tests, hoping to persuade other countries to enforce the same strict standards.

Instead, they got a foul-smelling surprise: In actual driving, the VWs spewed as much as 40 times more pollution from their tailpipes than allowed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"We ran the program to show that U.S. diesels are clean," said John German, senior fellow with the International Council on Clean Transportation, the group that blew the whistle on Volkswagen. "Turned out we found a violator."

The EPA and the California Air Resources Board announced the violations on Friday, accusing VW of installing software that switches on pollution controls during smog tests, then switches them off again so that drivers can enjoy more engine power on the road.

VW got away with this scheme for seven years, and according to the EPA, didn't come clean even when repeatedly confronted with evidence of excessive pollution.

Industry analysts say the company was likely trying to reduce costs and improve performance, to match its marketing.

Instead, VW's stock plunged a stunning 17 percent on Monday, costing the company $15 billion in market value. It also outraged customers, turned up the heat on the CEO, and could bring up to $18 billion in penalties from the U.S. government alone.

The company stopped selling the vehicles and likely will have to recall nearly 500,000 Jetta, Golf, Beetle and Audi A3 cars dating to the 2009 model year.

CEO Martin Winterkorn promised a company investigation as he apologized on Sunday, saying VW had broken the trust of customers and the public. He also pledged to cooperate with government investigations.

U.S. diesel emissions limits, mainly for ozone-causing nitrogen oxide, are more strict than those in Europe. Removing the chemical requires additional hardware. Instead, VW used secret software — an algorithm that detects when cars are being tested on treadmill-like devices called dynamometers, and stealthily switches the engines to a cleaner mode.

Because smog tests are almost always done on dynamometers, VW got away with the scheme for seven years, until the "clean transportation" advocates went to West Virginia University, which tests emissions using equipment that fits in car trunks.

WVU tested three cars in real-world conditions — a 2012 VW Jetta, a 2013 VW Passat and a BMW X5 SUV. The BMW passed, but the university found significantly higher emissions from the Volkswagens, according to the EPA.

The university and the council reported their findings to the EPA and the California Air Resources Board in May 2014, but VW blamed the problem on technical issues and unexpected conditions. The automaker even did a recall late last year, without much improvement, the EPA said.

Only when the EPA and CARB refused to approve VW's 2016 diesel models for sale did the company explain what it had done.

"We met with VW on several occasions, and they continued to dispute our data, so we'd return to the lab," recalled CARB spokesman Dave Clegern. "Over time, VW had no other explanations left, and it was our lab staff who actually got VW to admit that there was, in fact, a defeat device."

VW's diesel cars represent just a fourth of its U.S. sales, so the company was probably trying to avoid the cost of more sophisticated pollution controls, since it sells far more diesels in Europe, said Alan Baum, a consultant in Detroit who advises automakers on fuel economy regulations.

"That enabled them to offer the diesel without some of the additional hardware and software in the U.S.," Baum said.

The scheme also gave VWs better mileage, German said.

The scandal is already damaging VW's reputation as the people's car. European regulators announced parallel investigations, and the EPA said it is expanding its probe to make sure other automakers aren't using similar devices.

VW board members reportedly planned a crisis meeting Wednesday ahead of their regular board meeting. And at the White House, spokesman Josh Earnest said "we are quite concerned by some of the reports that we've seen about the conduct of this particular company."

VW CEO Winterkorn will face difficult questions in the coming days.

"I'd be surprised if Winterkorn can ride this out, but in Germany there's often a slightly slower process in these matters," said Christian Stadler, a professor of strategic management at Warwick Business School.

For a company to engage in such blatant trickery, top executives must have been informed, said Guido Reinking, a German auto expert.

Winterkorn is an engineer by training who led research and development across the VW group beginning in 2007, and became chairman of the management board the same year.

The illegal software was made and installed in vehicles with 2.0-liter diesel engines during the model years 2009 through 2015, the EPA said.

Car owners do not need to take any immediate action. The cars threaten public health, but the violations pose no safety hazards, and the cars remain legal to drive and sell while Volkswagen comes up with a plan to repair them at company expense, the EPA said.

VW didn't acknowledge its scheme until Sept. 3, EPA spokeswoman Liz Purchia said Monday. On Sept. 9, without making any reference to VW, the Justice Department announced a renewed commitment to holding individual executives accountable for corporate wrongdoing. And when the EPA announced VW's violations on Friday, it noted that in addition to the corporate fines of $37,500 per vehicle, individuals could be fined $3,750 per violation of the Clean Air Act.

On Capitol Hill, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., said his subcommittee will determine whether auto buyers were deceived. "The American people deserve answers and assurances that this will not happen again. We intend to get those answers."

___

Matthew Daly contributed from Washington, D.C. Pan Pylas contributed from London. Dee-Ann Durbin contributed from Detroit.

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DETROIT (AP) — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plans sweeping changes to the way it tests for diesel emissions after getting duped by clandestine software in Volkswagen cars for seven years.

Chris Grundler, head of the EPA's office of transportation and air quality, indicated the agency would add on-road testing to its regimen. VW's sophisticated software allowed its cars to pass tests in the lab and then spew pollution into the atmosphere while on the highway.

The revelations meant unwanted scrutiny for the EPA. Its testing procedures have been criticized for being predictable and outdated, making it relatively easy for VW to cheat. What's more, the EPA did not initially uncover the problem; researchers at West Virginia University did, using on-road testing.

Grundler says the changes are designed to detect software and other methods automakers might use to rig a test.

The EPA and the California Air Resources Board have engineers who are "developing clever ways in which these things can be detected," Grundler says.

He also notes that testing of diesel engines, which make up only 1 percent of the vehicles on U.S. roads, wasn't the top priority for the EPA. The agency did have on-road testing equipment — but it was assigned to monitor automaker gas mileage estimates and heavy-duty diesel trucks, where cheating had been uncovered in the past.

Grundler, who has been with the EPA for more than three decades, says the lack of on-road testing for diesels "might change in the future." An announcement of the changes could come on Friday.

VW has admitted to installing software on Volkswagen and Audi cars with four-cylinder diesel engines that switches on pollution controls when they are being tested. When the software, called a "defeat device," determines that the cars are back on real roads, the controls are turned off. The EPA says about 500,000 U.S. cars including the Jetta, Golf, Beetle, Passat and Audi A3 have the cheating software, and VW says a total of 11 million cars have it worldwide.

VW was able to fool the EPA because the agency only tested the cars on treadmill-like devices called dynamometers and didn't use portable test equipment on real roads. The software in the cars' engine-control computers checked the speed, steering wheel position, air pressure and other factors to determine when dynamometer tests were under way. It then turned on pollution controls that reduced the output of nitrogen oxide, an ingredient in harmful ozone, the EPA has said.

VW started the scheme with the 2009 model year, and may not have been caught without testing performed at West Virginia University on behalf of the International Council on Clean Transportation, a nonprofit group that advises governments on regulations. EPA and California regulators confronted VW with those findings to VW in May 2014. The automaker eventually did a recall late last year, without much improvement, the EPA says.

Only when the EPA and CARB refused to approve VW's 2016 diesel models for sale did the company admit what it had done.

The EPA announced the violations a week ago and said VW could face billions in fines. The agency said the cars are safe to drive but VW will have to pay to recall and fix them. The agency also is going to test diesels from other manufacturers to make sure they don't have similar devices.

Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida is frustrated that regulatory agencies such as the EPA are failing to protect the public. "Seven years is way too long a time that the EPA has been asleep at the switch," he says.

He says the VW case has similarities to those involving General Motors ' defective ignition switches and Takata Corp.'s exploding air bag inflators, where it also took years before those problems were disclosed to consumers.

"When there is this kind of deception, we've got to get these agencies to be able to cut through it and catch it," Nelson says.

It's not the first time the EPA has had to change testing to make sure automakers are playing by the rules. Earlier this year the agency updated gas mileage tests after some automakers were caught with inflated window sticker estimates.

Grundler disputes the notion that EPA would never have caught VW without the outside help. European regulators were looking into VW's on-road diesel emissions as far back as 2012, and since diesels make up half the cars there, the EPA decided to let Europe take the lead, he says.

"I don't think it's fair to say that this would never have been uncovered," he says. "Do I wish we had uncovered it sooner? Absolutely."

____

Daly reported from Washington, D.C.

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New diesel cars from Renault, Nissan, Hyundai, Citroen, Fiat, Volvo and other manufacturers have all been found to emit substantially higher levels of pollution when tested in more realistic driving conditions, according to new data seen by the Guardian.

Research compiled by Adac, Europe’s largest motoring organisation, shows that some of the diesel cars it examined released over 10 times more NOx than revealed by existing EU tests, using an alternative standard due to be introduced later this decade.

Adac put the diesel cars through the EU’s existing lab-based regulatory test (NEDC) and then compared the results with a second, UN-developed test (WLTC) which, while still lab-based, is longer and is believed to better represent real driving conditions. The WLTC is currently due to be introduced by the EU in 2017.

The biggest polluters according to Adac’s own data are:

• Nissan’s X-Trail 1.6 cDi, which produced over 14 times more NOx in the WLTC test. A Nissan spokeswoman said: “We can state unequivocally that we are committed to upholding the law and meeting regulations in all markets.”
• Renault’s Espace Energy dCi 160 emitted over 11 times more NOx in the WLTC test, with Renault’s Grand Scenic and Kadjar also among Adac’s top 10 polluters. A Renault Group spokesman said: “The group complies with all regulations and legislation for the markets in which it operates. Its vehicles are not equipped with defeat devices.”
• Adac found Jeep’s Renegade 2.0 emitted 10 times more NOx while other cars producing at least six times more NOx included Hyundai’s i20 1.1, Fiat’s 500x 1.6 and Citroen’s DS5 Hybrid4. “Hyundai Motor abides by the testing regulations and methods of each region where it sells cars including Europe,” said a spokeswoman. Citroen, Fiat and Jeep did not respond to requests for comment.

Reinhard Kolke, head of test and technical affairs at Adac’s state-of-the-art test centre in Bavaria, told the Guardian: “If all cars complied with [the official EU NOx limit], we would have solved all the worst health effects. Every consumer has the right to expect all manufacturers to do this. But still there are these gross emitters.”

The controversy over high nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions from diesel cars was sparked when Volkswagen, then its Audi and Skoda brands, were caught using software in millions of cars to cheat pollution tests. There is no suggestion of cheating in Adac’s analysis, but only a quarter of the 79 different cars ADAC tested using the WLTC standard matched their official performance on the existing EU test.

Peter Mock, one of the team at the International Council on Clean Transportation who exposed the VW diesel scandal, said the Adac test centre was “absolutely trustworthy”.

But Mock said the high profile now being given to the issue of misleading emissions data left him with mixed feelings. “I feel happy, but I also feel sad because there was enough data and people knew for a long time. The emissions in cities have not gone down like we expected and they could have been reduced a long time ago.”

The failure of the regulatory tests is the main cause of illegal levels of NO2 in many cities, according to a recent UK government document. “It has had an absolutely enormous effect,” said Prof Alistair Lewis, an air pollution expert at the University of York. “The costs will be in thousands of deaths and billions of pounds, all passed on to the taxpayer.”

Emissions experts have warned for some time that there were problems with official lab-based NOx tests, meaning there was a failure to limit on-the-road emissions. “Gaming and optimising the test is ubiquitous across the industry,” said Greg Archer, an emissions expert at Transport & Environment.

A recent T&E round-up of evidence found this affected nine out of 10 new diesel cars, which were on average seven times more polluting in the real world. But the Adac data are the first detailed list of specific makes and models affected.

Adac also measured a Volvo S60 D4 producing NOx emissions over 14 times the official test level – but a Volvo spokesman said that in this instance the car was faulty. “We are investigating this incident further,” he said. “An early indication is that the emission control system was out of order.”

Kolke said Adac had not been contacted by Volvo and that the car would have needed additional equipment fitted to reduce NOx emissions to low levels. The Adac tests also measured a Volvo V60 D3 emitting three times the official test level. The Volvo spokesman said: “Every Volvo car on the market today meets the legal Euro 6 standard for NOx emissions, based on the current test.”

T&E argues that the Adac WLTC tests are minimum estimates of actual on-the-road emissions. Archer said the EU must back up the WLTC with on-the-road tests and end the practice of carmakers paying for the tests at their preferred test centres. “It is more realistic but it still isn’t entirely representative,” said Archer. “We still think there is a gap of about 25% between the WLTC test and typical average new car driving.”

One politician said that the Adac tests showed there was an urgent need for review. “The Adac tests show the diesel emissions scandal is happening right across the industry,” said Liberal Democrat MEP Catherine Bearder, who is a lead negotiator in the European parliament on the EU’s new air quality law.

“We urgently need to reform. This is not just about customers being misled, it is about the thousands of premature deaths due to air pollution each year.”

This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk

This article was written by Damian Carrington from The Guardian and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

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CHICAGO (AP) — More than a decade ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency helped develop a technology that ultimately was used by an independent laboratory to catch Volkswagen's elaborate cheating on car emissions tests. But EPA used the technology primarily to test trucks rather than passenger cars because such heavy equipment was a much bigger polluter.

That decision meant that the U.S. regulator missed its best chance to foil the German carmaker's deception early on. The portable emissions measurement systems that EPA pioneered might have subjected VW diesel cars to on-road tests and discovered they were spewing up to 40 times the allowable levels of key pollutant nitrogen oxide under normal driving conditions.

Without that test, VW was virtually home free and evaded detection for seven years.

"If EPA had used the technology back then (on diesel cars), we could have caught it," said Margo Oge, who was director of the EPA's office of Transportation and Air Quality at the time and headed the office for 18 years until 2012. But she doesn't regret EPA's decision to focus that technology on manufacturers of trucks and heavy equipment, which had a record of cheating on tests and accounted for a much bigger portion of U.S. pollution than the nascent diesel car business.

Interviews with former and current EPA officials and other auto and environmental experts suggest that although the U.S. has the world's toughest auto emissions standards, federal and state regulators don't have the resources to conduct the kind of comprehensive tests that might have nabbed VW, and they rely on automakers to self-report data in a kind of honor system.

"They trust the auto companies to tell the truth. And the auto companies have proven time and again that they don't tell the truth," said Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign and a veteran of the fight for tougher car emissions regulation. "We can't allow the students to test themselves and submit their own grades."

The crucial step in the U.S. testing system is "certification" of each new model or family of models, allowing them to be sold in the U.S. To get that EPA stamp of approval, car manufacturers run their own tests and submit sometimes thousands of data points to the EPA.

The EPA requires carmakers to follow a test script that has not changed in more than a decade. The script must be the same, experts said, in order to compare vehicles or validate data. They put the vehicles on a dynamometer — a treadmill for cars — that accelerates and slows down at a programmed interval known as a "drive cycle." A device measures pollutants from the tailpipe.

Aware of the script, VW installed 2009-2015 diesel models with software that sensed when the vehicles were on the treadmill and switched the emissions system to trap the right amount of nitrogen oxide. That sophisticated software algorithm sensed things such as the position of the steering wheel, speed, the duration of the engine's operation and barometric pressure.

Out on the road, the exhaust system would switch back to allowing more pollutants to pass through the nitrogen oxide trap and spill out of the tail pipe.

Volkswagen's 2009 Jetta and Jetta Sportwagen models passed the dynamometer tests and were certified for sale in the U.S.

In addition to certification, the EPA runs spot checks on cars representing 15-20 percent of models in a year to verify the data from manufacturers.

"We can't do a 100 percent check of every data point for every model," said Byron Bunker, director of the EPA's vehicle compliance program. "We focus on new vehicles, new technologies or those where we have a concern."

EPA's National Fuel and Vehicle Emission Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Michigan, ran spot checks on VW's 2009 models that validated the company's data by running an identical series of laboratory tests.

After that, emissions tests are not required at U.S. ports of entry for imported cars or at dealerships. And most states do not require owners of diesel cars to submit them to an emissions test to get a car registration renewed. The 21 states that do test diesel vehicles usually are not equipped to catch cheaters. Most only examine data stored in on-board-diagnostics systems for a record of faults that would indicate a broken component or a maintenance problem. But in the case of the Volkswagens, if the cars were operating as designed, no fault would appear.

It was only when researchers connected with West Virginia University last year used the technology pioneered by EPA, that VW's duplicity was finally exposed by subjecting the cars to actual road tests. Threatened with having its new models banned from the U.S. market, VW admitted the cheating.

In response, EPA last month announced it would toughen testing and is keeping the details secret from carmakers. The new methods could include the use of the portable devices and other tests that replicate real-world driving or just changing the treadmill script. The EPA will have to prioritize its limited money for testing, Christopher Grundler, the agency's current Transportation and Air Quality director, said last week. The regulator's budget has been slashed 21 percent by Congress since fiscal 2010, according to data on its website.

___

Associated Press writer Justin Pritchard in Orange County, California, contributed to this report.

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Hans Dieter Poetsch, the incoming chairman of Volkswagen, sees the scandal around the rigging of emissions tests as a threat to the firm's viability albeit a surmountable one, a newspaper quoted him as saying.

At an internal company meeting this week at the VW headquarters in Wolfsburg, Poetsch described the situation as an "existence-threatening crisis for the company", Germany's Welt am Sonntag reported in a release ahead of Sunday's publication.

Poetsch also said that he believed VW could overcome the crisis, the newspaper said.

A VW spokesman declined to comment on the report.

Europe's largest carmaker has admitted cheating in diesel emissions tests in the United States and Germany's transport minister says it also manipulated them in Europe, where VW sells about 40 percent of its vehicles.

VW has set aside 6.5 billion euros ($7.3 billion) to help cover the cost of the scandal, but some analysts think the final bill could be much higher.

Moody's, S&P and Fitch have all put negative outlooks on their credit ratings, meaning they see a risk of downgrades.

Citing an unnamed insider, Welt am Sonntag said VW's planned investment budget of 100 billion euros through to 2018 was under review for cuts. VW declined to comment.

Sources close to the board told Reuters this week the supervisory board was looking at ways to make savings to try to avoid a downgrade in the company's credit ratings, which would lead to higher borrowing costs.

They said, however, it was not talking about asset sales, after calls from some analysts for the firm to sell its trucks business or brands such as Bugatti, Ducati and Lamborghini.

VW has said it will refit up to 11 million diesel vehicles that contain software capable of cheating emission tests. It also faces potential fines from regulators and prosecutors, lawsuits from consumers and investors, and a possible hit to sales from the damage to its reputation.

A survey by German market research firm Puls showed 41 percent of consumers see the brand as damaged for the long term, while 11 percent say they no longer want to buy a VW, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung paper reported.

(Writing by Emma Thomasson; Editing by Louise Ireland)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Volkswagen's pollution-control chicanery has not just been victimless tinkering, killing between five and 20 people in the United States annually in recent years, according to an Associated Press statistical and computer analysis.

The software that the company admitted using to get around government emissions limits allowed VWs to spew enough pollution to cause somewhere between 16 and 94 deaths over seven years, with the annual count increasing more recently as more of the diesels were on the road. The total cost has been well over $100 million.

That's just in the United States. It's likely far deadlier and costlier in Europe, where more VW diesels were sold, engineers said. Scientists and experts said the death toll in Europe could be as high as hundreds each year, though they caution that it is hard to take American health and air quality computer models and translate them to a more densely populated Europe.

"Statistically, we can't point out who died because of this policy, but some people have died or likely died as a result of this," said Carnegie Mellon environmental engineer professor Peter Adams. He calculates the cost of air pollution with a sophisticated computer model that he and the AP used in its analysis.

Computer software allowed VW diesel cars to spew between 10 to 40 times more nitrogen oxides (NOx) than allowed by regulation, making this "clearly a concern for air quality and public health," said Janet McCabe, acting air quality chief for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Nitrogen oxides mostly form smog — that murky, dirty air that makes it hard to see and for some people to breathe — but also amplify a deadlier, larger problem: tiny particles of soot. Numerous medical studies show those tiny particles cause about 50,000 deaths a year in the United States, mostly from heart problems.

Nitrogen oxides can travel hundreds of miles, so pollution spewed in Pittsburgh can be felt on the East Coast, Adams said.

Experts calculate how much pollution costs society by looking at the value of lost lives. In this case, Adams and other said the lost lives — valued at $8.6 million apiece — overwhelm other costs such as lost work days or hospital costs. The overall annual cost of the extra pollutants from the VW diesels ranged from $40 million to $170 million, environmental engineering professors calculated.

"Even the small increase in NOx from VW diesel emissions is likely to have worsened pollution along the roadways where they have traveled, and affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of people," said Dan Greenbaum, president of the Health Effects Institute in Boston.

"To say millions of people of people are breathing poor air as the result of that is not off the mark," said Greenbaum, who runs the institute that is funded by both the EPA and the auto industry to serve as an independent arbiter of the science.

In a response Saturday night to an earlier request for comment, Volkswagen said the EPA has noted that the affected vehicles do not present a safety hazard and are legal to drive. "General allegations regarding links between NOX emissions from these affected vehicles and specific health effects are unverified. We have received no confirmed reports that the emissions from such vehicles caused any actual health problem," the company said in a statement.

The calculations should be put in context of air that is getting dramatically cleaner in the United States, experts said. Also, the deaths from extra pollution are dwarfed by the 35,000 people in the U.S. a year who die in auto accidents and are closer to the annual U.S. death toll of spider or snake bites.

The AP calculated how much pollution was spewed year by year, starting with that broad 10 times to 40 times emissions level estimate from the EPA, then factoring in mileage and car number totals from EPA, the car company and Kelley Blue Book.

The results show an upper and lower limit of extra nitrogen oxides pollution allowed by VW's subterfuge. The AP took those figures to scientists who previously created a sophisticated computer program that looks at air movement and numerous epidemiological studies on the health effects of pollutants. The result was a rough estimate on deaths and costs to society based on a certain amount of pollution triggering each death.

The EPA has its own open source computer model that calculates death and social costs of emissions, roughly finding it takes nearly 1,300 tons of nitrogen oxides to cause one death. Using that calculation and AP's emission totals, the total death figures over the past seven years range from 12 to 69, slightly lower than the AP calculations.

The AP ran its calculations and results by more than a dozen experts in emissions, risk and public health. They all confirmed the calculations and results seemed right. One scientist had even done a statistical analysis on his own and came independently to the same conclusion. The experts were mostly university professors or from research institutes. They were not environmental advocates or representatives of auto companies.

But engineers caution that these figures come with many caveats and are ballpark estimates. They rely on many assumptions and a range of potential emissions per car. Air pollution impacts on people are usually calculated on a local level because that's where it is felt, and it changes from place to place. But these calculations were broadened to a national level, which adds more uncertainty.

The computer simulation that made the death calculations use conservative medical studies as their baseline. Other epidemiological studies would more than double the deaths and health costs, said Adams and model co-creator Jinhyok Heo of Cornell University.

Chris Frey, an engineering professor at North Carolina State University, has been testing the VW diesels in real world conditions, driving more than 100 miles with monitors in the car tailpipes. He found pollution 10 times higher than the federal standard, and noticed that the worst pollution came as he got on to highways and in stop-and-go traffic. Those less desirable areas are where poorer people live, Greenbaum and other experts said.

Since 2008, VW sold more than 10 million VW diesel cars in Europe, compared with less than half a million in the United States. In Europe, the population is more densely packed in urban areas, making people more vulnerable to added air pollution, several experts said.

"Assuming most of the cars are in Europe, it's pretty simple to estimate that it could go as high as hundreds," said Robert Rohde, a physicist and lead scientist at the Berkeley Earth team that has estimated death tolls of air pollution in the past.

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Online:

EASIUR computer model that calculates costs of air pollution: http://barney.ce.cmu.edu/~jinhyok/easiur/

EPA on Volkswagen emissions dodge: http://1.usa.gov/1KLXXH1

Volkswagen on the emissions dodge: http://www.vwdieselinfo.com/

EPA computer model that calculates death and social costs of pollution: http://www2.epa.gov/benmap

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Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears

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Volkswagen announced that 800,000 additional cars could be affected in this new scandal.

Produced by Jacqui Frank

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This man is wearing 500 plastic bags to show what humans are doing to the environment.

Jim Ries is demonstrating how many bags the average person wastes in a year by attaching 500 of them to his body and walking around town.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the US recycles only 34% of its waste. That's not a lot compared to the world-leading Germany, which recycles more than 60%.

Ries got the idea after his daughter Olivia was upset after learning about dangers to the environment at school. Soon after, the family started the environmental non-profit One More Generation, which aims to educate communities on environmental issues.

Story and editing by Adam Banicki

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SEE ALSO: Arnold Schwarzenegger: Republicans need to stop treating climate change like a political issue

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