Rational establishment of air quality standards

This paper attempts to apply two principles of rationality--efficiency and equity--to the establishment of air quality standards for total suspended particulates in the USA. It is argued that standard setting should embrace either the use of some cost-benefit-risk criterion, or some concept of equity whereby risks are not reduced below levels judged to be acceptable elsewhere. There is often a trade-off to be made between these principles of efficiency and equity and that both cannot be pursued in tandem. In other words, the cost of fairness is more deaths in total than there need be at a particular level of expenditure. The concept of the "margin of safety" is also discussed, and we conclude that, as currently defined, it is of doubtful relevance in either the context of efficiency or of equity. Finally, and using evidence from other studies, we conclude that there are much more cost-effective ways of using scarce resources to save lives (e.g., in health care and in road safety) than pursuing the primary standards for TSP laid down by the United States Environmental Protection Agency in light of the U.S. Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970 and 1977.