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Loophole In Clean Air Act Obscures Its Impact

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A firefighter uses an instrument to douse flames in a forest.
A prescribed fire in Hayfork on April 10, 2019. Advocates for the practice of setting planned burns to manage lands and minimize wildfire risk say the exceptional events rule gets in the way. (Molly Peterson/California Newsroom)

Obscure Part Of Clean Air Act Could Be Blunting Its Impact 

In more than a dozen California counties, a little-known rule in the Clean Air Act has forgiven air pollution – not from the sky, but from the record.  After wildfires flourished across North America this year, more U.S. states east of the Mississippi may use this exceptional events rule to subtract smoke from the record, if not from the air we breathe. But these exceptional events are no longer exceptional, and the requests to obscure them from air-quality records are more common.
Reporter: Molly Peterson, The California Newsroom

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