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News Brief

May 13, 2025

A handful of Nebraska's 93 counties are below federal clean air standards

A new report from the American Lung Association found air pollution continues to be a problems, even as Congress Stymies efforts to bolster the electric vehicle industry. Nebraska advocats said rollbacks on incentives for clearner burning vehicles threaten to take the state' efforts at healthier air in the wrong direction. The report showed a handful of Nebraska's 93 counties are below federal clean air standards. Assistant vice president of nationwide healthy air for the American Lung Association, Laura Kate Bender, says the state' seniors, children with asthma, and people with other respiratory illnesses suffer more when the air is dirty.

"We know that people of color tend to be for a variety of reasons are disproportionately at risk from unhealthy air polution. We also know that if you work or excercise outdoors, you are getting more exposed on days that the pollution is unhealthy.", says Bender. 

Washington lawmakers are currently considering using the Congressional Review Act, which allows them to roll back the Environmental Protection Agency's efforts to support cleaner fuel cars and trucks, including a transition to heavy-duty EV trucks, rules designed to reduce tailpipe pollution in Nebraska and nationwide. Benders says any Congressional action should be aimed at improving progress on air quality that Nebraska and the nation have made, rather than going in the other direction.

"Our vehicles are cleaner than they used to be but it is clear from the future course that people are still breathing too much unhealthy air. The climate change is beginning to undo some of that progress. We need to work harder than ever to implemenet the policies we already have on the books that can make out vehicles cleaner and get the rest of that polluition cleaned up.", says Bender.

One of the congressional rolback measures is through the U.S. House and awaits action in the Senate.