The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Thursday ordered reductions in smog and soot pollution in the District of Columbia and 28 states in the East, South and Midwest.

The move is intended to make air cleaner in the regions downwind of coal-burning power plants. It will be translated into an eventual rise of up to one US dollar per month in the power bill of the consumers concerned.

The new regulations require the power plants to reduce smog-forming nitrogen oxides by 1.9 million tons annually by 2015, or 61 percent lower than 2003 levels, and soot-producing sulfur dioxide by 5.4 million tons, a 57-percent decline.

The EPA believes cleaner air in the regions, mostly east of the Mississippi River, will prevent 17,000 premature deaths and 700,000 cases each year of bronchitis, asthma and other respiratory illnesses. And the benefits will outweigh an annual cost of about 4 billion dollars to achieve the pollution cuts.

The new regulations "will result in the largest pollution reductions and health benefits of any air rule in more than a decade," said EPA acting administrator Stephen Johnson, who is expected to become the official EPA administrator.

States affected by the new regulations are Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota,Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

Source: Xinhua