President Obama recently made a very quiet decision to negate significant EPA findings and pulled back on implementing stronger smog standards for various industries, siting that the new regulations would harm the economy and job growth.

These regulations would have curtailed ozone emissions which are known to create smog and cause asthma, heart disease and premature death. And this is just the beginning, because other limits on mercury and air toxins, greenhouse gases from power plants and other harmful emissions are also currently under debate.

I would like to point out that supporting scientific findings from our Environmental Protection Agency, especially with the goal of saving lives, is not only the responsible moral choice for our president, it would actually help the economy!

Implementing the new regulations creates jobs; the standards have to be enforced by governmental agencies and new equipment needs to be manufactured and installed. It would also save our country possibly billions in health care costs as we take a proactive and preventative stand against the known causes of chronic disease.

The bottom line is that the only ones who would be impacted negatively by implementing these standards are the industries themselves, the presumable “job growers” who would have to reach into their very deep pockets in order to comply with the new regulations.

C’mon Obama, stop capitulating to these old arguments and let’s get back to your original agenda of hope, which maintained that we can live in a clean environment and have the economy humming again.

Dr. Jenny Glavin, Kirkland