Just the facts ma’am.

They’re what Dr. Roy Cordato, vice president of research and resident scholar at the John Locke Foundation, were trying to ascertain when he compiled “A Decade of Data on Smog.”

The report details the last 10 years of North Carolina’s compliance with ever-tightening U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ozone and air quality standards.

“We are the only organization putting out the data,” he said. “I lay out the data with very little analysis and no spin. This paper is just the facts.”

Cordato said the statistics gathered over the past decade show most communities in North Carolina have consistently met stricter ozone and air pollution standards put forth by the EPA in 2008.

That means North Carolinians can breathe a lot easier.

“It’s a good trend,” Cordato said. “Smog has gotten better. This year may end up being the best on record with the lowest number of high ozone level days.”

The EPA asserted its full authority to control ozone and air pollution after the United States Congress passed the Clean Air Act into law in 1990.

Viney Aneja, professor of marine, earth, and atmospheric sciences at N.C. State University in Raleigh, said the problem of ozone pollution is not only improving in North Carolina, but is also decreasing steadily across the country.

“Even with stringent standards it is coming down,” he said. “It means [the EPA’s approach is] a good strategy for our country.”

Cordato said the EPA, the American Lung Association, and other environmental entities continue to use irrelevant and outdated air quality information to scare citizens and communities into stricter compliance.

“The EPA doesn’t want to make people comfortable,” he said. “They want them always to worry. These are folks who feel it’s never enough. Whenever the community comes into compliance, they ratchet the standard lower to make it harder. I think it’s uncalled for.”

Other groups are on the same bandwagon, he said. One case in point is the American Lung Association’s longstanding campaign to blame ozone pollution on the rise of childhood asthma in Western North Carolina.

“The air quality is going up and the ozone is going down, but asthma is going up,” Cordato said. “The counties with the lowest levels of ozone have the highest levels of asthma. It just flies in the face of what they are trying to claim.”

For many of the organizations, it’s nothing more than fear tactics designed to keep them in business, said Joel Schwartz, a national environmental consultant specializing in air pollution. He said compliance both nullifies their mission and the potential funding they need to survive.

“We are now breathing the cleanest air urban people have ever breathed,” Schwartz said. “The EPA has to insure its own survival by tightening their own standards. The EPA depends on the perception that there is a serious problem to solve. They want to stay in business, to keep in power.”

He said it’s unfortunate, but each time the EPA tightens the regulations, the cost for that increment becomes more and more expensive for both the residents of North Carolina and the rest of the country.

Cordato said it’s time to stop the EPA from spewing out its own pollution in the form of out-of-date rhetoric and costly standards, which holds North Carolinians hostage to the highest pollution standards in the country.

He said the only way to stop the escalation is to ask state officials to curb the EPA’s control.

“Someone needs to hold the regulatory agencies accountable,” he said. “Politicians need to rein them in, but unfortunately most are not willing to do so because they feel they will be seen as non-environmentally safe. Not only don’t they rein them in, but they aid and abet them.”

Cordato said cleaner air standards have become a dirty business, one in which residents pay dearly through higher electricity bills — leaving everyone gasping for air.

Karen Welsh is a contributor to Carolina Journal.