The following statement was issued by Commissioner Bob Shinn in response to a Washington, D.C. circuit court decision today ordering the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to justify the use of an eight-hour standard for ozone, which offers greater protection of public health than the current one-hour standard for the measurement of ozone exceedances:

"New Jersey was the first state to support the more protective, eight-hour standard. One need only look at the number of hospitalizations on high-ozone days to justify the higher standard. By forcing the reduction of smog-forming emissions, it will provide greater protection for some of our most vulnerable citizens: young children, the elderly and those with respiratory and heart problems."

"We in New Jersey will not relent in our pursuit of cleaner air. We will continue to seek the emission reductions needed to achieve this health-based standard. Given the regionality of the ozone problem, broad-based implementation of the more protective standard is the only way New Jerseyans will ever be assured of clean and healthy air."

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