Setting Environmental Standards: A Statistician’s Perspective

Governmental environmental protection is often implemented by specifying a standard value of pollution, measured or actual, not to be exceeded. We consider the standard for ozone in the United States, interpreting it using a hypothesis testing framework, and show (in a simplified setting) how a statistician could implement this standard. This implementation is contrasted to the implementation by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Some of the issues are illustrated using ozone data from three areas in the United States. In addition, we look at potential biases in using data collected for standard compliance monitoring purposes to assess health effects of ozone.