42 U.S.C. § 7403 — Research, investigation, training, and other activities

(a) The Administrator^* must establish a national research-and-development program on preventing and controlling air pollution. The program must: (1) conduct and coordinate research, investigations, experiments, demonstrations, surveys, and studies about the causes, effects (including health and welfare effects), extent, prevention, and control of air pollution; (2) encourage, cooperate with, and give technical help and financial assistance to air-pollution agencies and other suitable public or private agencies, institutions, organizations, and individuals conducting those activities; (3) investigate and study a specific air-pollution problem with an air-pollution agency when that agency asks, or when the Administrator believes the problem may affect a community in another State^*; (4) create technical advisory committees of recognized experts to review research progress and proposals and prevent duplicated research; and (5) coordinate and speed up training about the causes, effects, extent, prevention, and control of air pollution.

(b) To carry out subsection (a), the Administrator may: (1) collect and publish research results, other information, and related recommendations; (2) cooperate with Federal departments and agencies, air-pollution agencies, other public and private organizations and institutions, and involved industries; (3) make grants to air-pollution agencies, other public or nonprofit private agencies, institutions, and organizations, and individuals for the research described in subsection (a)(1); (4) contract with public or private agencies, institutions, organizations, and individuals without applying 31 U.S.C. § 3324(a) or (b) or 41 U.S.C. § 6101; (5) establish and maintain research fellowships at the Environmental Protection Agency and at public or nonprofit private educational or research institutions; (6) collect and share basic data on the chemical, physical, and biological effects of different air quality, and other information about air pollution and its prevention and control, working with entities that have related responsibilities; (7) develop practical and effective processes, methods, and prototype devices to prevent or control air pollution; and (8) build facilities, provide equipment, and hire staff needed to carry out this chapter. The Administrator must provide training and training grants to air-pollution-agency personnel and other suitably qualified people, and grants to eligible agencies and organizations for the training described in subsection (a)(5). The Administrator may charge reasonable fees for training other people, but must provide it free to air-pollution-agency personnel.

(c) As part of subsection (a), the Administrator must research, test, and develop methods for sampling, measuring, monitoring, analyzing, and modeling air pollutants. The program must: (1) consider individual pollutants, complex mixtures, and their chemical changes in the atmosphere; (2) establish a national network to monitor, collect, and compile data, with stated certainty, about the status and trends of emissions, deposition, air quality, surface-water quality, forest condition, and visibility impairment, and to make air-quality data from different States and nations comparable; (3) improve methods and technology for sampling, measuring, monitoring, analyzing, and modeling ozone precursors, ozone formation and transport, regional effects on urban ozone, regional ozone trends, and ozone’s interaction with other pollutants. Priority must go to techniques that (A) improve inventories of volatile organic compound and nitrogen-oxide emissions from human and natural sources; (B) improve understanding of how human-caused and biological volatile organic compounds react to form ozone and other oxidants; and (C) improve identification and evaluation of region-specific ozone-prevention and control choices. The Administrator must submit Congress a report at least every 5 years evaluating air-pollution regulations and programs using the required monitoring and modeling data.

(d)(1) The Administrator, consulting the Secretary^* of Health and Human Services, must research short- and long-term effects of air pollutants, including wood smoke, on human health. The Administrator must conduct needed epidemiological, clinical, laboratory, and field studies; may use existing Federal scientific laboratories and research centers on a reimbursable basis; and must consult other Federal agencies so similar research is coordinated and not duplicated. (2) The Administrator must develop methods to identify and assess health risks from routine and accidental exposure to individual pollutants and combinations. The program must include: (A) an Interagency Task Force with representatives of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, Environmental Protection Agency, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, National Toxicology Program, National Institute of Standards and Technology, National Science Foundation, Surgeon General, and Department of Energy. An EPA representative chairs it, and its first meeting must be within 60 days after November 15, 1990; (B) within 12 months after that date, an evaluation of each hazardous air pollutant^* listed in 42 U.S.C. § 7412(b), ranking it for environmental-health assessment based on expected human toxicity and exposure factors such as frequency as an air pollutant and emissions volume in populated areas. The Task Force must review the evaluation; and (C) assessments of each pollutant in (B), beginning 6 months after the Task Force’s first meeting and completed within the following 96 months. At least 24 must be completed and published each year. The assessments must follow guidelines developed by the Administrator with the Task Force and EPA Science Advisory Board. Each must examine and evaluate toxicological and epidemiological information to identify exposure levels posing a significant human-health threat and acute, subacute, and chronic adverse effects; identify missing information about health effects and exposure levels; and, when appropriate, identify additional work, including toxicity and inhalation testing, needed to identify risky exposure types or levels.

(e) With appropriate cooperation from the Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, the Fish and Wildlife Service Director^*, and the Secretary of Agriculture, the Administrator must research short- and long-term causes, effects, and trends of air-pollution damage to ecosystems. The program must: (1) identify representative and critical regional ecosystems; (2) evaluate risks, including causes and effects of chronic and episodic exposure and whether effects can be reversed; (3) improve atmospheric-dispersion models and monitoring systems for multiple environmental stresses; (4) evaluate effects on water quality, including short- and long-term ecological effects of acid deposition and other atmospheric pollutants on surface water, wetlands, estuaries, and groundwater; (5) evaluate effects on forests, materials, crops, biological diversity, soils, and other land and water systems; and (6) estimate economic costs of ecological damage caused by pollutant exposure. Consistent with the program’s purpose, the Administrator may use estuarine research reserves established under 16 U.S.C. § 1461.

(f)(1) The Administrator, consulting the Secretary of Energy and the Federal Coordinating Council for Science, Engineering, and Technology, must oversee an experimental and analytical research effort, with the experimental research carried out at the Liquefied Gaseous Fuels Spill Test Facility. With the Secretary of Energy, the Administrator must list chemicals and schedule field tests at the Facility. The program must analyze at least 10 chemicals each year and select at least 2 chemicals for field testing each year, giving highest priority to chemicals posing the greatest potential human-health risk from an accidental fixed-site release or transportation-related release. (2) The research must: (A) improve atmospheric-dispersion models that describe dense-gas releases in complex terrain and around structures with changing winds, account for turbulence, and realistically model aerosols, water-vapor reactions, ground deposition, and water-spray removal; (B) evaluate present and future models by creating a strict standardized method for dense-gas models and applying it to current models with field data; and (C) evaluate hazard-mitigation and emergency-response technology for fixed-site and transportation accidents involving toxic chemicals. Accident-release models must be periodically evaluated and improved for evacuation planning and other strategies that reduce human exposure. (3) The Secretary of Energy must make the Facility available to interested people, including Federal agencies and businesses, for related research.

(g)(1) The Administrator must conduct basic engineering and technology research to develop, evaluate, and demonstrate nonregulatory strategies and technologies for preventing air pollution. (2) Priority must go to pollutants posing significant human-health or environmental risks, and industry, public-interest groups, scientists, States, higher-education institutions, and other interested people must have opportunities to participate. (3) The program must improve nonregulatory strategies and technologies to prevent or reduce multiple pollutants from stationary sources, including fossil-fuel power plants; reduce emissions from area sources; prevent, detect, and correct accidental releases of hazardous air pollutants; and dispose of tires without adverse air-quality effects. Stationary-source work must cover sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, heavy metals, PM-10, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide, compare cost effectiveness and long-term effects of choices such as energy conservation and cleaner fuels, and consider existing and new facilities. (4) This subsection does not authorize imposing air-pollution-control requirements on anyone. (5) The Administrator must coordinate with appropriate Federal agencies and avoid duplication. (6) For carbon dioxide, the Administrator may conduct the direct-air-capture activities in subparagraph (B) and must conduct the deep-saline-formation activities in subparagraph (C). In subparagraph (B), “Board” means the Direct Air Capture Technology Advisory Board; “dilute” means less than 1 percent carbon dioxide by volume; “direct air capture” means using carbon-capture equipment to capture carbon dioxide directly from air, but excludes carbon dioxide deliberately released from a naturally occurring subsurface spring or captured by natural photosynthesis; and “intellectual property” means a patentable invention under title 35 and any patent on it. Within 1 year after December 27, 2020, the Administrator may create competitive financial awards for direct air capture from dilute media. The Administrator must develop competition and project^*-performance requirements, after at least 60 days’ public notice and comment and consideration of comments. Awards should, as far as practicable, support projects designed to capture over 10,000 tons per year, be commercially viable in the foreseeable future as the Board determines, improve monitoring and verification, and be geographically diverse, including at least one coastal-State and one rural-State project. The Administrator may establish the nine-member Board, whose members are appointed by the Administrator and provide expertise in climate science, physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, economics, business management, and other necessary fields. Members serve 6 years; vacancies do not affect the Board’s powers and are filled like the original appointments. The Board’s first meeting must be within 30 days after all members are appointed. It meets when the chair calls it or the Administrator requests, a majority is a quorum (but fewer may hold hearings), and it chooses its chair and vice chair. Members may receive up to the daily equivalent of level-V Executive Schedule basic pay for each day of Board work. The Board advises and assists the Administrator as requested. Award recipients must vest technology-derived intellectual property in one or more United States-incorporated entities. The United States may reserve a paid-up, irrevocable, nonexclusive, nontransferable license to practice it for or on behalf of the United States, but may not publicly disclose related proprietary information. The intellectual property title may not pass except to a United States-incorporated entity until the first related patent expires. Up to $35,000,000 is authorized until expended. The Board and all authority under this subparagraph end no later than 12 years after December 27, 2020, notwithstanding the Federal Advisory Committee^* Act.

Under subparagraph (C), “deep saline formation” means geographically extensive subsurface sedimentary rock layers saturated with high-total-dissolved-solids water or brine and below the depth where carbon dioxide can exist there as a supercritical fluid; it does not include oil or gas reservoirs. Within 1 year after December 27, 2020, after consulting the Energy Secretary, other relevant agencies as appropriate, and stakeholders, the Administrator must give Congress and publish a report identifying potential risks and benefits to developers from storing carbon dioxide captured from stationary sources in such formations, recommending ways to manage those risks, including risks unique to public land, and recommending Federal legislation or other policy changes. Under subparagraph (D), within 5 years after that date, the Comptroller General must report to Congress identifying every Federal grant program whose purpose includes research on carbon-capture and utilization technologies, including direct air capture, and examining overlap or duplication among them.

(h) The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Director may conduct basic research to identify, describe, and measure human-health risks from air pollutants, mainly through university and medical-school grants, intramural studies, and contracts. The Director must educate and train physicians in environmental health, ensure these programs do not conflict with the Administrator’s research, and may receive whatever appropriations are necessary.

(i) The Administrator must create and carry out a plan to find ways to conduct this section’s activities together with other Federal ecological and air-pollution research. Within 6 months after November 15, 1990, the plan must go to Congress and must assess urban and rural monitoring stations and networks for cost-effective expansion, consider the feasibility and scientific value of including atmospheric processes and pollution effects in the ecosystem program, and provide a method for evaluating and ranking pollution-prevention technologies by cost-effective reduction of air pollutants and other concerning airborne chemicals. Within 2 years after November 15, 1990, and every 4 years afterward, the Administrator must report progress to Congress and include plan revisions.

(j) The acid-precipitation research program under the Acid Precipitation Act of 1980 continues with the changes here. The Task Force consists of the EPA, Energy, Interior, and Agriculture heads; the NOAA and NASA Administrators; and any additional members the President selects. The President must choose its chair within 30 days after November 15, 1990. Its duties include reviewing prior research and creating a revised plan identifying gaps and priorities, submitting a draft within 6 months, allowing 60 days of public comment, and having the President submit the final plan within 45 days after comments close; coordinating Federal agencies, strengthening research and monitoring, and sponsoring needed research, including continuous monitoring of acid-deposition precursors, maintaining and applying atmospheric and ecosystem-response models, and analyzing program costs, benefits, and effectiveness; publishing and maintaining a statistically representative National Acid Lakes Registry; submitting a unified budget recommendation every 2 years; and, beginning in 1992 and every 2 years, reporting to Congress in a public-friendly format on actual and projected emissions and deposition, precursor and transformation-product concentrations, affected ecosystems, materials and visibility, causes and effects, episodic acidification (especially in high-elevation watersheds), and confidence levels for conclusions. Beginning in 1996 and every 4 years afterward, that report must also cover deposition reductions needed to prevent adverse ecological effects and the costs and benefits of the control program in subchapter IV-A.

(k) If the Administrator believes a substantially important air-pollution problem may result from a discharge, the Administrator may call a conference near the discharge location. Interested people must be allowed to speak or submit writing and appear personally or through a representative under the Administrator’s procedures. If the evidence shows that allowing or continuing the discharge probably would cause or contribute to air pollution subject to abatement under this part, the Administrator must send findings and recommended reasonable measures to the responsible people, the State and municipal air-pollution agencies where the discharge would begin, and any applicable interstate agency. The findings and recommendations are advisory only, but must be admitted with the conference record in proceedings under 42 U.S.C. § 7408(b)-(f).