CLEARING THE AIR; EMISSIONS RULES BRING CONSEQUENCES THAT COST LIVES.

Byline: Kenneth Green

HAVING labored mightily, the Clinton administration has come forward with a proposal to protect Americans from something most of them apparently don't think of as a threat: the sport-utility vehicle, or SUV.

Regulators chasing ever smaller improvements in air quality have been stymied for about a decade by a perverse pattern of behavior: The same people calling for cleaner air in telephone polls and on Election Day ballots keep voting for sport-utility vehicles with their wallets.

The trend appears to threaten the pace of the nation's recent clean-air gains, but in this instance the appearances can be deceiving.

Though measured levels of air pollution have been dropping steadily for years, the Environmental Protection Agency set the stage in 1997 to ensure that ``bad air'' days will go up nonetheless.

In 1997, the EPA tightened standards on ozone and particulate matter (dust) to a level that many feel border on the unattainable.

As a result, several hundred American cities will spend billions of dollars chasing the new ultra-low air standards, and in failing, will still be said to have ``unhealthful air quality.''

Still, we all want to be safer, and the administration claims that its new plans to toughen SUV emission standards and remove sulfur from fuel will make people safer by reducing air pollution.

But will the plan actually do so?

Air pollution might come down a teensy bit more because of these new regulations. But we've had such excellent success in reducing air pollution since the 1970s that we're at (or beyond) the point of diminishing returns when it comes to protecting people's health.

In fact, several studies show that the last round of air standard revisions will take more lives than they save: all because they ignored the side effects of ill-advised regulation.

What wasn't considered then, and isn't being considered now, are life's unavoidable trade-offs.

To reduce tailpipe emissions, automakers will almost certainly have to lighten up SUVs considerably.

Studies by the National Highway Transportation Safety Board show that every 100 pound reduction in weight for passenger vehicles leads to an estimated 10,000 more incapacitating injuries in traffic accidents. That's one benefit-reducing trade-off.

Automakers have also pointed out that research and new technology cost money - which is passed on to the consumer of automobiles, not only of SUVs but across the board. Meanwhile, gasoline refiners have pointed out that removing the sulfur in fuel will add several cents per gallon.

All that money has to come from somewhere, and when it eventually comes out of people's disposable income, they're left with less ability to weave their own, privately financed safety nets for themselves and their families.

This isn't rocket science - more than 20 years of research have confirmed the fundamental linkage of income to well-being and family protection.

Finally, the claim that we'll get cleaner air is very questionable. It wouldn't take much of an unanticipated consequence to erase predicted gains.

If the increased cost of new high-tech SUVs causes consumers to delay replacement of older SUVs with newer, less-polluting SUVs, more of the air pollution benefit of the new standards could be lost.

And we've already seen evidence suggesting that consumers facing higher costs for lower-emitting SUVs might well decide to shift up to the next larger class of pickup trucks and vans, which get even worse mileage and put out even more pollution.

None of this should be construed as an argument in favor of a special emission exemption for sport-utility vehicles, their manufacturers or their owners.

Americans want cleaner air and better health, and it's reasonable to reform discrepancies in regulations that prevent the best possible application of the ``polluter pays'' principle.

But in doing so, regulators must remember that theof overall mission is to produce a net benefit to human health in a way that is effective, efficient and fair.

Our nation's risk-reduction priorities are clearly out of whack. If we look at the return on our national safety investments, and add up how much money it costs to delay a person's death by only one year, we can rank the effectiveness of our investments.

As researchers at Harvard's Center for Risk Analysis observed, to regulate the flammability of children's clothing, we spend $1.5 million to save one child's life in one year, while some 30 percent of those children live in homes without smoke alarms, an investment that costs about $200,000 per year of life saved.

We regulate potentially carcinogenic benzene emissions during waste operations at a cost of $19 million to prevent one benzene-related cancer death in one year. Meanwhile, 70 percent of women over age 50 do not receive regular mammograms, which achieves benefits that cost only $17,000 per year of life saved.

And while our regulations averted about 56,700 deaths in 1994 at a cost of $21.4 billion, had we prioritized that spending by targeting the biggest possible risk-reductions that cost the least, we could have averted an additional 60,200 premature deaths.

Before going after diminishing and risky safety returns from SUVs, the administration should consider whether its risk-reduction priorities are in order, and stop shilly-shallying around with high-profile campaigns against small sources of health risk.