The clean air act was first enacted in 1955, however, there have been key amendments in 1970, 1977 and 1990. Before the act was passed responsibility of regulating air pollution fell to the local and state governments. The clean air act was the initial piece of legislation to bear the name “clean air” and it strived to advance health and welfare to the public (McCarthy, 2011). This act sought to protect human health and to also protect the environment from emissions that pollute the air. The clean air act compelled the EPA, environmental protection agency, to establish health grounded criteria for air quality, time limits to be set, and demanded the national emissions criteria be established by the EPA. The act also mandated that emission restrictions for sources of 187 dangerous air pollutants, plan to limit acid rain, prevention of substantial worsening of air quality, and implemented the protocol to reduce most of the ozone diminishing chemicals (McCarthy, 2011). …show more content…
As a result, this caused a huge and sudden change in economic funds concerning pollution reduction. It has been claimed that pollution reduction had developed as a major supplicant on the stores of the economy of the U.S. prior to the amendments to the Act in 1990. The long term costs of the environmental regulations before 1990 indicated a reduction of 2.59% in the level of the gross national product. That was an increase of 10% or more in the total purchases by the government for goods and services in the national product for the time of 1973-85. This was a reduction of the yearly growth rate in the economy of the U.S. by 0.191%. By the year 2020, which is when the legislative growth of the economy will be concluded, it is estimated that there will be rise to almost half a percent of the gross national product. (Jorgenson & Wilcoxen,