Your EPA/Scott Brown Op Ed

Big Oil and Big Coal are literally making us sick

Big Oil and Big Coal are literally making us sick. Pollution from burning oil and coal spurs a host of serious, life-threatening health problems, inflicting children with asthma, stifling childhood development and cutting short thousands of lives.

But by tying us to dirty 19th century energy sources, these corporate polluters are also strangling oureconomy while wreaking havoc on our health. To corporate polluters like Big Oil and Big Coal, our health is worth less than their profits.

They want to continue polluting with no limits. We need to hold corporate polluters accountable. We cannot continue to let them ruin our children's health for the sake of an extra buck.

There is a cure. With the help of the Environmental Protection Agency, we can clean up our air and water and protect our families now by phasing out lifethreatening oil and coal, while moving to a clean energy economy for a healthy and prosperous future. We need our leaders, particularly President Obama, to hear that the nation's physical and economic well-being depends on enforcing strong standards to protect our families' health. I am also dismayed at Scott Brown's recent vote against EPA standards.

This is a step back for the environmental record of Massachusetts.

Stuart Kurtz, Brookline.