The EPA has said repeatedly that it has no plans to regulate farm dust. Romney revives point from dust bin

Mitt Romney revived a long-debunked GOP talking point Tuesday — the claim that the Obama administration is so overzealous in its quest to clean up pollution that it wants to regulate farm dust.

The Environmental Protection Agency has said repeatedly that it has no such plans. But that didn’t stop Romney from trotting out the rumor while outlining his agriculture policy in a speech at a family farm in Van Meter, Iowa.


“The regulatory burden under this administration has just gone crazy,” Romney said, adding later that administration officials “of course want to regulate dust.”

( Also on POLITICO: Romney intensifies EPA attacks)

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) joined the Obama campaign in lambasting Romney for pushing the discredited meme.

“The EPA under this president has made it absolutely clear that the administration has no intent to start regulating farm dust. Again, this is sort of one of those straw men that you throw up,” Harkin said during a conference call organized by the campaign. “I don’t know what else you can say. They’re just not going to do it. Period.”

Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt added: “This is just one more indication of Mitt Romney saying anything regardless of the facts to get elected.”An EPA spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.

Asked for clarification on the GOP nominee’s remarks, a Romney campaign spokeswoman emailed a news story noting that the White House last year threatened to veto GOP legislation meant to block the agency from regulating farm dust. At the time, the White House argued that the legislation could be used to block other important public health protections under the Clean Air Act, including requirements for mining operations and industrial activities.

EPA officials have spent more than a year pushing back on the dust storm.

The agency said in June that it will not tighten the existing health-based standard for coarse particulate matter or PM10, commonly referred to as dust. PM10 comes from demolition activities, wildfires and — the concern for farmers — unpaved roads.

The existing standard has been in place since 1987, but farmers had feared that a tighter standard would affect farm dust.

Separately, EPA said it would tighten the standard for soot or fine particulate matter, also known as PM2.5. But PM2.5 isn’t dust kicked up by farm equipment — it’s an air pollutant that results from combustion and comes from cars, power plants, wood burning and some industrial processes.

The announcements came after EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson met with farmers last year to tamp down fears that officials would tighten the PM10 standards, along with several other “myths” about the agency’s activities.

But the dust rumors persist. House Republicans have passed several bills that would bar EPA farm-dust regulations, although Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) admitted late in the game that one such piece of legislation was also written to avoid some EPA regulation of open-pit mining.

The farm-dust talking points join several other durable attacks on EPA, including claims that the agency would regulate spilled milk or charge farmers for emissions from their livestock.

President Barack Obama gave some credence to the milk rumor in this year’s State of the Union address, saying his administration “got rid of one rule from 40 years ago that could have forced some dairy farmers to spend $10,000 a year proving that they could contain a spill — because milk was somehow classified as an oil.” (“With a rule like that, I guess it was worth crying over spilled milk,” the president added.)

Romney, in his speech Tuesday, pointed to several other examples of what he calls overzealous regulations.

“There was actually an effort, you recall this, to prevent teenagers from being able to work in certain types of functions on farms,” Romney said.

As The Washington Post noted earlier this year, the Labor Department proposed rules “banning children under age 16 from operating power-driven equipment such as tractors and prohibiting people under the age of 18 from working in grain silos, feed lots and stockyards.” But as POLITICO has reported, the department said the rule wouldn’t apply to kids working on farms owned by their parents. Amid an outcry from farmers, the department scuttled the proposed rules.

Erica Martinson contributed to this report.