Gas Pains.

• Author: Doherty, Brian
• Position: Environmental Protection Agency bans fuel additive - Brief Article

In March, the EPA announced a ban on the fuel additive Methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), a substance it had previously mandated. This ban followed nearly a year of low-key national panic, starting when California announced its own ban of the additive in April 1999 after the chemical began showing up in drinking water supplies from Santa Monica to Lake Tahoe.

Several other states have found MTBE in their water since then, and in January it earned the health-scare laurel: a scary 60 Minutes segment. A February study from Rutgers University found that MTBE can cause headaches and eye irritations in humans. The usual cancers in lab animals have also been created, under conditions nowhere near analogous to exposure in minuscule amounts through drinking water.

MTBE has been added to fuel in 16 states because it increases gasoline's oxygen content, helping it burn cleaner. Areas with low air qualities, as defined by the feds, are required by the EPA to have 2 percent oxygen content in their fuel. MTBE had been the cheapest and most efficient way to meet that clean air mandate.

The EPA now wants to replace the 2-percent rule with a rule forcing gas to contain a certain...