Legislation to Regulate Indoor Air

(Sacramento, California) If anyone is naive enough to think that nanny-state liberals have reached the limit for intruding in people's lives, think again. In addition to regulating the air we breathe outdoors, some legislators believe that indoor air also needs to be governed by law.

Assemblywoman Sally Lieber, D-Mountain View, a member of the California Assembly Select Committee on Air and Water Quality has promised to introduce legislation to aggressively address indoor air pollution from sources such as cigarette smoke, candles, gas appliances, radon, cleaning fluid, solvents, paints, hair spray, deoderant spray, perfume, mold, and other substances that may readily become airborne. The justification for the lawmaking is to reduce the amount of money expended due to lost worker productivity, health care, and premature death. The hazards of poor indoor air quality have been documented in "hundreds of scientific studies," which have concluded that there is no conceivable explanation as to why anyone is alive.

Currently, there are no agencies with the authority to regulate air quality inside such structures as buildings, houses, garages, tool sheds, porta-toilets, ranger stations, aircraft hangers, and bedrooms. However, Assemblywoman Sally Lieber hopes to change the law to give the state the regulatory authority to determine the acceptability of the air inside buildings and structures. It's not clear what the long-term implications of the legislation would be, but it is clear that the state would dump a plethora of expensive design and habitability regulations on industry and the public while empowering some sort of sniffer police to enforce the provisions of the law.

In my opinion, this area of government intrusion into people's lives should be limited to issuing guidelines or good practices. I don't think there should be any law that gives the government the authority to monitor, issue reports, and mandate enforcement action to assure my bathroom meets established pungency criteria in the state Code of Indoor Air Quality. Holy moly! Pretty soon you won't be able to light a fart without first completing a state-certified course of training, then buying a license, and, lastly, obtaining a California Indoor Methane Burn Permit.

Intrusive? You make the call.