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Washington –  Two-thirds of Latinos in the United States live in areas that do not comply with federal standards for air quality and Hispanics are three times more likely than whites to die from asthma, the Center for American Progress says in a report released Wednesday.

The report, "Why the EPA Is Important for Latino Families," points out that Hispanics represent upwards of 40 percent of the population in seven of the 25 main U.S. cities with the worst air quality.

The regions with higher levels of pollution and Hispanic population are located in California, Florida, Illinois, New York and Texas.

Therefore, CAP, a progressive think-tank based in Washington, raised the alarm about the proposals of Republican lawmakers to reduce financing for the Environmental Protection Agency as part of their proposed budget cutbacks.

The CAP report cites advocacy group Environment America's description of those proposals as "the largest assault on public health, clean air and clean water in years."

"In a fiscal climate that forces government to cut spending they are choosing to keep subsidies for the fossil fuel industry and tax breaks for the rich, but slash measures that protect their constituents from polluted air and water," according to the CAP study, co-authored by Jorge Madrid and Valeri Vasquez.

CAP said that the situation is especially dangerous for Latino children, given that they have a 60 percent greater chance of suffering from asthma attacks than non-Hispanic white youngsters.

"Air pollution causes respiratory problems, like asthma," Dr. Evelyn Montalvo, a pediatrician at University Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, said Wednesday in a CAP conference call.

In addition, the fact that almost 80 percent of agricultural workers in the United States are Latino means that they are also exposed to large amounts of pesticides.

These disparities in environmental health are especially aggravated by the low rate of medical coverage for Latinos, something that the study says makes "this vulnerability devastating."

"If we eliminate funds for the EPA we're abolishing necessary controls on air quality and it will create later public health problems," Madrid said.

The report says that a bill passed by the Republican majority in the House of Representatives prevents the EPA from taking any measures to clean up or warn about potential dangerous pollutants coming from power stations and oil refineries, among other facilities."

"The Environmental Protection Agency has been a 'thin green line' of defense between big polluters and public health since 1970. But that line is in danger of being erased," CAP says.

EPA limits on pollution "have avoided an estimated 400,000 premature deaths in the last 20 years," according to the report.

CAP also points to a peer-reviewed EPA study showing that last year alone, "the Clean Air Act prevented over 13 million lost work days and 1.7 million asthma attacks."

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