The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made it official and announced today that greenhouse gases are harmful to people and that car emissions directly contribute to increased green house gases. In other words, all of the gas burning vehicles out there are directly responsible for making people sick.

Lisa Jackson, EPA Administrator, stated that “greenhouse gases threaten the public health and welfare of the American people. EPA also finds that GHG emissions from on-road vehicles contribute to that threat.”

She went on to explain that the studies that contributed to this announcement showed overwhelming evidence that greenhouse gases were not only at their highest point ever, but were at that level due to human activity.

The direct impact of these findings won’t be revealed immediately but Jackson did state that it “is the prerequisite for strong new emissions standards for cars and trucks: the ones the president announced last spring.”

For more details you can listen some of Jackson’s speech on the EPA announcement.