Cite as: 531 U. S. 457 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
attainment under a revised ozone standard. The suggestion must be rejected, however, because § 7511(b)(1) specifically provides for the classification of areas that were in attainment in 1989 but have subsequently slipped into nonattainment. It thus makes clear that Subpart 2 is not limited solely to 1989 nonattainment areas. This eliminates the interpretive role of the title, which may only "she[d] light on some ambiguous word or phrase in the statute itself," Carter v. United States, 530 U. S. 255, 267 (2000) (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting Pennsylvania Dept. of Corrections v. Yeskey, 524 U. S., at 212, in turn quoting Trainmen v. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co., 331 U. S. 519, 528-529 (1947)).
It may well be, as the EPA argues—and as the concurring opinion below on denial of rehearing pointed out, see 195 F. 3d, at 11-12—that some provisions of Subpart 2 are ill fitted to implementation of the revised standard. Using the old 1-hour averages of ozone levels, for example, as Subpart 2 requires, see § 7511(a)(1); 44 Fed. Reg. 8202 (1979), would produce at best an inexact estimate of the new 8-hour averages, see 40 CFR § 50.10, and App. I (1999). Also, to the extent that the new ozone standard is stricter than the old one, see Reply Brief for Petitioners in No. 99-1257, p. 17 ("the stricter 8-hour NAAQS"); 62 Fed. Reg. 38856, 38858 (1997) (8-hour standard of 0.09 ppm rather than 0.08 ppm would have "generally represent[ed] the continuation of the [old] level of protection"), the classification system of Subpart 2 contains a gap, because it fails to classify areas whose ozone levels are greater than the new standard (and thus nonattaining) but less than the approximation of the old standard codified by Table 1. And finally, Subpart 2's method for calculating attainment dates—which is simply to count forward a certain number of years from November 15, 1990 (the date the 1990 CAA Amendments took force), depending on how far out of attainment the area started—seems to make no sense for areas that are first classified under a new standard after November 15, 1990.
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