EPA Rule Change Could Lead to Increased Pollution
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) quietly enacted a rule earlier this month that substantially alters how the agency weighs the health benefits of clean air regulations, a change experts predict will likely lead to increased pollution and poorer public health outcomes.
A Shift in Calculating Clean Air’s Value
The EPA’s new approach removes a key component of cost-benefit analysis, potentially weakening safeguards against harmful pollutants.
- The EPA is no longer calculating the dollar value of health benefits from regulating pollutants like PM2.5 and ozone.
- this change removes a critical tool for justifying environmental regulations,potentially leading to higher pollution levels.
- Experts suggest the shift primarily benefits industries facing compliance costs.
- States have limited power to counteract the EPA’s changes due to the interstate nature of air pollution.
- Cancer survival rates are at a record high, but experts caution that federal policy shifts could jeopardize this progress.
For decades, the EPA has used a cost-benefit analysis to determine the value of environmental regulations. This process involved assessing the economic costs to industry of implementing pollution controls against the health benefits gained from cleaner air. The benefits side of the equation relied on health studies comparing areas with high and low pollution levels, looking at rates of hospitalizations, premature deaths, and other health indicators. Thes findings were then combined with economic studies that assigned a “value of a statistical life”-a statistical, not moral, calculation-to quantify the economic benefits of reducing pollution.
What has changed is that the EPA is now, at least for PM2.5 and ozone, foregoing the calculation of a dollar value for those health benefits. PM2.5 refers to tiny particles that can penetrate deep into the lungs and bloodstream, contributing to a range of health problems, from asthma to cancer and low-birth-weight babies. These are pollutants commonly encountered from burning gasoline and wildfire smoke.
“In the old days, let’s say, I had a plant, and it was polluting, and it cost me $100 to put a scrubber on my plant so it had less particle pollution, and the goverment could say, ‘Well, yeah, it’s gonna cost you $100, but it’s gonna save $1,000 in human health costs,'” explained Andrea Thompson, a senior editor specializing in life sciences. “But now they’re still looking at the $100, but they no longer have that $1,000 to compare it to.”
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