In a controversial move, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced that it will no longer calculate the monetary value of lives saved and healthcare costs avoided through regulations on air pollution. This shift in approach, aligned with the Trump administration’s business-friendly policies, has raised concerns among environmental and public health advocates.
The EPA stated that it will now focus solely on the cost to industry when crafting rules for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone, two deadly pollutants. This decision means the agency will no longer quantify the significant public health benefits of such regulations, which under the Biden administration were estimated to prevent up to 4,500 premature deaths and 290,000 lost workdays by 2032.
“The EPA’s mandate is to protect public health, not to ignore the science in order to eliminate clean air safeguards that save lives,” said John Walke, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Critics argue that this change in calculation methods is “reckless, dangerous and illegal,” as it allows industry to pollute the air while communities bear the consequences in the form of increased asthma attacks, heart disease, and premature deaths.
The EPA maintains that it remains committed to its core mission of safeguarding human health and the environment, but it will not be “monetizing the impacts at this time.” The agency claims that the previous methods of quantifying public health benefits were misleading, leading the public to believe the agency had a better understanding of the impacts than it actually did.
However, environmental advocates argue that this shift demonstrates a concerning trend under the Trump administration, where the EPA has sought to weaken or rollback multiple policies aimed at protecting the environment and public health, including the recent proposal to abandon a rule setting tough standards for deadly soot pollution.
The EPA’s decision to focus solely on the cost to industry when crafting air pollution regulations raises fears that the economic interests of businesses will take precedence over the well-being of the public. As the agency moves forward, environmental and public health groups will be closely watching to ensure the EPA upholds its responsibility to protect the health and safety of all Americans.