The Trump administration has faced severe condemnation from environmental campaigners, economists, and Democratic lawmakers following a significant policy shift at the Environmental Protection Agency. The agency has announced it will no longer calculate the monetary value of health benefits—such as reduced healthcare costs and prevented deaths—associated with regulations that limit air pollution. Instead, the EPA will focus exclusively on the compliance costs borne by industries when setting pollution limits.
Decades of Practice Overturned
For many years, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, the Environmental Protection Agency has routinely calculated the health benefit costs linked to reducing air pollution. This involved setting limits on fine particles and ozone, two of the most pervasive and deadly air pollutants. The practice provided a clear economic justification for regulations by quantifying savings from avoided medical expenses and premature deaths. However, this longstanding approach has now been abruptly discontinued.
Critics Decry 'Repulsive' Decision
Environmental advocates and experts have labelled the move as "repulsive" and indicative of the administration's priorities. Stanford University environmental economist Marshall Burke told The New York Times, "The Trump administration is saying, literally, that they put zero value on human life. If your kid breathes in air pollution from a power plant or industrial source, EPA is saying that they care only insofar as cleaning up that pollution would cost the emitter."
Connecticut Democratic Representative Rosa DeLauro echoed this sentiment, stating, "If you needed a clearer example of who the Trump administration serves, his EPA plans to calculate only the cost to industry when setting pollution limits – not the value of saving American lives." Non-profit organisation Public Citizen added in a statement, "The EPA has stopped using the number of lives saved as a benchmark for air pollution rules. Their new plan? Calculate the cost to INDUSTRY when setting pollution limits. Trump's EPA cares more about profits than human lives. This is repulsive."
EPA's Justification and Backlash
In analysis published recently, the agency defended its decision by citing "too much uncertainty in the cost estimates" as the reason for no longer monetising benefits. Following immediate backlash, EPA spokesperson Brigit Hirsch attempted to clarify the position, telling The Times, "Saying we aren’t attaching a dollar figure to health effects is like saying we aren’t putting a price tag on clean air or safe drinking water. Dollars and cents don’t define their worth."
Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin went further, dismissing media reports as "fake news" and asserting that the agency "will still be considering lives saved when setting pollution limits." Despite these reassurances, critics remain deeply sceptical about the practical implications of the policy change.
Potential Health and Environmental Consequences
The shift has raised substantial concerns about deteriorating air quality and its subsequent health impacts. Michael Greenstone, an environmental economist at the University of Chicago, emphasised to The Times, "Clean air is one of the great success stories of government policy in the last half-century. And at the heart of the Clean Air Act is the idea that when you allow people to lead longer and healthier lives, that has value that can be measured in dollars."
Mary Rice, associate professor of Environmental Respiratory Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, expressed specific worries to NPR, saying, "I’m worried about what this could mean for health. Especially for people with chronic respiratory illnesses like asthma and COPD, for kids whose lungs are still developing, and for older people, who are especially susceptible to the harmful effects of air pollution on the heart, lungs and the brain."
Broader Context of Regulatory Rollbacks
This controversial move occurs within the wider context of the Trump administration's systematic rollback of numerous policies designed to protect human health and mitigate climate change. The decision to cease calculating health benefits from air pollution regulations is seen by many as part of a broader pattern favouring industrial interests over public welfare and environmental safeguards.
