The EPA’s decision this week to scrap consideration of the dollar value of health effects in air pollution rulemaking ends a longstanding strategy that stands to blind the public to the monetary benefits of lives saved while easing the path for further deregulation.
The change cuts the public out of key knowledge on the impacts of reducing pollution, an instrumental tool in President Donald Trump’s deregulatory campaign that’s part of a “long running battle” dating back to his first administration, according to Joe Goffman, who led the Environmental Protection Agency’s air office during the Biden administration.
The EPA, by previously …