Against the recommendation of the environmental, and public health experts, as well as even the electric power industry, this week the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued final rules to roll back regulations on mercury and toxic air emissions from our nation’s coal and oil-fired power plants. To justify taking such action, the EPA set aside years of precedent in both Republican and Democrat-led administrations. The new regulations change how the agency conducts cost-benefit analysis of environmental regulations, ignoring the co-pollutant health benefits that would be achieved by reductions in particulate matter pollution under the mercury air toxics rule.

"EPA cooked the books and ignored the health benefits that have been achieved by installing control technology to reduce mercury and air toxic emissions," says Mary B. Rice, MD, chair of the ATS Environmental Health Policy Committee. 

“The EPA’s decision ignores science, economic guidance, and common sense by not considering all costs and benefits in their rule making,” says Kevin Cromar, PhD, vice- chair of the ATS Environmental Health Policy Committee.  “If there is a small consolation for this bad decision, it is that industry has already largely complied with the requirements of the original rule and has done so at a fraction of the estimated costs. The real threat to public health is the EPA seeking to arbitrarily select which costs and benefits to consider when crafting future environmental health policies, but we trust the courts will see through this clumsy attempt to rewrite how good policy analysis should take place."