Texas Public Policy Foundation report exposes how EPA manipulates cost-benefit analyses to justify almost all new air-quality regulations
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency relied on four highly questionable assumptions in 2009 to drastically inflate the health benefits from far-reaching new rules, according to a new report published by the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
“For the last three years, the EPA has justified a series of strict and incredibly expensive new air quality regulations on the assumption that even trace levels of particulate matter can accelerate death,” said the report’s author, Kathleen Hartnett White. “But the science behind the EPA’s new approach to assessing health risks is deeply flawed and misleads the public.”
Since 2009, the EPA has attributed risk of “early death” or shortened lifespan from fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) concentrations far below the health protective national standards and even below natural levels that would occur absent human activity. The EPA is justifying the many unprecedented new regulations commonly known as the EPA train wreck on the basis of the health benefits gained from reducing these new risks from already low levels of particulate matter – a substantial portion of which is airborne dust.
The new regulations, however, target other pollutants and not PM 2.5. In the recently finalized rule to reduce mercury emission from power plants, EPA estimated 99.9 percent of the health benefits derive from coincidental reduction of particulate matter at levels far below the already conservative federal standard. Without this methodology, the cost of reducing mercury would be far higher than the benefits of further reduction of mercury.
“The new regulations, however, target other pollutants and not PM 2.5″
It is typical of “progressive (and Liberals) that the corrective measures they suggest to solve a problem run perpendicular to the path from the problem to the solution.