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EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announces a rollback of pollution regulations at the White House, February 12, 2026.Saul Loeb\/AFP via Getty<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\tGet your news from a source that\u2019s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.<\/a><\/p>\n This story was originally published by\u00a0Slate<\/a>\u00a0and is reproduced here as part of the\u00a0Climate Desk<\/a>\u00a0collaboration.<\/p>\n Recently, millions of Americans have faced orange skies and air-quality alerts. The struggles many people had with the smoke are a sad reminder of the importance air quality has for our health. Yet the Trump administration has done everything in its power to make our air less clean. Now it is adopting new, stealthier strategies to weaken clean-air standards.<\/p>\n During its first year, the second Trump administration used a \u201cshock and awe\u201d approach to environmental deregulation. In an effort to erase climate policies, the Environmental Protection Agency claimed that climate change was not a serious problem, pointing to a\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0by hand-picked climate skeptics. The criticisms of the\u00a0National Academy of Sciences<\/a>\u00a0and other\u00a0prominent scientific organizations<\/a>\u00a0were so devastating that the EPA abandoned its reliance on the report when it eliminated key greenhouse gas standards, instead basing its decision\u00a0primarily<\/a>\u00a0on shaky legal arguments.<\/p>\n The agency is now routinely determining that the benefits of reducing air pollution are too uncertain to quantify or value at all.<\/p>\n In the second year of this term, the Trump administration has shifted gears, taking another legally indefensible approach that is less visible but even more pernicious because it extends to all pollutants, not just greenhouse gases. The EPA is now routinely determining that the benefits of reducing air pollution\u2014that is, life-saving health benefits for Americans\u2014are too uncertain to quantify or value at all in regulatory decisionmaking. <\/p>\n The administration is doing this without any analysis or citation to scientific studies. Extensive peer-reviewed science has used sophisticated techniques to quantify the impacts of pollution reductions and account for related\u00a0uncertainty<\/a>. And the EPA has relied on these findings for decades, including during the first Trump administration and other Republican administrations. But, beginning this year, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin has decided that every health benefit from air pollution reductions is too uncertain to count\u2014and every regulatory cost dispositive.<\/p>\n The EPA announced its new approach in January in a rule on emissions from gas turbines,\u00a0stating<\/a>\u00a0that it would no longer value public-health benefits from reducing fine particulate matter and ozone\u2014two of the most prevalent and damaging air pollutants. The agency\u00a0referenced<\/a>\u00a0uncertainties in how different concentrations of pollutants translate into negative health impacts like premature deaths; uncertainties in mortality valuations, which assign a dollar value to these deaths; and uncertainties in growth and discount rates, which are used to translate future impacts to present values. But the EPA\u2019s longstanding techniques already accounted for these uncertainties.<\/p>\n As a result of its new approach, the EPA no longer estimates the number of lives saved or diseases and hospitalizations averted. It is assigning no value whatsoever to these environmental benefits, thereby ignoring the very health concerns the agency was created to address.<\/p>\n Later, the EPA doubled down on its new approach when it\u00a0repealed<\/a>\u00a0one vehicle emission rule and\u00a0delayed<\/a>\u00a0another one. It similarly did not consider these adverse health consequences in an air pollution\u00a0regulation<\/a>\u00a0for coal and oil power plants, another air pollution\u00a0regulation<\/a>\u00a0for wood products, and, earlier this month, in\u00a0relaxing<\/a>\u00a0emissions test procedures for heavy-duty vehicles.<\/p>\n When the EPA first announced its new approach in January, Zeldin\u00a0insisted<\/a>\u00a0that even though the agency would not assign a dollar value to averted deaths, it would \u201cstill be considering lives saved when setting pollution limits.\u201d The subsequent regulatory proceedings confirmed that Zeldin\u2019s statement was false.<\/p>\n The EPA, whose actions here are plainly illegal, is basing some of its cost analyses on disputed industry claims.<\/p>\n Moreover, the EPA did not restrict its approach to particulate matter and ozone. The agency also refused to assign any benefits to the reduction of pollutants\u00a0like<\/a>\u00a0nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide. And, similarly, in multiple proceedings, it ignored the benefits of reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases, including\u00a0carbon dioxide<\/a>,\u00a0methane<\/a>, and\u00a0hydrofluorocarbons<\/a>.<\/p>\n On the cost side of its regulatory analysis, the EPA\u2019s approach is entirely different. The EPA is continuing to fully quantify and consider the compliance costs for affected industries, even though those costs are subject to many of the same uncertainties as the benefits. For instance, like health benefits, compliance costs are borne at different times and must be translated into present value (using the same discount rates that the EPA had found\u00a0too uncertain<\/a>\u00a0to use for benefits).<\/p>\n The EPA is basing some of its cost analyses on disputed industry claims, as long as they align with the administration\u2019s favored deregulatory narrative. To justify\u00a0weakening<\/a>\u00a0requirements<\/a>\u00a0to reduce hydrofluorocarbons and other potent greenhouse gases in new refrigeration equipment, the agency relied on unverified assertions about costs from certain supermarkets and other\u00a0regulated<\/a>\u00a0entities<\/a>, even though\u00a0major refrigeration trade associations<\/a>\u00a0opposed<\/a>\u00a0these claims and explained that the EPA action would in fact\u00a0raise\u00a0compliance costs.<\/p>\n Without any empirical evidence, Zeldin\u00a0claimed<\/a>\u00a0that the EPA\u2019s action\u00a0\u201cwill be felt directly by American families in lower grocery prices.\u201d But the refrigeration rule did not impose any costs on regulated entities until future replacements of refrigeration equipment may be needed. Recent\u00a0increases<\/a>\u00a0in grocery prices have been driven largely by supply-chain disruptions and rising energy costs arising from the war in Iran. Any cost savings from this rule, therefore, were unlikely to be felt in the near term.<\/p>\n The EPA\u2019s actions are plainly illegal. Agencies cannot\u00a0put<\/a>\u00a0a thumb on the scale by taking account of a rule\u2019s costs but not its benefits, particularly when there are established techniques for valuing the benefits.<\/p>\n