The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will no longer consider the economic cost of harm to human health from fine particles and ozone, two air pollutants that are known to affect human health. The change was written into a new rule recently published by the agency.
A 2014 US Supreme Court case clarified that agencies like the EPA had to take both benefits and costs into account in their regulatory processes. But the courts have “not waded into the question of how exactly [EPA] should do that,” Bracewell’s Jeff Holmstead, former leader of the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation during the George W. Bush administration, told NPR.
“So, yes, they do have to consider both, but there is no legally enforceable requirement for them to do it in any particular way,” he says. That leaves it up to the agency’s discretion, Holmstead says, whether to forgo an economic benefits calculation, as long as the EPA still assesses the health benefits in some way.
