In Another Handout to Polluting Industries, Trump’s EPA Neglects Public Health to Finalize Deceptive Cost-Benefit Rule

Contact: Sasha Tenenbaum, stenenbaum@momscleanairforce.org, 917-887-0146

Washington, DC – Today, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Andrew Wheeler finalized cost-benefit analysis procedures that would require EPA, when analyzing the impact of clean air rules, to falsely inflate costs while underestimating health benefits of pollution protections.

In response, Molly Rauch, Public Health Policy Director of Moms Clean Air Force, released the following statement:

“The arbitrary and deceptive changes to Clean Air Act assessments announced today are yet another blatant attack from EPA Administrator Wheeler on our children’s health. Moms are outraged that Wheeler has seen fit to ram through this cynical and manipulative rule in the final weeks of his tenure. EPA already has a long-standing practice of evaluating the costs and benefits of Clean Air Act rules. There is zero evidence that there are problems with this practice, or that it is not working effectively. The new rule purports to solve a problem that does not exist, simply to benefit polluting industries.

“With today’s announcement, Administrator Wheeler has rigged the system to make pollution appear less harmful than it is. And because air pollution harms vulnerable groups disproportionately, this proposal is an attack specifically on the health of babies, children, pregnant women, Black and brown Americans, older adults, and those with underlying health conditions like asthma and heart disease. To add insult to injury, EPA has failed to consider the environmental justice impacts of the rule.

“Wheeler’s insistence on distorting the cost-benefit process is perfectly aligned with his announcement earlier this week of too-weak, do-nothing particle pollution standards that are untethered from science and risk tens of thousands of lives each year. Both are eleventh-hour prostrations to industrial polluters, at the expense of the health of our loved ones.

“No fun-house mirror of a rule can change the fact that our kids, our families, and our communities deserve the profound health benefits of breathing clean air — and an EPA willing to undertake a full accounting of those benefits.”