The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced on Jan. 9 that it will no longer calculate the economic costs and benefits associated with air pollution’s effects on human health.

For over 40 years, the EPA has calculated the monetary benefits of reducing tiny air particle pollutants known as PM2.5 that can pose significant health risks to humans as they travel deep inside the lungs and even into the bloodstream. Inhalation of these articles over time is linked to heart disease, lung cancer, birth defects and other serious health conditions. 

Many government agencies, in addition to EPA, conduct cost-benefit analyses to assess the potential value of regulations. The EPA’s analyses of PM2.5 health effects have informed environmental legislation and helped the public quantify the effects of pollution. 

Mark Curtis, an associate professor of economics at Wake Forest, said in a statement that cost-benefit analyses are “one of the main tools” experts use to better understand the effects of environmental policies. 

“[It’s] not about putting a price on any one person’s life, but about measuring society’s willingness to pay to reduce small risks of premature death,” Curtis said. “If agencies stop accounting for these benefits, regulations that save lives and improve health can appear far less valuable than they actually are, which risks systematically understating the benefits of pollution control.”

Under the Biden administration, the EPA calculated that its recommended PM2.5 regulations would prevent up to 4,500 deaths and could yield over $77 in health benefits per $1 spent on efforts to reduce air pollutants. 

Now, however, the Trump administration will no longer make these evaluations, saying they leave too much room for error. A recent report by the EPA states that the current process of these estimates “leads the public to believe the Agency has a better understanding of the monetized impacts of exposure to PM2.5 and ozone than in reality.”

Stan Meiburg, former Acting Deputy Administrator of the EPA and the Executive Director of the Andrew Sabin Family Center for Environment and Sustainability at Wake Forest, said that the EPA’s cost-benefit reports fell in and out of political favor over the years.

“This practice goes back to conservatives during the Reagan administration who felt that cost-benefit analysis would reduce over-regulation,” Meiburg said. “Sometimes, it produces results that show benefits of regulation vastly [exceed] costs, and the parties on whom the costs fell don’t like this.” 

Meiburg also said that the federal government may be more willing to slash environmental regulations when they stop collecting data on the benefits of these rules.

“The EPA is very quick to say that it doesn’t mean they’re not considering benefits, it just means they’re not going to put a number on them,” Meiburg said. “But when you’re comparing numbers of costs and then benefits that are not quantified, it’s kind of an unfair fight — like fighting with one hand tied behind your back.”

Health experts fear that overall pollution levels will increase if the government implements less stringent air standards.

Mary Rice, director of the Center for Climate Health and the Global Environment at Harvard University, expressed her dismay at the decision. 

“I’m worried about what this could mean for health,” Rice said in a statement for NPR. “Especially for people with chronic respiratory illnesses like asthma and COPD, for kids whose lungs are still developing, and for older people, who are especially susceptible to the harmful effects of air pollution on the heart, lungs and the brain.” 

Rather than calculate the potential health benefits of regulating pollution, the EPA is now concentrating its efforts on estimating the potential cost benefits to industry. The chief of the EPA, Lee Zeldin, recently said the government agency’s mission is “to lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home, and running a business.” 

Meiburg said he was disappointed by the EPA’s shift in priorities. “The EPA mission forever has been to protect public health and the environment. It has not been [to…] increase the productive capacity of America,” he said. “There are lots of agencies who have missions related to improving the productivity of the economy – that’s not the EPA’s job. Now, it doesn’t mean [the] EPA should be mindless of cost. You have to do that, of course, but you should keep the public health and the environment mission first.”