Overview
- The reported plan, first detailed by the New York Times and covered by TechCrunch, would have the EPA stop counting monetized health benefits when setting standards for ground-level ozone and fine particulate matter.
- Since the Reagan era, federal analyses have assigned a monetary value to reduced illness and death, and removing those valuations would shrink calculated benefits and make looser rules easier to justify.
- Ozone and PM2.5 are linked to a wide range of diseases and to millions of deaths globally each year, highlighting why public-health groups view the proposed shift as consequential.
- The U.S. Chamber of Commerce welcomed the direction, with energy institute president Marty Durbin praising efforts to rebalance regulations.
- The proposal would proceed through notice-and-comment rulemaking and could face scientific and legal challenges, against a backdrop of dirtier power use by some data centers such as xAI’s unpermitted gas turbines near Memphis.