EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin attacked the “dishonest” New York Times for pushing a “fake news claim” that the agency is no longer considering “lives saved” when setting regulations.
“Yet another dishonest, fake news claim courtesy of the New York Times. Not only is the EXACT OPPOSITE of this headline the actual truth, but the Times is already VERY WELL AWARE that EPA will still be considering lives saved when setting pollution limits. The Times’ unyielding commitment to destroying journalism is second to none,” Zeldin wrote on X about the Times‘ article, “E.P.A. to Stop Considering Lives Saved When Setting Rules on Air Pollution,” which cited internal emails and documents.
The Times report claimed that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will no longer calculate “gains from the health benefits” created by limiting air pollutants such as fine particulate mater (PM 2.5) and ozone while regulating major industries.
An EPA spokesperson has said that the agency is committed to using “gold standard” science in its rulemaking and that many of these models are either “outdated” or “inaccurate” to place monetary values on human health.
“EPA is committed to using only the most accurate and up-to-date gold standard of science in our decision-making. This is the high scientific standard the Trump EPA set for the agency on day one, and that the agency works tirelessly to live up to. Continuing to use outdated or inaccurate models to place monetary values on human health would not be meeting the scientific standard we demand of ourselves,” the spokesperson explained in a statement to Breitbart News.
“The agency will continue to value, account, and evaluate for the human health impacts of PM2.5 and ozone in our rulemaking, and understands the extreme importance this has for our country. This temporary pause of not monetizing the impacts is about making sure the methods are sound, not about walking away from the duties of our core mission — to protect human health and the environment.”
The spokesperson concluded, “The Trump EPA has and remains unwavering in our commitments to our core missions, providing clean air for all Americans, and following the law. The agency will continue to be clear and transparent on our decisions as we Power the Great American Comeback. The American people deserve nothing less.”
The EPA has and will continue to recognize the benefits of reducing PM 2.5 and ozone as the country has achieved PM 2.5 concentrations of 37 percent and ozone concentrations of 12 percent since 2000. The agency hopes to enhance the models for monetization of the economic impacts associated with additional reductions in PM 2.5 and ozone emission reductions.
Section 111 of the Clean Air Act mandates that the EPA calculate emissions, reductions, costs, and other factors, not assign a dollar figure to emissions reductions.
Even the Biden administration has not always monetized the reduction in various pollutants.
Two years ago, the Biden administration did not monetize the reduction in PM 2.5, ozone, or hazardous air pollution in the March 2024 Biden EPA Oil and Natural Gas regulations.
Charlie Stadlander, a spokesperson for the New York Times, has defended the outlet’s reporting.
“Our reporting on internal EPA documents found that the agency is no longer calculating the health benefits of reducing fine particulate matter and ozone pollution when writing clean-air regulations. An EPA spokeswoman did not deny this when we asked for comment and our reporting remains accurate,” the Times spokesperson said in a statement.
Monetizing the value of a human life has long been a source of contention and is often based on conflicting analyses by experts, as explained by Deseret News.
Granger Morgan, the then-chairman of EPA’s Science Advisory Board and an engineering and public policy professor at Carnegie Mellon University, said, “This sort of number-crunching is basically numerology. This is not a scientific issue.”
Steve Milloy, a member of Donald Trump’s first presidential transition team for the EPA and editor of the outlet Junk Science, spoke to Breitbart News about how monetizing deaths has been used to justify some of the agency’s most impactful and onerous regulations.
“This whole [issue] about monetizing deaths has just been a farce, you know, it’s been EPA, most powerful regulatory weapon, its biggest rules,” Milloy said.
Milloy said that these models were used by the Obama administration to justify the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), which he said was used to kill the coal industry.
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