EPA to change how air risks measured

Proposed standard to reduce government predictions of pollution-related fatalities

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency plans to change the way it calculates the future health risks of air pollution, a shift that would predict thousands of fewer deaths and would help justify the planned rollback of a key climate change measure, according to five people with knowledge of the agency’s plans.

The proposed change would dramatically reduce the 1,400 additional premature deaths per year that the EPA had initially forecast as a result of eliminating the old climate change regulation — the Clean Power Plan, which was former President Barack Obama’s signature climate change measure. It would also make it easier for the administration to defend its replacement, known as the Affordable Clean Energy rule.

It has been a constant struggle for the EPA to demonstrate, as it is normally expected to do, that society will see more benefits than costs from major regulatory changes.

The new modeling method, which experts said has never been peer-reviewed and is not scientifically sound, also stands to be used by the President Donald Trump administration to defend further rollbacks of air pollution rules if it is formally adopted.

The proposed change is unusual because it discards more than a decade of peer-reviewed EPA methods for understanding the health hazards linked to the fine particulate matter produced by burning fossil fuels.

Fine particulate matter — the tiny particles that can penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream — is linked to heart attacks, strokes and respiratory disease.

The five people familiar with the plan, who are all current or former EPA officials, said the new modeling method would be used in the agency’s analysis of the final version of the Affordable Clean Energy rule, which is expected to be made public in June.

William Wehrum, the EPA air quality chief, acknowledged that the new method would be included in the agency’s final analysis of the rule, though aides later said the matter had not been settled.

Wehrum said the new approaches would allow for public debate to move ahead and that any new methods would be subject to peer review if they became the agency’s primary tool for measuring health risks.

“This isn’t just something I’m cooking up here in my fifth-floor office in Washington,” Wehrum said.