EPA’s plan seen as fudging number of pollution deaths

The Environmental Protection Agency is reportedly looking into new ways to estimate the future health risks of air pollution that will make the dangers look less deadly.

The EPA in October 2018 released an extensive report about the impact of the administration’s Affordable Clean Energy rule, which sought to block proposed Obama-era regulations on coal-fired power plants. The changes, the EPA estimated, could cause as many as 1,400 additional premature deaths annually by 2030.

But now, the EPA plans to create a new formula that will lower that estimate, and in turn defend President Trump’s proposal, according to The New York Times.

While details were limited on the new methodology, the Times reported that the calculations would discard “more than a decade of peer-reviewed EPA methods and relies on unfounded medical assumptions.”

The assumption is that the lowered reported risks would allow the Trump administration to roll back more environmental protections.

“On paper, [this] would translate into far fewer deaths from heart attacks, strokes and respiratory disease, even if air pollution increased,” the Times reported.

President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan never went into effect due to legal battles. But it would have helped avoid up to 3,600 premature deaths, 90,000 child asthma attacks and 300,000 missed school and work days a year by 2030, the EPA previously estimated.