Facing Fears Over Rules' Costs, EPA Moves To Increase Benefits' Estimates

摘要

EPA is moving to update and likely raise some of its years-old estimates for quantifying the health and mortality benefits of its regulations, such as the value of reduced asthma cases or lives saved, a policy that could help the agency fend off growing criticisms from industry and GOP lawmakers that its rules are too costly while providing little benefit. Both the health and mortality values are important because they influence how the agency calculates the benefits of lives "saved" or extended by air or other environmental rules - which allows them to justify the rules' costs. Calculating a rule's benefits involves placing a monetary value on human life or diseases prevented, and then calculating the number of lives saved from premature deaths due to environmental exposures.