E.P.A. Plans to Get Thousands of Pollution Deaths Off the Books by Changing Its Math - The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency plans to change the way it calculates the health risks of air pollution, a shift that would make it easier to roll back a key climate change rule because it would result in far fewer predicted deaths from pollution, according to five people with knowledge of the agency’s plans.


The Hunter power plant in Castle Dale, Utah, which burns an estimated 4.5 million tons of coal a year.CreditCreditBrandon Thibodeaux for The New York Times

The E.P.A. had originally forecast that eliminating the Obama-era rule, the Clean Power Plan, and replacing it with a new measure would have resulted in an additional 1,400 premature deaths per year. The new analytical model would significantly reduce that number and would most likely be used by the Trump administration to defend further rollbacks of air pollution rules if it is formally adopted.

E.P.A. Plans to Get Thousands of Pollution Deaths Off the Books by Changing Its Math - The New York Times