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Reducing air pollution controls would cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars
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Reducing air pollution controls would cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars

New commentary finds that power plants’ use of these devices has saved up to 9,100 lives and up to $100 billion in health costs in 2023. These estimates reveal the substantial health benefits that could be at stake if the next presidential administration implements policies to weaken the Clean Air Act and limit the EPA’s regulatory authority.

Air pollution control devices (APCDs) have prevented up to 9,000 deaths and saved up to $100 billion in healthcare costs in 2023, according to new estimates published in a report. American Journal of Public Health editorial.

But these public health benefits will be significantly reduced in coming years if a future presidential administration implements the environmental policies outlined in Project 2025 and the America First Agenda, write researchers at the University’s School of Public Health. Boston University (BUSPH), Sierra Club, Institute. for the environment at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.

Both far-right policy platforms are working to dismantle environmental regulations, including weakening the Clean Air Act, the foundational 1970 federal law that gives the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) power to regulate emissions of major air pollutants from power plants. Through EPA policies that require or encourage power plants to use APCDs, SO2 emissions decreased by 93 percent and NOx Emissions fell 87 percent between 1995 and 2022, translating into a massive drop in excess coal-related deaths, from 40,000 in 2000 to 1,600 in 2020, the commentary said.

If the 2025 Project and/or America First Agenda federal policy platforms are adopted by the next administration, APCD use could plummet and seriously endanger the public’s health, the authors say.

“Air pollution controls and other provisions of the Clean Air Act are a fundamental part of the public health infrastructure in the United States,” says Dr. Jonathan Buonocore, assistant professor of environmental health at BUSPH and author main comment. “This work reminds us how important the Clean Air Act is and that protecting or strengthening it has great public health benefits.”

To capture the environmental and health ramifications of a potential reduction in APCD use if Project 2025 or the America First Agenda is adopted, the team calculated changes in SO2 and NOx emission levels based on a hypothetical “worst case” scenario in which power plants would stop using existing APCDs.

The researchers estimated that SO2 the reductions would be 2.9 times higher and NOx reductions would be 1.8 times higher if power plants – many of which are coal-fired – stopped operating their APCDs. The team used a reduced complexity model to estimate the health benefits of reduced emissions if APCD use continued at these plants. They found that by 2023, power plant APCDs would capture approximately 1.2 million tons of SO.2 and 1 million tonnes of NOx CO2 emissions, which would prevent between 3,100 and 9,000 premature deaths in 2023 and save between $35 and nearly $100 billion in health care costs.

“Power plants are no longer the largest contributors to public health risks from air pollution in the United States, thanks to federal policies that have significantly reduced SO emissions.2 and NOx from this sector over this period,” says Saravanan Arunachalam, deputy director of the Institute for the Environment at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Any future efforts to weaken the Clean Air Act could bring this sector back to the top.” again, and further increase the overall burden of disease for Americans. »

Even with these substantial health benefits, these models underestimate the additional health benefits of reduced emissions from APCD use, including reduced risks of stroke, seizure heart disease and asthma in adults, as well as low birth weight, premature births, the onset of asthma, and other respiratory or developmental problems in children, the authors point out.

Although these health benefits are national in scale, the largest benefits come from reduced emissions at power plants in Appalachia, the Midwest, and the Mountain West. More than 85 percent of these reductions were attributed to a sharp decline in SO2mainly from coal-fired power plants. Although the researchers note that future policy changes are unlikely to eliminate all use of APCD, these new estimates quantify the health consequences that are at stake – as well as the future health benefits that may remain – based on changes to EPA’s authority under the law. a potentially weakened Clean Air Act.

“The health benefits of APCDs may be concentrated in specific locations, but these results show that strict environmental regulations benefit everyone,” says Dr. Mary Willis, assistant professor of epidemiology at BUSPH.

Importantly, any future policies stripping the EPA of its current regulatory authority would also exacerbate racial health inequities and likely undercut other climate policies at all levels of government, the authors write. Policies that reduce the use of APCD would place a heavy burden on environmental justice communities, a majority of which are people of color or low-income populations who already experience the harms of other environmental hazards at disproportionate rates. Increased air pollution emissions from power plants would also offset gains in cities with climate action plans resulting in reduced greenhouse gas emissions through the electrification of buildings and transportation.

The authors point out that federal policies that strip regulatory authority over harmful practices can have short-term health consequences.

“These misguided plans to dismantle pollution protections and undermine the Clean Air Act would put the health and safety of millions of people at risk,” says Jeremy Fisher, senior climate and energy advisor for the Sierra Club. “Lives are at stake and the American people deserve greater accountability and oversight of polluting power plants, not less.”

Air pollution policy and climate policy are ultimately health policy, says Dr. Jonathan Levy, chair and professor of BUSPH’s Department of Environmental Health and lead author of the commentary. “These policy platforms targeting the EPA threaten to set us back and make Americans less healthy.”

The commentary was also co-authored by Dr. Frederica Perera, professor emerita of environmental health sciences and special scholar in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health; Dr. Daniel Prull, Sierra Club deputy director of research, strategy and analysis; Dr. Patrick Kinney, Beverly Brown Professor of Urban Health at BUSPH; and Brian Sousa, research data analyst in the BUSPH Department of Environmental Health.