The US administration finalized a rule last week that changes the way the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) calculates the costs and benefits of new limits on air pollution.
The new cost-benefit requirements, which apply to all future Clean Air Act rules, instruct the agency to weigh all the economic costs of curbing an air pollutant but disregard many of the incidental benefits that arise, such as illnesses and deaths.
The move is one of several major environmental rollbacks that the administration is pushing through before President Trump leaves office in January next month. Earlier this week, it rejected calls to tighten national standards for fine particle pollution, known as PM 2.5, which ranks as the country’s most widespread deadly air pollutant.