On a date unknown, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stopped factoring the monetary value of human life when determining clean-air rules. Costs to businesses will be used to determine environmental policy instead.
While the EPA will continue to weigh the health effects of harmful pollutants such as fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, and ozone on paper, according to spokeswoman Carolyn Holran, asthma attacks and premature deaths will be irrelevant with regard to the actual policies being set. This will make it more difficult to justify regulations on polluters.
This policy shift in the EPA potentially goes as far back as December 11, 2025, when an EPA supervisor emailed his employees in the Office of Air and Radiation that the benefits reducing the output of PM2.5 and ozone were “uncertain.” The head of this office, Aaron Szabo, was a lobbyist for oil and chemical companies, including American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, which has resisted harsher PM2.5 regulations. This is a conflict of interest, even if Szabo recused himself from such conflicts.
Oil and gas PACs provided $11,089,723 to Republicans during the 2024 election cycle.
This change may run afoul of legal precedence when challenged in court. In 2015’s Michigan v. EPA, Justice Antonin Scalia penned “that if an agency considers the benefits of a regulation, it must also consider the costs, and vice versa.” This decision also violates the EPA’s own mission statement, which includes the protection of human health and the environment.
