The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will stop including health benefits in its assessment of new environmental regulations, focusing instead on costs to businesses, according to Jalopnik.
In the past, the EPA’s cost-benefit analyses weighed both the economic costs of compliance for industry and the monetary value of health benefits, such as reduced asthma treatment, fewer respiratory illnesses and lives saved. That approach helped justify air-quality protections by showing that overall societal benefits often outweighed industry costs.
Trump: "We're canceling the EPA's absurd tailpipe emissions standard, one of the worst ever"
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 14 января 2026 г. в 00:48
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Under the new policy, the agency will no longer assign dollar values to health improvements from reduced ozone and particulate matter emissions when evaluating regulations, although it will continue to estimate compliance costs for businesses. Critics say this could sideline health considerations in regulatory decisions, making it easier to weaken environmental protections.
However, in a statement to ABC News, an EPA representative said the agency continues to take into account how fine particulate matter and ozone affect public health, as it has in the past, but will not assign a monetary value to those effects for now.
The agency also emphasized that although health impacts will no longer be calculated in financial terms, this does not mean they are being ignored or treated as unimportant. The EPA said it remains committed to protecting human health and the environment.
