When EPA announced its intent to roll back more than two dozen regulations last month, Administrator Lee Zeldin said it was necessary because pollution limits were “suffocating” the nation’s economy.
But 12 of the 31 rules on the chopping block protect Americans’ ability to breathe by curtailing air pollutants like fine particulate matter and ozone. According to one review of EPA’s analyses, those rules would collectively prevent more than 100 million asthma attacks through 2050.
The regulatory rollback isn’t the Trump administration’s only move that will affect American lungs. Just this month, the Department of Health and Human Services completely eliminated the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s asthma office, which provides funding and advice to state and local health officials on how to prevent the the inflammatory lung condition.
“I don’t say this lightly, but these are programs that were keeping people alive,” said Laura Kate Bender of the American Lung Association. “And now we have this double whammy where on the one hand, we are seeing the threat of a slew of air pollution rollbacks and lax enforcement at EPA, and on the other hand, they are cutting programs that were helping people manage their lung disease.”
