Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Very depressing news. The EPA plans to NOT take into account of the value of human life any more when making rules and setting policy regarding air pollutants (e.g., fine particulate matter and ozone). Meaning that the value of a human life is zero dollars. Instead, the only thing that will be considered is the cost to businesses of pollution regulations.

In other words, no more estimates of the dollar value of lives saved in the cost-benefit analyses for new pollution rules. People dying will just be a side-effect of business - eh, move on, nothing to see here.

This means that the cost to society (of human suffering and deaths) from pollutants just doesn't matter. Businesses obviously do not/will not want regulations that cost money. Yes, this will mean dirtier air and the environment going forward. Very depressing...

Excerpts from NY Times: Trump’s E.P.A. Has Put a Value on Human Life: Zero Dollars

Government officials have long grappled with a question that seems like the purview of philosophers: What is the value of a human life?

Under both Democratic and Republican administrations, the answer has been in the millions of dollars. The higher the value, the more the government has required businesses to spend on their operations to prevent a single death.

But for the first time ever, at the Environmental Protection Agency the answer is effectively zero dollars. ...continue reading "The EPA Now Values Human Life At Zero Dollars"

The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) has failed the people of the United States with regard to pesticides and pesticide exposures, but absolutely given in to the wishes of the pesticide industry. This has resulted in pesticides being used in the US that are banned in other countries, and in Americans being exposed to unsafe pesticide exposures.

What is going on at the EPA? Cover-ups, studies finding health problems ignored, waiving of tests/studies that should have been done, political interference, pesticide industry lobbyists having a lot of influence at the EPA, punishment of scientists who speak out or point out harms about specific pesticides, top EPA officials leaving the EPA to work at pesticide companies, and on and on.

Yes, commonly used pesticides such as chlorpyrifos, Roundup, malathion, and neonicotinoids (neonics) all have had EPA suppression of research showing serious health harms (e.g. cancer, neurological harm).

Sharon Lerner at the Intercept has written a great piece of investigative journalism about pesticides and the EPA. She writes that the EPA:

“...is often unable to stand up to the intense pressures from powerful agrochemical companies, which spend tens of millions of dollars on lobbying each year and employ many former EPA scientists once they leave the agency. The enormous corporate influence has weakened and, in some cases, shut down the meaningful regulation of pesticides in the U.S. and left the country’s residents exposed to levels of dangerous chemicals not tolerated in many other nations.”

From the Intercept: The Department of Yes - How Pesticide Companies Corrupted the EPA and Poisoned America

While it’s impossible to catalog all the ways in which the EPA has failed to protect the public from the harms of pesticides, this reporting has brought to light several instances in which the overlooking, burying, or scuttling of science has had direct consequences for human health. ...continue reading "The Pesticide Industry’s Influence Over EPA Decisions"