Overview:
-Increased public health costs created by the rollbacks are likely to overshadow any cost savings, according to a report by the nonprofit Environmental Protection
Network.
-"Children are going to be much more affected by all this," says asthma and allergy expert.
-Dialing back PM 2.5 regulations could be especially impactful in southwest Detroit.
The Trump administration’s proposed rollbacks of federal clean air rules could lead to 200,000 premature deaths nationally by 2050 and 10,000 asthma attacks a day, according to Jeremy Symons, senior advisor at the Environmental Protection Network, a group of former EPA staffers and political appointees.
Experts say that cities like Detroit that already deal with substantial pollution and high asthma rates could be especially vulnerable to the rule changes.
In March, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin pitched rollbacks to 31 water, air quality, and climate regulations as a way to lower the cost of living and encourage investment.
“We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more,” Zeldin said in a statement.
Dialing back regulations for fine particulate matter, or PM 2.5; vehicle emissions; and power plants could exacerbate air quality problems in Detroit and burden individuals with increased health care costs. The Trump administration may also rely on EPA staff cuts, weaker enforcement, and polluter exemptions to advance its deregulatory agenda, strategies that could prove easier than reversing environmental rules.
“A city like Detroit that already has unhealthy levels of air pollution has the most to lose from these rollbacks,” Symons said. He added that businesses need the certainty of clear rules to justify investments in cleaner technologies that could benefit public health and make industry more competitive.
Increased public health costs created by the rollbacks are likely to overshadow any cost savings, according to a September 2024 report from EPN that looked at many of the rules Zeldin seeks to reverse. The report found that recently enacted rules would produce $250 billion in public health and climate savings annually, outpacing regulatory costs by a ratio of six-to-one.
An EPA spokesperson defended the agency’s deregulatory push in a statement to Planet Detroit, saying it would protect the environment and grow the economy.
“The greatest and most consequential day of deregulation in American history was a step in the right direction to ensure EPA adheres to the agency’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment, and power the great American comeback,” the statement said.
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Rollbacks could mean more asthma cases, deaths in Detroit
Reversing PM 2.5 standards, vehicle emissions regulations and the federal “good neighbor rule,” which addresses factory and power plant emissions that cross state lines, could be especially harmful for public health and have an outsize impact in Detroit.
The EPN study found that, at that national level, these three rules would prevent approximately 175,000 deaths by 2050. The report cautioned that its numbers could be an underestimate because it relies on EPA data that often fails to quantify the health benefits of reducing a number of hazardous air pollutants.
Kathleen Slonager, executive director of the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America Michigan Chapter, said the EPA’s proposed rollbacks would exacerbate health problems among metro Detroit’s most vulnerable populations.
“These rollbacks are going to absolutely increase the number of cases of people getting diagnosed with asthma, the number of emergency room visits, (and) the number of asthma deaths in southeast Michigan,” she said.
AAFA’s “2024 Asthma Capitals” report identified Detroit as the third worst city for asthma in the nation, Slonager said, adding that these impacts were felt disproportionately by communities of color and children.
“Children are going to be much more affected by all this,” she said. “The impact on their small, undeveloped lungs from air pollution is greater.”
Air pollution can also harm brain development in children and lead to poor outcomes in school as well as increasing the likelihood of childhood cancers or individuals developing chronic disease later in life, Slonager said.
Dialing back PM 2.5 regulations could be especially impactful in southwest Detroit. The area is home to many polluting industries and sees large amounts of vehicle traffic. Michigan’s MiEJScreen, an environmental justice screening tool, shows much of southwest Detroit in the 98th, 99th, and 100th percentiles, indicating an extremely high level of pollution exposure and underlying risk.
In February, Wayne and Kalamazoo counties were notified they had failed to meet the EPA’s revised National Ambient Air Quality Standards, which lowered the annual PM2.5 standard from 12 to 9 micrograms per cubic meter. A “nonattainment” designation could mean that companies in these counties would have to adopt new emissions controls and may prevent regulators from issuing new air pollution permits in environmentally overburdened communities like southwest Detroit.
The EPA now says the revised PM 2.5 standard would “shut down opportunities for American manufacturing and small businesses.”
EPA cuts, air quality exemptions could make rule changes unnecessary
Changing environmental regulations can take several years, and environmental groups are already challenging rule changes in court. The EPA is undertaking other actions like laying off workers and potentially cutting funding that could allow it to carry out its deregulatory agenda even if the old rules remain.
The EPA set up an email address last week to allow polluters to seek a presidential exemption to Clean Air Act rules, a move that Symons said was unethical.
“Lee Zeldin is setting up a system where he and the president can hand out political favors at the expense of public health,” he said. “That’s an incredibly dangerous new direction that is a sharp departure from any prior administration.”
Shutting down enforcement and laying off staff could also achieve the same end as rolling back regulations, Symons said. Already, hundreds of EPA workers have been fired across the country. Some of these layoffs hit the Region 5 Office of General Counsel in Chicago, an office that includes prosecutors who help enforce air and water quality rules in Michigan and other Midwestern states.
Symons said Zeldin’s deregulatory strategy amounted to “trying to hit the EPA with wrecking balls from all directions at once” so that polluters won’t be held accountable under the Clean Air Act and Safe Drinking Water Act.
“He’s throwing it all against the fridge, in the hopes that enough will stick that EPA will fundamentally no longer be able to do its job.”