Power plant regulations could reduce health costs

WASHINGTON – New coal-burning power plant regulations by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, known as the Cross State Air Pollution Rule, to take effect in 2012, will prevent as many as 34,000 deaths a year and eliminate millions of tons of pollutants in the air, the agency said.
The new rule would improve air quality for 240 million Americans living in states where the pollution is produced or where it travels downwind, according to Lisa P. Jackson, the EPA’s administrator.
“No community should have to bear the burden of another community’s polluters, or be powerless to prevent air pollution that leads to asthma, heart attacks and other harmful illnesses,” Jackson said. “This is a long-overdue step to protect the air we breathe.”
The costs of the new regulations, estimated to be less than $1 billion a year to utility companies, are far less than the health cost savings achieved by the reduction of death and illness and lost work time, according to the agency. The cleaner air will prevent as many as 34,000 premature deaths, 15,000 nonfatal heart attacks and hundreds of thousands of cases of asthma and other respiratory ailments every year, according to the agency. It will also lessen sick day leave for 1.8 million people.
For Jackson, the new regulation is more than just an economic argument. “As a mother of a son with asthma, I know that these numbers and the fight we wage for clean air are not just abstract concepts,” she told The Huffington Post.
Steve Miller, president of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, opposes the new regulation. “The EPA is ignoring the cumulative economic damage new regulations will cause,” he said.
However, supporters of the new regulation, such as the Clean Energy Group, say that the new regulations will provide between $120 billion and $280 billion a year in savings and benefits by 2014.