Researchers from the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs studied regulations issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and found that effects attributed to these regulations are actually uncertain.
These regulations are issued in an effort to save lives every year, but researchers John D. Graham, David H. Good and Kerry Krutilla have discovered that the estimates touted by the regulations are too wide-ranging to be certain. The researchers analyzed expected life savings and costs for nine regulations issued by the EPA from 2011 to 2013, the bulk of which required national emission standards for toxic air pollutants.
According to the results of their analysis, lives saved by the regulations ranged from zero to over 80,000 annually. However, the range translates to uncertain health effects associated with fine particles as well as the possibility that airborne exposure to these fine particles doesn't give rise to higher mortality risks. Minor changes applied to estimates involving mortality risks for large populations with high levels of exposure to air pollutants resulted in large discrepancies in estimates for the number of lives that the EPA regulations were supposedly saving.
The higher limits achieved by the researchers were comparable to the estimates released by the EPA. However, standard analyses carried out by the agency for the regulations don't reflect the possibility that zero lives were saved during implementation. If being exposed to fine parties doesn't increase risks of premature death, the majority of regulations examined by the researchers are unlikely to impart economic benefits over how much they cost.
The researchers based their work on a reevaluation of an expert elicitation study sponsored by the EPA in 2006 that surveyed expert opinion on health effects associated with exposure to fine particles. The format of that elicitation study allowed experts to adjust and synthesize empirical findings to accommodate limitations the research topic had.
Since 2006, the EPA has utilized other methods for assessing expert opinion. However, the researchers recommend that the elicitation study be updated to reflect new scientific knowledge and experience with the method. Graham, Good and Krutilla conclude that better information must be provided to asses the economic effects of regulations released by the agency, most especially when these regulations can impact other laws and rules concerning the economy of the country.
Graham is the dean for the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, while Good and Krutilla are associate professors in the school. Their study was published in the Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis.
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