EPA Science Panel Considering Guidelines That Upend Basic Air Pollution Science

[Morgen]

Several members of a powerful science panel for the Environmental Protection Agency expressed doubt at a hearing Thursday about the long-established scientific consensus that air pollution can cause premature death.

The panel was meeting to consider recommendations that would fundamentally change how the agency analyzes the public health dangers posed by air pollution and could lead to weaker regulation of soot.
...
"If we don't know that X causes Y, then we should say we don't know," said Cox, who consults and lectures about various risk-related topics. He expressed concern that the EPA would move to reduce air pollution under the erroneous assumption that it would result in fewer premature deaths.
...
The draft recommendations would dramatically limit the breadth and depth of the science used to determine safe air pollution limits in the U.S. by pushing the EPA to limit the types of studies considered during the regulatory process.

The EPA currently bases its air pollution regulations on a wide range of scientific studies about the relationship between health outcomes, such as asthma or premature death, and different types of air pollution, such as soot of different microscopic sizes.
https://www.npr.org/2019/03/28/707166015/epa-science-panel-considering-guidelines-that-upend-basic-air-pollution-science?t=1553893868273

[Clovis]

This is seriously scary. I hope all the damage that's done to the EPA is overturned when the US gets a sane administration.

[Last or First]

“If we don’t know 100% it’ll kill people, we may as well just do it. We could be making more money! You know what they say, better sorry than safe!”

fuck these people so goddamn much

[Orbito]

Greed trumps sanity

[Morgen]

expressed concern that the EPA would move to reduce air pollution under the erroneous assumption that it would result in fewer premature deaths.

Literally this:

https://mk0enterpriseirdbne0.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/HLIC/baa85003ad43e9f09844da289bd9ad49.jpg

[Maken]

They don't need a seperate planet to get barely reigned in....

[Splarg]

I am concerned that we would avoid filling Republican congressional offices with lobsters under the erroneous assumption that it would cause premature deaths.

There's just no data to back it up. If we don't know that X causes Y, then we should say we don't know.

[PiddlezMcFuzz]

I've suggested it before but next time there's some pro-coal convention we need to fill their auditorium with soot to give them first hand empirical evidence of its dangers

I wish I could say I was joking, but the reality is that people like these need sense quite literally slapped into them. No amount of papers will undo decades of fossil fuel lobbying and misinformation brainrot.

Destroy the means of pollution etc etc