CLIMATEWIRE | When EPA announced its intent to roll back more than two dozen regulations last month, Administrator Lee Zeldin said it was necessary because pollution limits were “suffocating” the nation’s economy.
But 12 of the 31 rules on the chopping block protect Americans’ ability to breathe by curtailing air pollutants like fine particulate matter and ozone. According to one review of EPA’s analyses, those rules would collectively prevent more than 100 million asthma attacks through 2050.
The regulatory rollback isn’t the Trump administration’s only move that will affect American lungs. Just this month, the Department of Health and Human Services completely eliminated the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s asthma office, which provides funding and advice to state and local health officials on how to prevent the the inflammatory lung condition.
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“I don’t say this lightly, but these are programs that were keeping people alive,” said Laura Kate Bender of the American Lung Association. “And now we have this double whammy where on the one hand, we are seeing the threat of a slew of air pollution rollbacks and lax enforcement at EPA, and on the other hand, they are cutting programs that were helping people manage their lung disease.”
The rollbacks and cuts contradict the Trump administration’s stated goals of reducing childhood chronic diseases, including asthma. Asthma was mentioned twice in President Donald Trump’s February executive order that directed federal agencies to act “urgently” to end chronic childhood diseases through “fresh thinking” on “environmental impacts” to health, among other things.
Asked how EPA reconciles its directive to tackle asthma with rolling back regulations that prevent the disease, EPA spokesperson Molly Vaseliou said only that “the Trump Administration is taking steps in the right direction to ensure EPA adheres to the agency’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment and powering the great American comeback.”
The costs of a regulatory rollback
Elizabeth Hauptman remembers the joy she felt two years ago when EPA finalized a carbon rule meant to reduce pollution from fossil fuels.
Now a field consultant for Moms Clean Air Force, Hauptman started paying attention to air pollution regulations when her then-toddler son, Oscar, started having difficulty breathing. In the years since he was diagnosed with asthma, Oscar, now 15, has been to the intensive care unit twice and had to sit out sports practices more times than Hauptman can count on poor air quality days.
She had been hoping the carbon rule would save more kids like Oscar from struggling to breathe. But now the rule is one of 12 air pollution limits EPA announced it would reconsider in March on its “biggest deregulation action in U.S. History.”
Hauptman worries EPA’s actions will only make asthma attacks more common — for her son and others.
“My son is growing up in a world where he has to check the air quality index like some kids check their favorite sports scores, and that should not be normal,” she said. “This is not just about policy — it’s about playgrounds and bedtime stories without wheezing.”
In 2035 alone, EPA estimated, the rule would prevent 1,200 premature deaths, 870 hospital and emergency room visits, 1,900 new asthma diagnoses and 360,000 asthma attacks severe enough to require an inhaler.
Those calculations are part of the cost-benefit analysis EPA is required by law to conduct whenever it issues new regulations. They often measure the benefits of reducing air pollution in terms of avoided asthma symptoms, emergency room visits and hospitalizations.
“My son is growing up in a world where he has to check the air quality index like some kids check their favorite sports scores, and that should not be normal. This is not just about policy — it’s about playgrounds and bedtime stories without wheezing.” —Elizabeth Hauptman, field consultant for Moms Clean Air Force
For example, EPA estimated that another regulation targeted in Zeldin’s rollback — the “good neighbor” rule — would prevent 179,000 asthma attacks and 5,000 new diagnoses of the disease in 2026. The rule limits smokestack emissions from power plants that create ozone pollution and smog in downwind, neighboring states.
All told, those health benefits, along with avoided hospitalizations and premature deaths from the pollution, would save $13 billion in 2026, the agency calculated.
“Inhalers are expensive, asthma attacks are expensive, keeping kids home from school and parents out of work to care for them is expensive,” Bender explained.
Making America healthy?
Trump’s February executive order created the Make America Healthy Commission, tasked with drafting a strategy to improve kids’ health that must “address appropriately restructuring the Federal Government’s response to the childhood chronic disease crisis, including ending Federal practices that exacerbate the health crisis.”
Zeldin sits on the commission with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is restructuring the Health and Human Services Department as part of an agenda he calls “Make American Healthy Again.”
Kennedy mentioned asthma as a chronic disease he wants to address during his confirmation hearings. But earlier this month, he put every staff member in the CDC’s Asthma Control Program on administrative leave, and told them their jobs will be eliminated in June.
Created in 1999, the CDC program funds work in 29 state and local health departments to help reduce asthma attacks. Some grants provide training for visiting nurses to help patients reduce exposure to things like secondhand smoke and mold at home. Others fund training for school nurses and other officials on how to administer inhalers and other medications.
Utah, for example, has used grants from the asthma program to create “recess guidance” that recommends when air quality is too poor for kids to play outside. The state has also started sending proactive email alerts to school personnel based on the guidance.
The program’s experts would also deploy to areas hit by disasters, like wildfires and hurricanes, to help communities respond to asthma threats, and would even field calls directly from patients who had recently been diagnosed with asthma and needed advice on how to manage their symptoms.
That expertise is no longer available. The program’s entire staff was sent Reduction in Force notices earlier this month as part of a broader HHS reorganization that has resulted in 18 percent of the agency’s workforce being cut overall.
“If you are newly diagnosed with asthma because of air pollution issues now, what resources do you have after these cuts?” asked Jenna Riemenschneider, vice president of advocacy and policy at the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.
HHS did not respond to questions about why the office has been eliminated or whether Kennedy agrees with EPA’s actions to roll back pollution rules that prevent asthma.
In a statement, an agency spokesperson only said that “critical programs within the CDC will continue,” and Kennedy “is committed towards understanding and drastically lowering chronic disease rates and ending the childhood chronic disease epidemic.”
Three staff members from the CDC program, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said they were blindsided by the move to eliminate HHS’ only asthma experts, in part because they had read the February executive order.
“When we saw the first announcement that they were reorganizing HHS, we thought maybe they would move us to the new Administration for a Healthy America,” said one employee, referring to a new division created in the HHS restructuring. “But none of us saw coming that we would be cut along with our entire division.”
Another employee said she had actually been “excited” by the February executive order because she thought it would elevate the program’s work to help more asthma patients.
“By eliminating the asthma and air quality branch, the MAHA movement loses so much scientific and medical experience that would have helped actually make America healthier,” she said.
Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2024. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.