EPA weakens air pollution rules, cancer survival soars, and NASA evacuates astronauts

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• 00:12

  For Scientific American Science Quickly, I'm Kendra Peer-Lewis in for Rachel Feldman.

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  You're listening to our weekly science news roundup.

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  First up, Earlier this month, the U.S.

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  Environmental Protection Agency published a new rule signaling a major change to the way it counts for the impact of certain air pollutants on human health.

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  Many health experts say the shift will likely lead to increased air pollution and worse health outcomes.

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  Andrea Thompson, Siam's Senior Editor for Life Sciences,

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  is here to give us a clearer understanding of what the agency is doing and what that means for the air we all breathe.

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  Hi, Andrea.

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  Thanks for joining us today.

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  Thanks for having me.

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  So my understanding is that in general,

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  the EPA uses a type of cost-benefit analysis to understand the impact of an environmental regulation.

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  Can you talk a bit about how prior to this rule change, the EPA measured these costs and benefits?

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  Yeah, so in general,

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  the science for how you've sort of calculate how much a regulation will cost so the economic benefit you get from it has been pretty well established over several decades.

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  So for at least for the benefits part,

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  it starts with health studies that compare areas where say a certain pollutant is high in areas where it's low and look at the differences in hospitalizations and premature deaths and other health indicators.

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  and controlling for other factors that may influence those,

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  and come up with a model that you can use to see,

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  okay, if this pollutant goes up or down, how much do those health indicators change?

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