The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday announced it has created a new method of calculating the costs and benefits of controlling the release of toxic metals like mercury by oil and coal-fired power plants, weakening the existing regulation.
Environmental organizations say this will likely increase air pollution, with The New York Times' Lisa Friedman and Coral Davenport writing, "By reducing the positive health effects of regulations on paper and raising their economic costs, the new method could be used to justify loosening restrictions on any pollutant that the fossil fuel industry has deemed too costly to control."
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