Accompanying Poll of African American Adults Shows Support for Strong Government Action to Deal with Environmental Quality

WASHINGTON, DC – A new report issued today by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies provides an expanded review of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) cost-benefit analysis of six new air quality regulations that have been proposed or implemented by EPA, and finds that the benefits of implementing the rules outweigh the costs.  This report comes at the heels of EPA’s release of the first national standards for reducing dangerous emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants from power plants.

The report, “Health and Economic Benefits of Clean Air Regulations,” authored by Patrick L. Kinney, ScD, professor of Environmental Health Sciences and director of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health’s Program on Climate and Health, and MPH candidate Amruta Nori-Sarma, also examines the role that environmental justice issues play in the development of EPA regulations, and analyzes these findings in relation to a new poll conducted by Dr. David A. Bositis, Joint Center’s Senior Research Associate in conjunction with the report, “Three-City Survey of African Americans on EPA Regulations, Climate Change and Health.”