The Environmental Protection Agency has based its most onerous air pollution regulations on junk science meant to further political goals, says the author of a new book.
Lawyer-statistician Steve Milloy’s new book, “Scare Pollution,” shows readers how EPA has distorted the science behind air pollution regulations to hamper politically incorrect industries, from coal to logging to manufacturing.
“I have worked on EPA science controversies for 25 years,” Milloy told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “EPA doesn’t use science so much as it abuses it for its political ends.”
Milloy is referring to EPA regulations that rely on the shaky claim that fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, kills people. That claim alone has allowed EPA to claim billions of dollar worth of supposed benefits from regulating coal plants, factories and automobiles.
PM2.5 science has been a major driver of regulations targeting the coal industry, including the EPA’s Clean Power Plan (CPP). That rule is ostensibly to cut carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, but more of the CPP’s benefits come from PM2.5 reductions than CO2 cuts.
“Although ‘Scare Pollution’ focuses on the controversy over EPA’s claims about particulate matter in outdoor air, the book represents lessons learned from decades of exposure to a broad range of EPA programs,” said Milloy, who used to work for the coal company Murray Energy and is a senior fellow at the Energy & Environment Legal Institute.
Milloy has been actively fighting back against EPA regulations for decades, most recently exposing agency-funded experiments exposing humans to air pollutants. EPA-backed researchers conducted the same experiments on children.
Most recently, Milloy and the Energy & Environment Legal Institute sued an EPA scientific advisory panel for stacking with researchers who’ve collectively gotten millions of dollars in grants from the agency.
“Government employees and contractors at universities appear to be rubber-stamping EPA’s distorted claims,” Milloy wrote in the forward of his new book, which has been endorsed by Oklahoma Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe and former EPA science panel Chairman Dr. George Wolff.
“The EPA is using dishonest means to expand its regulatory power,” Milloy wrote. “This is all happening because of and through the EPA’s patently and demonstrably false claim that PM2.5 kills people.”
“Despite the best efforts of the EPA and its allies to prevent discovery of the scientific misinformation behind PM2.5, this book presents, uncovers and debunks in one unified narrative this miscarriage of science against our society. But this David vs. Goliath story goes beyond just the EPA,” Milloy wrote.
