Air pollution from fossil fuels alone costs each American an average of $2,500 per year in extra medical bills, with a national price tag of more than $820 billion per year. According to Trump’s EPA, such costs should no longer factor into regulatory decisions for two of the deadliest and most widespread air pollutants in the U.S.

According to a new rule, the EPA will no longer consider the economic cost of harm to human health from fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone when regulating industry. The change reverses the agency’s longstanding practice of conducting benefit-cost analyses to estimate the economic value of avoided emergency room visits, illnesses, and premature deaths associated with cleaner air.

Ending the monetization of health benefits from ozone and PM2.5 regulation could make it easier to roll back limits on power plants, steel mills, oil refineries, and other industrial facilities that emit these pollutants, experts say.

“The idea that EPA would not consider the public health benefits of its regulations is anathema to the very mission of EPA,” Richard Revesz, the faculty director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law, told the New York Times. The agency’s mission statement says its core responsibility is to “protect human health and the environment.”

In an emailed statement, an EPA spokesperson told Gizmodo that the agency is still considering the impacts that PM2.5 and ozone have on human health but will not be monetizing the impacts at this time.

Why the EPA is making this change now

The EPA’s regulatory impact analysis for the new rule states that past benefit-cost analyses overstated the precision of monetized health impacts from PM2.5 and ozone.

To “rectify this error,” the EPA will stop considering the dollar value of health benefits from its regulations on these pollutants “until the agency is confident enough in the modeling to properly monetize those impacts,” the analysis reads. The EPA spokesperson told Gizmodo that reductions in PM2.5 and ozone since 2000 have made the “incremental impacts” of further reductions more difficult to measure, prompting the agency to reevaluate its methods.

Still, the change fits into a broader pattern of deregulatory actions by the Trump administration’s EPA that have scaled back longstanding environmental protections and analytical frameworks. Over the past year, the agency has moved to rescind the endangerment finding that empowers the U.S. to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, ditch emission limits on power plants, undo a Biden-era ban on cancer-causing asbestos, and more.

Revesz told NPR that halting the monetization of health impacts from PM2.5 and ozone could facilitate further rollback of air pollution regulations. If the benefits aren’t assigned a concrete dollar amount, it’s easier to ignore them, he said.

The health impacts of ozone and PM2.5

Studies have linked long-term exposure to both ozone and PM2.5 to a range of serious health effects, including heart disease and stroke, chronic lung disease, and premature death. PM2.5 is especially dangerous because the particles are tiny enough to penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream, causing widespread inflammation and organ damage.

Ozone primarily harms the respiratory system, irritating airways and reducing lung function over time. Even short-term exposure can trigger asthma, increase the risk of respiratory infection, and cause shortness of breath, wheezing, or coughing.

Both pollutants largely stem from industrial activities—particularly fossil fuel combustion. PM2.5 can be a direct emission from power plants, factories, mining operations, and other facilities, or it can form in the atmosphere when gases like sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides react.

Ozone is not emitted directly. It forms when nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds—released primarily by motor vehicles, power plants, and industrial furnaces and boilers—react in sunlight.

Nationally, average PM2.5 and ozone concentrations have declined over the past few decades, and EPA trend data attribute much of that improvement to federal and state air-quality regulations. However, the American Lung Association’s 2025 State of the Air report found that progress on ozone has reversed in recent years, and unhealthy spikes in PM2.5 pollution remain a significant problem in many parts of the country.

As these trends continue, the EPA’s decision could mean that future air quality regulations are judged largely on industry compliance costs, not on the cost of medical bills or lives lost. That shift could clear the way for weaker standards at a moment when air pollution remains a growing public health threat to Americans.