For more than 50 years, the Clean Air Act has worked to provide clean air and a healthier future for all Americans. The law requires the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to set limits on pollution. Before creating these rules, EPA traditionally looked at both the cost to businesses, the effects on consumers and the health benefits for individuals. In the past, EPA considered health impacts of air pollution standards and the economic value of improved air quality by including estimates of how many lives would be saved and how many asthma attacks and other health harms could be avoided as a result of cleaner air, and the monetary value of those benefits.
But recently, EPA announced it will no longer estimate the dollar value of health benefits when reviewing air pollution rules. Instead, they will only include calculations of savings to polluting industries in the rule-making process. This approach ignores how these policies affect people’s health, making it easier to weaken clean air protections.
These analytical changes will have severe and dangerous effects. Years of data show that tighter clean air rules have significantly reduced pollution and improved public health. Regulatory rollbacks to air pollution standards will expose Americans to an increase in pollution from vehicles, power plants and factories, leading to more missed school and work days, asthma attacks, emergency room visits, premature deaths and higher healthcare costs. Though everyone will be impacted, high-risk groups such as children, older adults and people with existing chronic diseases will be most affected. Additionally, these rollbacks can have a devastating impact on the nation's economy.
Why Do Air Pollution Regulations Matter?
During a day of heavy smog or wildfire smoke, it is easy to see how air pollution affects our lives. But even when pollution is invisible, it can still harm our health. Years of research show that air pollution harms both our health and our economy.
For instance, EPA research data shows that clean air safeguards save lives. One study showed that in 2020 alone, they helped prevent:
- More than 230,000 early deaths
- 200,000 heart attacks
- Millions of asthma flare-ups
- 135,000 hospital visits
- 17 million missed workdays
- 5.4 million missed school days
In addition to health benefits, the study estimated a $2 trillion benefit for the U.S. economy in 2020.
Our 2026 “State of the Air” report further highlighted how widespread air pollution continues to be, and how EPA's recent actions will cause an increase in the dangers posed by exposure to ozone and particle pollution (PM2.5). Our 2026 report continues to show that climate change is making cleaning up air pollution much more difficult and even making air quality worse in many parts of the country by fueling more extreme wildfires or making ozone pollution more deadly due to hotter temperatures.
How Have Regulations Changed?
Since the Clean Air Act was strengthened in 1970, the U.S. has steadily reduced harmful air pollution by setting limits on emissions from cars, trucks, power plants and factories. According to EPA, emissions from major air pollutants dropped dramatically while the economy continued to grow. These regulations helped prevent illness, improved air quality and saved lives across the country.
Despite decades of evidence showing the effectiveness of clean air rules, EPA is now weakening some of those protections and considering changes to others. Public health groups worry this could lead to more pollution and more illness, reversing decades of progress. More pollution in the air means greater risk of asthma attacks, breathing problems, lung cancer and other serious health conditions. Children are especially vulnerable because their lungs are still developing, and people with existing lung diseases can experience worsening symptoms when air quality declines.
What’s Happening to Close the Gap?
Other health organizations are stepping up to help elected leaders and the public understand the impacts of these policy changes. For example, the nonprofit organization Energy Innovation recently released its own analysis that shows what could happen if EPA removes the Endangerment Finding — a key decision that explains how greenhouse gases can harm people’s health and the environment. The report also looks at what could happen if EPA weakens pollution limits for vehicles, power plants, renewable energy development and more. It includes the economic impacts, which forecast that households will pay more for energy and that worsened air pollution will contribute to mounting healthcare costs.
Another analysis conducted by the Environmental Protection Network focuses on the health impacts of 12 of the 31 air pollution-related rollbacks that the EPA is planning or has completed. They concluded that the weakening of these clean air standards will lead to over 200,000 deaths by 2050, cause more than 10,000 asthma attacks annually and cost the public about $6 for every $1 saved by polluting companies.
How Is the Lung Association Responding?
We’re proud to partner with Resources for the Future (RFF), an independent nonprofit research group, to understand in greater detail and with state-of-the-art modeling how EPA rollbacks of climate and clean air protections could affect public health. RFF is studying the impact of the EPA’s decision to repeal the Endangerment Finding as well as other planned or completed pollution rollbacks for power plants and vehicles. RFF is also looking at how increased electricity use contributes to the overall clean air problem.
They recognize that the world is different now than it was when these clean air rules were put into place. They’re incorporating those changes into their analysis, including the rapid growth in data centers and the fact that Congress repealed some clean energy investments and tax incentives last year. This will let RFF more accurately understand the effects of the EPA rollbacks, and let them model how the harms to public health could increase as electricity demand grows.
The Lung Association plans to build on RFF’s findings by focusing on lung health impacts. This includes factors like more hospital visits, more asthma attacks and more missed school days caused by unhealthy air. This will be the latest of many published analyses on clean air policies, including work on clean vehicles at Lung.org/ev and cleaner industry practices at Lung.org/clean-heat.
Early signs suggest these changes could mean dirtier air and more health problems for families across the country well into the future. The Lung Association will continue fighting for stronger clean air regulations so everyone can breathe easier.
Blog last updated: September 16, 2026
