Friday, June 22, 2018

Trump's Death Toll

A new report concludes that the damage already done by the Trump administration to the environment, and the US agency that regulates it, will result in 80,000 deaths each decade. Trump has so far initiated the reversal of 67 environmental laws. Even a future administration would have difficulty restoring the gutted EPA agency to its previous health and staffing levels any time soon.

An analysis by two Harvard University scientists, David Cutler and Francesca Dominici, looked specifically at the health impacts of changes to the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) policies on air pollutants and toxic chemicals. They came up with the 80,000 deaths figure by analyzing the EPA's own data. The deaths would result from increased diseases from bad air and water quality and would be in addition to the deaths that would have resulted from those diseases anyway under the previous trajectory before Trump scrapped the protections.

"This sobering statistic captures only a small fraction of the cumulative public health damages associated with the full range of rollbacks and systemic actions proposed by the Trump Administration," they said. 

http://www.dw.com/en/trumps-lasting-damage-to-the-environment/a-44315788

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