President Donald Trump's recent executive order to roll back the Environmental Protection Agency's climate change plan will cut short thousands of lives, a scientist whose work helped to establish the foundation of the regulations under the Clean Air Act, told CNN.
Douglas Dockery, a department chairman at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said the "Clean Power Plan," initiated by former President Barack Obama, could save those lives by reducing harmful emissions from gas, smog and soot.
"It's not about the polar bears," Dockery said Tuesday, explaining that burning coal was "affecting people living around power plants and downwind of power plants right now."
Rescinding previous analysis on the benefits of EPA's plan, Trump signed an executive order last week calling for a review of current regulations that could lead to the elimination of the agency's plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions by power plants.
The EPA estimated that the efforts would not only save lives, but also cut back on health issues preventing 1,700 heart attacks, 90,000 asthma attacks and 300,000 missed days of work or school a year, adding that air pollution can also be linked to lung cancer, cognitive development problems and autism in children and cognitive decline in adults, according to CNN.
Dockery coauthored a study in 1993 that was the first to link air pollution and premature death. He pointed to power plants as a main source of pollutants.
The EPA estimated in 2010 that "the cumulative rules under the act prevented 160,000 deaths, 54,000 cases of chronic bronchitis, 230 infant deaths, 130,000 cases of heart diseases and 86,000 emergency room visits," CNN reported.
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