Noelle Selin and Amanda Giang | The Conversation

Over 300,000 babies every year are born in the United States with levels of mercury that put them at risk of neurological and developmental problems. How much would you be willing to spend to reduce this number?

This might seem like an abstract question, but the judgments regulators make on this question can determine whether or not a proposed regulation survives challenges in court.

Regulation is an issue on the presidential campaign trail as well, with a number of candidates arguing that tighter environmental rules will strangle the economy and deliver few benefits.

One regulation at stake is an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposal to control mercury emissions from power plants under the Clean Air Act, through the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) issued in 2013, which remains in effect after a Supreme Court ruling last year challenged aspects of the decision to regulate.

We’ve done research to quantify the economic impacts from better public health of proposed mercury rules and found the benefits are substantial – on the order of billions of dollars per year, with significant improvements for at-risk populations.

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Read the full article in the The Conversation.

Photo: The biggest source of mercury in the U.S. continues to be coal power plants.  booleansplit/flickr, CC BY-NC