After cutting value of life, EPA ditching the term
Should emotion adjust how we weigh risks?
Bureaucrats are struggling with an age-old question: What is the value of our lives?
The government uses dollar amounts for lives when trying to weigh the costs and benefits of regulating such things as pollution, but it has proven politically and emotionally charged.
Now, the Environmental Protection Agency wants to stop putting a price tag on American lives and use different terminology, but that’s not as easy as it sounds.
The agency’s first try for a replacement — a wonky “value of mortality risk” — was shot down as not quite right by its science advisory board Thursday.
The EPA proposal would also put more value on preventing cancer deaths over other causes of death, like heart attacks. That’s because there’s a bigger scare factor for cancer, EPA officials said. But critics say that puts a premium on touchy-feely emotions over science.
“This is highly ethical, but very dangerous,” said David Ropeik, an expert in risk communications and author of the book “How Risky Is It, Really?” He said people often overestimate some risks, such as cancer, and underestimate others, such as heart disease.
For decades, the government in analyzing whether regulations make economic sense has used something called “value of a statistical life.”
The so-called price tag became a political hot topic in 2002, when the Bush administration tried to reduce the value of elderly people by 38 percent compared to people under 70.
Then quietly in 2004, the EPA reduced the value of life for everyone from $7.9 million to $7 million. The Associated Press uncovered the devaluation in 2008 and the EPA’s move was criticized by Democrats and ridiculed by comedians.
Soon after the Obama administration took over in 2009, the value