The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday finalized its proposal to loosen rules on oil- and coal-fired power plants emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants in its latest rollback of public health protections during the coronavirus pandemic.

The proposed change to the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) does not completely abandon limits on mercury pollution, which damages brains and lungs, but changes the methodology regulators use to weigh the pros and cons of such restrictions, giving more weight to the economic costs and less to the indirect benefits to public health.

There will be no increased mercury emissions, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said on a call with reporters Thursday evening. The outrageous claims by the environmental community that this is in some way going to cause mercury emissions to go up, theyre either not reading it or theyre purposely misrepresenting it.

Rather, he said, the changes met the requirements of a 2015 Supreme Court decision in which the conservative majority ruled it was appropriate for the EPA to consider whether the cost to businesses of complying with the rule outweighed the direct benefits to public health.

Wheeler said the Obama administration took a dishonest approach to interpreting the rule that tipped the scales so any regulation could be justified regardless of cost.

Its not too often that the Supreme Court hears an environmental case, Wheeler said. When they reach a decision, we have a responsibility to listen to the court and follow their direction, which is what were doing.

But environmental lawyers accused the EPA of downplaying the indirect benefits from restricting releases of toxic heavy metals just two weeks after the EPA defending its rollback of another major environmental rule by focusing almost exclusively on similar indirect benefits.

There is no plausible economic argument for this one-sided approach, said Richard Revesz, a professor at New York Universitys School of Law. The hypocrisy of this move is particularly striking.