During the Vietnam War, the U.S. military inflated their reports of the number of North Vietnamese and Vietcong soldiers killed. Supposedly, the purpose of these inflated body counts was to convince the American public that progress was being made in the war.
Now, EPA has its own body count propaganda machine.
During a speech at a conference sponsored by the State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrtaors (STAPPA) and the Association of Local Air Pollution Control Officials (ALAPCO), Mary Nichols, EPA's assistant administrator for air and radiation, claimed that the EPA's proposed air pollution standards for ozone and particulate matter would save... get this...58 MILLION LIVES!
58 MILLION!?
Given that about 2 million Americans die every year from all causes, 58 million deaths represents roughly every death in the U.S. for the next 29 years.
I think EPA's original press release estimated that the proposed standards would save about 40,000 lives per year. That means EPA is projecting its action will save lives for about 1,500 years (58 million lives divided by 40,000 lives per year)!
They must be smokin' something good at EPA! (And I'm sure they obtained it by prescription in California!)
Of course, what Mary Nichols forgot to say is that there is a fair likelihood that the proposed standards will save ZERO lives, EVER. After all, the EPA body counts are based on (what else?) weak association epidemiology. And we all know from chapter 2 of Science Without Sense that weak association epidemiology is about as reliable as a three-legged chair.
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