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Andrew Wheeler is officially the head of the EPA

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Wheeler's time as acting administrator indicates his EPA will weigh the needs of industry higher than those of human health and planetary well-being. In October, the EPA disbanded two panels formed to determine whether air quality standards should change. One was a 26-person panel of experts previously tasked with evaluating evidence on fine particulate matter, a particular type of air pollutant associated with various health problems. The other was meant to review the dangers of smog. Instead, the agency announced, both national air quality standards would be reviewed by a group of seven people: a pulmonary physician, five representatives from local, state, and federal environmental agencies (including an aquatic ecology and invasive species expert with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers), and a consultant whose clients have included the American Petroleum Institute, the American Chemistry Council, and tobacco company Philip Morris International.



The EPA also proposed an alternative to President Obama's Clean Power Plan—the Affordable Clean Energy rule, or ACE—that would increase national coal production.




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Written By Rachel Feltman

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