By Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 27, 2003; Page A01

A new White House study concludes that environmental regulations are well worth the costs they impose on industry and consumers, resulting in significant public health improvements and other benefits to society. The findings overturn a previous report that officials now say was defective.

The report, issued this month by the Office of Management and Budget, concludes that the health and social benefits of enforcing tough new clean-air regulations during the past decade were five to seven times greater in economic terms than were the costs of complying with the rules. The value of reductions in hospitalization and emergency room visits, premature deaths and lost workdays resulting from improved air quality were estimated between $120 billion and $193 billion from October 1992 to September 2002.

By comparison, industry, states and municipalities spent an estimated $23 billion to $26 billion to retrofit plants and facilities and make other changes to comply with new clean-air standards, which are designed to sharply reduce sulfur dioxide, fine-particle emissions and other health-threatening pollutants.

…The findings are more startling because a similar OMB report last year concluded that the cost of compliance with a given set of regulations was roughly comparable to the public benefits. OMB now says it had erred last year by vastly understating the benefits of EPA's rules establishing national ambient air quality standards for ozone and for particulate matter -- a major factor in upper respiratory, heart and lung disorders. Also, last year's report covered the previous six years and did not account for the beneficial effects of the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act that sharply reduced the problem of acid rain.