Just south of Charleston a coal barge travels up the Kanawha River, passing the Dupont chemical plant.
Credit: Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis/Getty

Apparently all American children have been bad this year, since the Trump administration has given them a huge lump of coal for Christmas.

On Friday, the Trump administration proposed a new rule that would boost coal-plant emissions of mercury, arsenic, and toxic air pollution.

The proposal would gut the EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards — an Obama-era rule — by barring the EPA from including any of the so-called “co-benefits” from the mercury standards that don’t directly come from cutting mercury.

Reducing mercury — a dangerous neurotoxin — simultaneously reduces many other toxic coal pollutants, thereby preventing up to 11,000 premature deaths and 130,000 asthma attacks yearly, while delivering total annual health benefits of up to $90 billion.

This new strategy would mean the EPA would have to ignore all of those co-benefits in defending the mercury standards, which would open them to serious court challenges from the coal industry.

It would also mean future EPA rules would […]