CNN/Newsmax
By Joe Crowe
October 24, 2017

Changes to environmental regulations by Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt could put people in “grave danger,” according to Christine Todd Whitman, who was EPA administrator under George W. Bush.

“There are 200,000 deaths in the United States every year from dirty airborne-related causes. All of these things are what EPA is designed to try to prevent, and what are being rolled back, putting us in grave danger,” Whitman said in a CNN interview.

The administration is legally obligated to reduce emissions, regardless of changes to regulations, Whitman said. “It’s called an endangerment finding, where the agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, says something is bad for human health or the environment, and the Supreme Court has upheld that,” said Whitman in the interview.

“We’re still going to have these protections. What we’re not going to see is enforcement, and that is really a tragedy for us, and a tragedy for the world,” the former administrator added.

“Every regulation can be improved, and tweaked on the margins. But this wholesale rollback just speaks to what I think is almost an obsession that this administration has that anything that had (former President Barack) Obama’s name on it is gone, good, bad, or indifferent, not based on science, certainly, as far as EPA is concerned,” Whitman said.

Another previous EPA administrator called on Trump to keep standards in place for clean car pollutants. Carol Browner, who led the EPA during Bill Clinton’s administration, said Monday that the standards save consumers money and help the environment.