Study Finds Net Gain From Pollution Rules: OMB Overturns Past Findings on Benefits By Eric Pianin.

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....

John D. Graham, director of OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which produced the study, said: "Our role at OMB is to report the best available estimates of benefits and costs, regardless of whether the information favors one advocacy group or another. In this case the data show that the Environmental Protection Agency's clean-air office has issued some highly beneficial rules."...

Many environmentalists had initially expressed fears that Graham, founder of a Harvard University-based risk analysis institute, would lead a Bush administration assault on regulatory safeguards. But Graham has sided with environmentalists on several key issues, including new rules to sharply reduce diesel engine emissions and the fine airborne particles that contribute to asthma and other serious respiratory ailments. The activists were quick to embrace this month's report.

It looks convincing, but after a while you don't know who to believe.