Mr Phalen has asserted that air is currently too clean, because children’s lungs need to breathe irritants so their bodies can learn how to fight them. “Modern air,” he said in 2012, “is a little too clean for optimum health.”

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Man who thinks pollution can make children healthier expected to join Trump's environment team

'Modern air,' he said in 2012, 'is a little too clean for optimum health.' 

Alexandra Wilts Washington DC a day ago

An expected choice for science adviser of the US Environmental Protection Agency believes the air is too clean – another indication that Donald Trump’s head of the EPA appears to be stacking the group in charge of trying to protect the environment with climate sceptics. 

Robert Phalen, who currently directs the Air Pollution Health Effects Laboratory at the University of California Irvine, has research that would support the deregulation of policies aimed at preventing air pollution. 

“The relative risks associated with modern [particulate matter] are very small and confounded by many factors,” Mr Phalen wrote in a 2004 study. “Neither toxicology studies nor human clinical investigations have identified the components and/or characteristics of [particulate matter] that might be causing the health-effect associations.”

Mr Phalen has asserted that air is currently too clean, because children’s lungs need to breathe irritants so their bodies can learn how to fight them. “Modern air,” he said in 2012, “is a little too clean for optimum health.”

Since becoming EPA administrator earlier this year, Scott Pruitt has been consistently lambasted by Democrats, scientists and environmental groups for several actions he has taken as head of an agency that has been tasked with protecting human health and the environment by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress. 

Critics of Mr Pruitt have said the former attorney general of Oklahoma is creating an EPA that is more industry-friendly and could be susceptible to being controlled by the businesses it is supposed to be regulating. 

Another controversial move that Mr Pruitt is expected to make is the appointment of Michael Honeycutt, the top toxicologist at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, to chair the EPA’s Scientific Advisory Board. 

Mr Honeycutt has argued with the agency over ozone standards. He also co-authored a study published in an air and waste management magazine which asserted that the health benefits associated with having more stringent air quality standards are overblown. 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-environment-adviser-air-too-clean-pollution-good-health-pruitt-phalen-a8033881.html