The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued its long-awaited draft regulations on carbon emissions from U.S. power plants, which would require a 30 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from 2005 levels by 2030. Just days before Monday’s announcement, scientists from Harvard and Syracuse universities released a study highlighting the potential health benefits of such changes.

While the federal regulations, to be finalized next year, are aimed at reducing the emission of globe-warming carbon dioxide, since they would decrease pollutants from power plant smokestacks, there is a significant ancillary benefit for human health.

Studies have indicated that air pollutants like sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury, and fine particulate matter that penetrate deeply into the lungs not only harm people with pulmonary conditions such as asthma, they also affect the cardiovascular system and can lead to thousands of premature deaths, along with thousands of days lost from work and school because of illness.

The Harvard Gazette spoke about the EPA’s rule with Kathy Fallon Lambert, director of the science and policy integration project at the Harvard Forest, and Jonathan Buonocore, a research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), who authored the health-benefits study along with Charles Driscoll of Syracuse University.