The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to significantly limit the use of science in agency rulemaking around public health, The New York Times reports.

A draft of the proposed science transparency rule obtained by the Times instructs that scientists disclose all raw data involved in their studies before the agency would consider their conclusions. The new standards would also apply retroactively to existing regulations, and expands the original proposal to apply to all studies underpinning environmental protections. Many clean air, water and other public health rules are justified by studies using personal health data gathered under confidentiality agreements, so the datasets by law can never been made public. The proposal, which was originally conceived as a means to prevent regulations on second-hand smoking, "means the EPA can justify rolling back rules or failing to update rules based on the best information to protect public health and the environment, which means more dirty air and more premature deaths," Paul Billings of the American Lung Association told the Times.