Washington (CNN) The Environmental Protection Agency is planning to use a different method to estimate the "future health risks of air pollution" in an analysis of a proposed new rule, The New York Times reported Monday.

Citing conversations with a handful of people familiar with the plans, the Times said the EPA's new technique could change a 2018 estimate by the Trump administration that said there could be 1,400 premature deaths each year due to a new agency rule on pollution from coal plants.

The agency's proposed rule, called the Affordable Clean Energy rule, would roll back Obama-era regulations on coal-fueled power plants. It would allow states to set their own emissions standards for carbon dioxide from power plants, instead of imposing a national standard.

The different method for evaluating health impacts, according to the paper, is notable "because it discards more than a decade of peer-reviewed EPA methods and relies on unfounded medical assumptions."

"No change to this scientific method will be made unless and until the new approach has been peer reviewed," EPA spokesman James Hewitt said in a statement to CNN.

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