The Environmental Industries Commission (EIC) has launched a campaign to counter what it calls the 'environmental deregulationists', claiming that scaremongering by polluting industries on the costs o

The EIC is urging government to ensure evidence-based policy making (in the UK and Brussels) by challenging the 'exaggerated' cost claims of industry and paying full attention to the range of economic benefits created by progressive environmental policies.

The Commission says that policy makers regularly overlook the positive economic benefits of environmental protection to the health service, occupational health, innovation in mainstream industry and to affected industries such as tourism, insurance and the environmental technology industry.

DEFRA recently published an independent study into the National Air Quality Strategy, which concluded that the original cost calculations were up to seven times greater than the actual costs.