By: Rachel Meyer, Ohio River Valley Field Organizer, Moms Clean Air Force
Date: August 21, 2025
About: Environmental Protection Agency Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0194
To: Environmental Protection Agency
My name is Rachel Meyer, and I am the Ohio River Valley Field Organizer for Moms Clean Air Force. I am from Independence Township, Beaver County, in rural southwestern Pennsylvania. Every year, as more unprecedented wildfires, flooding storms, and dangerous heat waves impact communities across the country, the vital importance of the Clean Air Act’s protections becomes increasingly apparent. The Endangerment Finding must be upheld to protect health and public welfare now and to prevent further-reaching negative impacts on our children’s future. In addition, it’s critical that EPA continue to uphold health-protecting limits on tailpipe pollution for motor vehicles.
Climate change is one of the biggest concerns I have for my five-year-old daughter. I see the petrochemical infrastructure, including fracking operations and an ethane cracker plant, near my family’s home and know this all contributes a heavy load of climate-warming pollution, including methane. Polling has found that more than two-thirds of voters in battleground and key oil-and-gas-producing states support stronger standards on methane pollution. The need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is apparent everywhere.
I see consequences of climate change in the growing tick populations; they were never a problem when I was a child. In 2017, I contracted Lyme disease. I missed about two weeks of teaching in my second-grade classroom and had ongoing symptoms for months. Ticks are a harbinger of more diseases to come with increased warming as areas previously too cold for disease vectors become able to support them.
I suffer from asthma. It is triggered by ground-level ozone, also known as smog. The Shell petrochemical facility located near me, along with annually emitting two million tons of carbon dioxide, regularly exceeds its pollution limits for VOCs and NOx. These pollutants combined with warming from climate change, create the perfect conditions for elevated smog levels. For me and the almost 17,000 other asthma sufferers in my county, this means more days gasping for air.
Two years ago, climate change had a drastic impact on our air quality in a way I had never experienced—wildfire smoke. Greenhouse gases are making much of our planet hotter, which contributes to the severity and duration of many wildfires. Just this week large areas of the country are breathing wildfire smoke again. There is no escaping the reality of climate change.
Climate change is also an issue of generational justice. Today’s children will live through at least 3 times as many climate disasters as their grandparents. Our children deserve a healthy and livable future. We cannot afford to go backward. The Endangerment Finding and limits on tailpipe pollution from motor vehicles must be upheld, and EPA must continue to provide crucial protections from climate change.