Contact: Sasha Tenenbaum, 917.887.0146, stenenbaum@momscleanairforce.org
WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Moms Clean Air Force released the following statement in response to news that Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Andrew Wheeler has proposed to retain the current, outdated standards for ground-level ozone, or smog, ignoring science and sidelining children’s health.
Statement from Dominique Browning, Co-founder and Senior Director of Moms Clean Air Force:
“I must speak out today to condemn EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler’s refusal to strengthen national standards for smog, which triggers asthma attacks and interferes with normal lung development. What EPA has been doing under cover of COVID and before we were in a pandemic is relentlessly attacking and undermining bedrock pollution protections that are essential to our nation’s public health. All of this activity can leave us numb. But there is a grave danger in normalizing Wheeler’s actions. What he is doing is unprecedented, and we cannot accept it.
“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Trump’s EPA is literally making us sick. It is abundantly clear that smog is harmful to breathe, even at levels below the national standards. Our more than one million members are denouncing this proposal as an attack on our health, and specifically the health of the millions of children who suffer from asthma,” said Dominique Browning, Co-Founder and Senior Director of Moms Clean Air Force.
“It is beyond time that we call out the racist agenda of Trump’s EPA. The agency charged with protecting human health and the environment is actively pursuing policies that increase air pollution especially in Black and low-income communities. The coronavirus pandemic has thrown into stark relief the grim inequities that so many have already been living: we are a country that has accepted the existence of sacrifice zones, places where Black communities experience health disparities because of air, water, and chemical pollution. As mothers, we must fight this unjust status quo.
“Let’s be clear: We are in the grips of a deadly respiratory pandemic that can ravage the lungs. We know that breathing smog increases the lungs’ susceptibility to infection. Parents understand that this is the time to strengthen national standards for ground-level ozone. We are deeply troubled that Trump’s EPA is sacrificing our families’ health to pander to polluting industries. Moms are ready to fight this proposal.
“Even as America is struggling to respond to the global coronavirus pandemic, with millions facing critical healthcare shortages and massive unemployment, the Trump administration isn’t stopping in its relentless campaign to undermine life-saving pollution protections. With his proposal to retain the current, outdated national standards for smog, along with an offensively curtailed public comment period, Administrator Wheeler has once again done the unthinkable: he has prioritized polluters’ profits over our families’ health.”
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