A cruel and unprecedented rollback of Clean Air Act protections
On May 1, 2025, 52 Senators voted to allow the nation’s most toxic polluters to permanently turn off their pollution controls and release into the air unlimited amounts of chemicals that cause cancer, birth defects, and brain damage. Now the resolution heads to the House of Representatives for a vote.
If the House also passes this Congressional Review Act resolution, it would remove control requirements from some of the nation’s worst polluters: chemical plants, refineries, and pesticide manufacturers, to name a few. These facilities are found in communities throughout the country.
Learn the answers to these questions:
What EPA rule are these CRA resolutions trying to roll back?
In 2024, EPA issued a rule to re-affirm that refineries, chemical plants, and other large emitters of the most dangerous pollutants must follow strict pollution control standards (known as Maximum Achievable Control Technology standards). The EPA rule is the Reclassification of Major Sources as Area Sources Rule.
The Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolutions would invalidate this rule. They would allow heavily polluting facilities to stop controlling the seven most hazardous air pollutants forevermore.
The CRA resolutions would enable facilities that spew these seven super-toxics to “reclassify” from “Major Sources” to “Area Sources.” Then, as “Area Sources,” most of these facilities would no longer have to comply with pollution controls, monitoring, and reporting requirements.
It is critical that Congress vote NO on this dangerous rollback.
What impact would these CRA resolutions have?
This cruel rollback would have devastating impacts on children and their families. It would eliminate the safeguards that have been in place for decades, and it would return us to a time when the Clean Air Act did not exist and industrial giants could emit the most toxic air pollutants without limits or accountability. These are pollutants that cause cancer, birth defects, and brain damage.
Industrial polluters want to rewrite the Clean Air Act to strip away decades-old protections against the most toxic air pollutants in existence. Never in the 55-year history of the Clean Air Act has any Congress rolled back the act’s protections.
We are urging Congress to preserve the Clean Air Act’s protections against toxic air pollution by voting NO on this rollback.
How has the Clean Air Act protected people from hazardous air pollutants?
The Clean Air Act lists 187 pollutants as “hazardous” because of their potential to cause cancer, birth defects, and other devastating health harms. These include heavy metals like arsenic, chromium, lead, and mercury; toxic organic chemicals like dioxins, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and formaldehyde; and acids that have been used as chemical weapons, like chlorine gas.
The Clean Air Act requires all “Major Sources”—any facility with the potential to release more than 10 tons per year of any single hazardous air pollutant or 25 tons of combined hazardous air pollutants—to follow rules known as Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) standards. MACT standards require polluters to reduce the amount of each hazardous air pollutant they emit by the “maximum” degree “achievable,” comply with permitting rules and monitoring requirements, and make their toxic releases and compliance data public.
For the seven most dangerous of the 187 listed hazardous air pollutants, the Clean Air Act requires stricter limits. These seven pollutants—mercury, alkylated lead, dioxins, furans, PCBs, polycyclic organic matter (POM), and hexachlorobenzene—are toxic in fractions of a gram. Even minute quantities can trigger cancers, reproductive pathologies, and other harms. Therefore, sources emitting these seven pollutants must meet strict MACT standards whether they are released in tens of tons (“Major Sources”) or not.
The CRA resolutions would enable facilities that spew these seven super-toxics to “reclassify” from “Major Sources” to “Area Sources” and would no longer have to comply with pollution controls, monitoring, and reporting requirements. This is why the CRA rollback would be so dangerous.
What can we do about these dangerous CRA resolutions?
Join Moms Clean Air Force in urging all U.S. Senators and Representatives to vote NO on S.J. Res. 31/H.J. Res. 79, which attempt to rollback EPA’s fixes to the Reclassification of Major Sources as Area Sources Rule.
Allowing huge sources of hazardous air pollutants to dodge control requirements just by reclassifying themselves as “Area Sources” is cynical, dangerous, and deeply irresponsible. People desperately need the Clean Air Act’s protections against the cancers, birth defects, and other serious harms that result from toxic pollution.
No Congress has ever stripped away protections against toxic air pollution—let alone on the scale of these Congressional Review Act resolutions.
We need to protect the health of children and families from the most potent carcinogens known to humankind. We urge Congress to prevent this cruel and unprecedented rollback of Clean Air Act protections.
Released: March 2025