By: Dorothy Brandt, Washington DC Supermom, Moms Clean Air Force
Date: August 26, 2021
About: Environmental Protection Agency Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2021-0208
To: Environmental Protection Agency
Hello, and thank you so much for listening to my testimony today. My name is Dorothy Brandt, I am a retired Catholic school principal and a volunteer with Moms Clean Air Force. I live in Washington DC. I call on the EPA to strengthen clean car standards. One of my daughters has asthma, and I insist that our government protect her health and the health of all Americans. No one should struggle to breathe due to preventable car pollution.
My own life experiences have shown me the need for environmental regulation to protect our health. I grew up in Los Angeles and lived with its worst air quality. As a small child, I lived in East LA and Compton, in the polluted core of the city. My nose ran constantly in reaction to the smog in our neighborhood. A survey of LA residents in 1956 found that half of county residents wanted to leave LA because of smog, and people overwhelmingly felt that the smog was bad for their health. In mid 1950s, my family moved farther out to a beach area where we could all breathe much better. As a small kid, we had no car but were able to travel across LA on the Red line, an early rail transit system. Even with fewer cars in LA, we still had terrible smog from industries and trucks.
As a college student in the 1960s, I had to drive into downtown LA to use the municipal library. The smog was so thick that it made driving unsafe. I wore sunglasses to try to peer through the smog. At this point, LA and the state of California were making efforts to curb smog pollution, but it was not enough to protect our health. As a teacher in the late 1960s, I had students whose families had to relocate to the ocean area to help their children breathe. I began to have more asthmatic students to watch out for in the classroom. In 1969, my husband and I moved to Seattle, Washington, where, for the first time in my life at age 24, I could breathe easy.
I tell you my story so you will understand the personal experiences of people living with poor quality air. Do not forget this past. We all know pollution from cars causes breathing problems. California air is so much better today than it was in the past because the government recognized the auto emissions problem and worked to improve clean air. California is still leading the way to limit dangerous auto emissions, but federal leadership is needed. Please help us by minimizing dangerous greenhouse gas emissions for passenger cars and light trucks for Model Years 2023-2026. This is a necessary, but short-term, first step in addressing climate pollution from the transportation sector.
If we do, our future could be much brighter with cleaner air to breathe. To my knowledge, smog pollution is getting worse in America. This is because of climate change and auto emissions. We are already experiencing rising temperatures and more intense heat waves because of climate change; high heat creates the perfect conditions for ozone to form. As climate change continues to erode the progress we've made on cleaning up air pollution, we need strong standards that follow the science and protect our health. Please hear my urgent plea to create the strongest possible federal clean car standards to protect the thousands of Americans who are harmed by climate change and breathing polluted air.
As a mom, grandmother, teacher, and principal, I highly recommend that the EPA work to strengthen these standards to ensure that our most precious national treasure, our children, are given the best air we can give them. As adults and parents, this is our responsibility. Our country’s future depends on it, and as a Roman Catholic, my sense of morality dictates it. I urge the EPA leadership to fight to protect the life and health of each American child.