By: Elizabeth Bechard, Public Health Manager, Moms Clean Air Force
Date: July 10, 2025
About: Environmental Protection Agency Docket ID No. EPA–HQ–OAR–2018–0794
To: Environmental Protection Agency
Thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Elizabeth Bechard, and I am a Public Health Manager with Moms Clean Air Force. I live in Vermont with my husband and young twins. I am strongly opposed to EPA’s proposed repeal of recent updates to the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards and ask you to preserve these important public health protections.
When the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards were strengthened by the Biden EPA last year, one of the key updates was stronger protections against non-mercury hazardous air pollutants covered by MATS, including lead, cadmium, arsenic, nickel, and chromium. According to EPA’s own analysis, these strengthened protections would reduce children’s exposure to these dangerous pollutants emitted from coal-fired power plants, which have been linked to an alarming array of health harms, including cancer, adverse birth outcomes, and birth defects, such as neural tube defects and cleft lip and palate. Research is absolutely clear that children should not be exposed to these dangerous heavy metals.
Maternal exposure to chromium during pregnancy is linked with increased risk of craniofacial clefts. I don’t know whether my mother was exposed to chromium during her pregnancy with me in the 1980s, but I do know what it was like to be born with a cleft lip and palate, and the impact that a birth defect can have on a family and a life. I know from firsthand experience that birth defects can require years of painful surgeries that take a profound financial and psychological toll on entire families. I often wondered why I had been born with a birth defect, and if anything could have prevented it. When I was thinking about becoming a mother myself, I was worried about having a child who would have to go through what I went through. I worry now about mothers who live near coal plants, and the risks their children face.
Neither of my children were born with a cleft lip or palate, but they were both born prematurely and low birth weight, which is common for twins. Low birth weight is also associated with the kind of pollution that comes out of coal plants—like the heavy metals and particle pollution that the strengthened version of MATS would have better protected children against. (I say “would have,” because so many of the coal plants that would have had to comply with the strengthened protections have asked the White House for compliance exemptions while EPA reconsiders this rule.) Both of my children spent their first week of life in the NICU, and one of them continues to navigate ongoing health challenges that are associated with prematurity and low birth weight. Again, I worry about the families who live near coal plants, and the risks their children face.
I know that not every health challenge can be prevented. But I believe it is our moral responsibility to protect children and families from exposures that we know will harm them. We know that mercury and other hazardous pollution from coal plants harms children—no amount of mercury or chromium or lead is safe for babies’ and children’s developing bodies. And we know that we have the control technology available to better address this pollution, as was clearly demonstrated in the MATS rule finalized last year. Please do not repeal these updated protections—there is far too much at stake. Thank you.