By: Elizabeth Brandt, National Field Manager, Moms Clean Air Force
Date: February 24, 2022
About: Mercury and Air Toxics Standards for Power Plants: Proposed Reaffirmation of the Appropriate and Necessary Finding, Docket ID No. EPA–HQ–OAR–2018–0794
To: Environmental Protection Agency
Hello, and thank you so much for listening to my testimony today. My name is Elizabeth Brandt. I am a social worker and a National Field Manager for Moms Clean Air Force. Moms Clean Air Force is an organization of more than one million parents across America who are taking action against air pollution and climate change.
Our members have fought to protect our children from mercury pollution from power plants for a decade. We advocated for the Mercury Air Toxics Standards, and we stood up to the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine them. We’ve made great progress in fighting mercury pollution in the US—MATS have slashed mercury pollution by more than 80% in a decade—but with many thousands of pounds of mercury still being pumped into the air by coal-fired power plants, we are far from done fighting mercury pollution.
I support this administration’s proposal to reinstate the appropriate and necessary finding of the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards. EPA’s proposal to reinstate the legal foundation of the standards that limit mercury and other toxic, carcinogenic pollution from coal-fired power plants is a public health necessity. As a parent, I urge you to finalize this proposal and swiftly move forward with strengthening the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards to help protect families from the pollution that can cause cancer, lung disease, brain damage in children, and other serious health harms.
Mercury is a dangerous heavy metal that harms the developing brains of babies and children. Hundreds of thousands of newborns born in the US each year are at risk of learning disabilities and loss of IQ due to prenatal exposure to mercury. As a social worker for the State of Washington, I supported families of children with intellectual disabilities for many years. It is difficult for a child and family to thrive while coping with the stigma, daily life challenges, and expense of supporting a member with an intellectual disability. Preventing learning and intellectual disabilities is a worthy investment!
Moms is proud to be an associate member of the National Tribal Air Association, and we have worked with NTAA to create a joint resource on the disproportionate impact of climate change and air pollution. Tribes participating in NTAA have let us know they are particularly concerned about the disproportionate impact of mercury pollution on Indigenous children and families. 1 in 10 babies born along the shores of Lake Superior in Northern Minnesota have elevated mercury levels at birth. The disproportionate impact of mercury pollution on people who traditionally rely on fish and marine mammals for food are unfair and need to be strongly considered in any analysis of whether or not any mercury-related policy provides adequate health protections.
Pregnant moms ingest it mostly via the fish they eat. Pregnant women are advised by doctors to limit consumption of certain fish in pregnancy. We think this is fundamentally unfair to place the burden of this pollution on moms; we must stop this preventable pollution at the source.
Being with you today brings me back to my own childhood in the north end of Tacoma, Washington. There was a wall of pictures in my grade school that displayed kids who died of cancer in our neighborhood in the 1970s. See, I grew up close to the Asarco copper smelter site, which turned into the Asarco Superfund site. The smelter’s gone, but its legacy continues, all these years later. My sister’s adult cancer diagnosis could be related to our exposure to arsenic and other chemicals from the smelter. I undergo extra cancer screening myself. For my family and many others, the legacy of loose regulation of toxic emissions from industry is deeply personal.
We demand the EPA live up to its mission to “protect human health and the environment” and think about the heavy burden, financial and otherwise, of caring for sick people as you consider the regulated industry’s concerns about the cost of preventing toxic pollution.
I support the proposal to reinstate the appropriate and necessary finding of MATS. Furthermore, it is time to move forward with strengthening the substantive protections in the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards so that brain damage in children, as well as pollutants that cause cancer, lung disease, and other serious health harms, are no longer a threat to our families’ health and well-being. Thank you for the opportunity to testify.