By: Maria Finnegan, National Field Manager, Moms Clean Air Force
Date: July 10, 2025
About: Environmental Protection Agency Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2018-0794-6978
To: Environmental Protection Agency
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Maria Finnegan, and I live in the rural town of Dublin, New Hampshire. I’m a National Manager for Moms Clean Air Force, and most importantly, I’m the mother of a four-year-old boy.
I’m here to speak out strongly against EPA’s proposal to repeal recent updates to the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, also known as MATS. I am deeply concerned about what loosening these protections would mean for our children’s health, especially the most vulnerable among us: babies in the womb, young children, and those living near pollution sources.
There is no safe level of mercury exposure. Mercury is a potent neurotoxin, and it is especially dangerous during pregnancy and early childhood. When a pregnant woman is exposed to mercury, it can cross both the placental and blood-brain barriers, damaging the developing brain tissue of her baby. This damage can lead to a lifetime of challenges—learning disabilities, behavioral issues, and impaired motor skills. We are talking about permanent, irreversible harm to a child’s ability to think, learn, and thrive.
While MATS has significantly reduced mercury pollution from coal plants over the past decade, more was needed to fully protect public health. Last year, the EPA strengthened MATS, targeting mercury from dirty lignite coal plants, tightening limits on other hazardous pollutants like arsenic, lead, and chromium, and requiring continuous emissions monitoring to hold plants accountable.
Pollution emitted from coal plants harms real children in real communities—communities where families fish in local waters, where kids play near power plants, and where moms, like me, try to protect their children from dangers they can’t always see. It’s deeply concerning to me that the Merrimack Coal Plant in New Hampshire has already received a presidential compliance exemption for MATS, putting children and families in my state at immediate danger.
Among the key benefits of the strengthened version of MATS is an anticipated reduction in children’s exposure to fine particle pollution and ozone—pollutants that are linked to pediatric asthma, premature birth, and low birth weight. Children living in polluted areas are more likely to miss school due to asthma attacks and are more likely to end up in the emergency room struggling to breathe. These are not just quality-of-life issues, they are life-and-death issues.
Power plants have already complied with these regulations. The technology exists. The industry has already invested in pollution control. Weakening these rules now would simply allow polluters to cut corners at the expense of our children’s futures.
As a mother, I find that unacceptable. We all have a basic responsibility to leave our children a world that is safer than the one we inherited. But if we choose to allow more mercury and toxic pollution into our air, we are doing the opposite—we are choosing to burden the next generation with more illness, more learning challenges, and fewer opportunities.
I urge you to uphold the strengthened version of the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, not just because the law demands it, but because morality does. Protecting our children from harmful pollution isn’t optional. It’s your duty. And it’s our right. Thank you.