While families across the country endured global-warming-fueled record-breaking heat waves, deadly flooding, and dangerous wildfire smoke, the Trump-Zeldin EPA’s attacks on public health and environmental protections nevertheless continued unabated this summer. Read on for a summary of some of EPA’s most corrupt and harmful decisions from the last three months, each one a shocking step backward for clean air and climate stability.
Tell Congress: Hold Zeldin Accountable for Corrupting EPA’s Mission
- Weakening protections from heavy-duty truck exhaust. In July, EPA released a proposal to weaken tailpipe pollution standards for new heavy-duty diesel vehicles, like school buses and many kinds of delivery trucks. The inevitable result? More toxic exhaust that can cause asthma attacks, heart attacks, strokes, and preventable premature deaths. That’s why 14 Moms spoke out against this proposal at a public hearing in July and thousands more submitted written comments.
- Eroding protections for new pollution sources. Also in July, EPA proposed changes to the New Source Review (NSR) program that could allow polluters to get permits for new so-called “minor” pollution sources without even notifying local communities. This proposed rule would take away one of the only opportunities communities have to learn about polluters like data centers and petrochemical facilities before they are built and to ask important questions about how those facilities will affect the air our families breathe. Thirteen Moms testified against the proposed changes in a public hearing and nearly 7,000 more submitted written comments.
- Stacking the deck against chemical safety. Individuals who work for corporate interests, including Tesla and petrochemical giant Lyondell Chemical, now make up the majority of the Trump-Zeldin EPA’s panel of outside chemical advisers—a group of experts who are supposed to offer unbiased advice on chemical risk evaluations. The appointments are yet another example of this EPA’s insistence on compromising scientific independence and putting polluters’ interests over people’s health and safety.
- Scrubbing cancer risk estimates from national air pollution data. EPA has shared public-facing data on the cancer risks of air pollution for nearly two decades. Until now. In August, the agency did not include cancer risk in its latest air pollution data update, making it much more difficult for communities to access the public health information they need to call for better protections.
Tell Congress: Hold Zeldin Accountable for Corrupting EPA’s Mission