“What’s in the Air” is a column by Dominique Browning, Moms Clean Air Force Co-Founder and Director, in which she explores life today through the lens of air quality and public health.
Many things break my heart about what this reckless EPA is doing to our country. The corruption of its mission—to protect human health AND the environment—is unprecedented.
Let’s start with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s admission that the burden of climate and air pollution on people’s health doesn’t even figure into his calculations when he’s rolling back protections. Instead, he’s working with the Trump administration to prop up the heavily subsidized, dirty coal, oil, gas, and petrochemical industries—all already making record profits.
Tell the Trump Administration: Don't Bail Out Coal. Protect Our Children's Health!
Fifteen years ago, when I was just getting Moms Clean Air Force off the ground, we took on an EPA that couldn’t get to an agreement to seriously cut the air pollution from coal-fired power plants that was contaminating our lakes and rivers, getting into the food we eat (fish and rice), migrating into pregnant women’s bodies, and damaging the brains of developing babies.
Mercury poisoning. Mercury comes from coal power plants. And scientists are in agreement: no amount is safe for the developing brains of babies and toddlers.
We got together a coalition of concerned people to join the fight—mostly by explaining what a coal plant had to do with pregnancy. I remember being told not to eat fatty fish when I was pregnant (wow! decades ago now!). But no one ever explained how mercury in fish and coal plants were connected. Or that mercury contamination was entirely preventable.
Together, we succeeded in securing health-protecting limits on coal pollution. And over the years, we got those protections strengthened. Remember: NO AMOUNT OF MERCURY IS SAFE.
But Zeldin directed EPA to roll back a version of mercury protections that was recently strengthened for the first time in over a decade, propping up an industry and helping to delay retirement of coal plants that would otherwise have been shuttered.
There is absolutely no reason to get dirty, aging, expensive coal plants running again, raising costs, polluting communities, and driving up serious illness. But that’s what the Trump administration is determined to do. Just yesterday, they issued another emergency order to keep an outdated expensive coal plant running in Michigan.
We have the force of love on our side, love for our children—a sustainable, renewable energy source that will keep us fighting for the healthy air our kids and communities deserve.
Tell the Trump Administration: Don't Bail Out Coal. Protect Our Children's Health!