Take action: Current opportunities

It shouldn’t be our responsibility to know what and how many chemicals we eat every day. We should be able to trust that the Food and Drug Administration is ensuring that what we put in our bodies is safe. But the agency is shirking its duty.

An EDF investigation of nearly 900 safety determinations — submitted by companies making new additives — found that only one followed through on a legal requirement to consider the cumulative health effects of related chemicals, and FDA didn’t raise objections with this major shortcoming.

Will you join us in demanding the FDA ensure food chemicals do not harm our health? Add your name today!

We want safe and sustainable products.

According to a recent survey of American shoppers, nearly 2 out of every 3 expect companies to explain the environmental impact of their products — and nearly 4 out of 5 believe companies should be doing more to help them make decisions that support sustainability.

But as we increasingly shift to a digital world, we’re not getting the information we need. Finding legitimate environmental and ingredient safety data — or any data, for that matter — online is a monumental challenge. And often, the information that is provided is complicated and hard to verify.

We deserve — and demand — transparency about the environmental and health impacts of the products we’re bringing in to our homes.

More than 2 out of every 5 Americans live in areas where ground-level ozone pollution – commonly known as  smog – makes the air unhealthy to breathe.

Ozone pollution irritates our airways, causing a burning sensation, coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath, and exacerbating conditions like asthma. Ultimately, it’s linked to serious heart and lung conditions – and premature death.

But as America struggles to contain a respiratory pandemic, and as heat waves put us at risk, the Trump administration is declining to protect us.

Over the last three years, EPA reversed course on protecting Americans from known cancer-causing chemicals. The agency adopted an illegal practice of ignoring exposure to dangerous chemicals from the ground, air, or water when evaluating their health and safety risks. EPA abandoned its duty to ensure workers are protected from chemical risks.

Now, the former chemical industry exec behind these decisions – who consistently throws Americans’ health and safety under the bus – could gain day-to-day control of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is charged with ensuring the safety of baby cribs, children’s clothes and toys, cleaning products and much more.

It’s one of the most widespread air pollutants — particulate pollution, also known as soot. It spews from America’s power plants, cars and trucks, factories, and more. Tiny particles infiltrate our lungs, causing heart and lung diseases (which we know make COVID-19 more deadly).

There is clear and consistent evidence that particulate pollution leads to more hospital admissions, more emergency room visits, and early death — from lung disease, heart attacks, strokes, asthma, and cancer.

But when EPA Administrator — and former coal lobbyist — Andrew Wheeler had the chance to protect us, he chose to ignore EPA’s own scientists instead of acting to protect public health.

More than 4 out of 5 congressional staffers say personalized emails are the best way to make sure your message breaks through, and gets attention while they're working remotely. 

But it can be daunting to write your own message to Congress – so we made it simple. We’ll ask you 3 easy questions, and use your answers to create your own personalized message – which you’ll get a chance to review before sending it off to them.

Use this simple tool to easily explain to Congress why, as they invest in our future, you want them to build a safer, cleaner, healthier one for 100% of us.

Our world is changing rapidly in the face of a crisis.

As Congress makes investments in our future, they must build a better one – where less pollution is pumped into our air, everyone’s water is clean and safe to drink, and all communities are equally protected from the dangers of environmental degradation.

We've set a goal of sending Congress 100,000 messages calling on them to rebuild better. Add your name, and let's make sure Congress knows what Americans expect of them.

When EPA – in the middle of an unprecedented pandemic that has made the importance of science abundantly clear – attempted to gut the critical science that guides our public health protections, you spoke out. 

EDF supporters flooded EPA with nearly 15,000 messages demanding they halt this attack until the public health professionals who needed to weigh in were done dealing with the current crisis.

And the Trump administration yielded – sort of. They extended the comment period by one more month, giving experts and others until May 18th to weigh in. 

The problem? The COVID-19 crisis hadn't been resolved, and the public – including doctors and scientists currently dedicated to the pandemic – still need more time.

Kevin Hartley was only 21 years old when tragically he passed away after being overcome by chemical fumes while refinishing a bathtub on the job in Nashville, Tennessee. The cause of his death was acute exposure to methylene chloride — a highly toxic chemical that can be lethal and has been linked to dozens of deaths across the country for decades.

Unfortunately, after a two-year delay, the Trump administration finalized a ban on methylene chloride paint strippers that is significantly weaker than the one originally proposed.

While protecting consumers, it excludes all commercial uses, despite the fact that the great majority of reported deaths from these products have involved workers. Instead of banning commercial uses outright, the EPA is merely starting a process to gather input on what a possible future worker certification and training program might look like — delaying any real action for years.

Trichloroethylene — or TCE — is a known human carcinogen as well as toxic to our immune system, kidneys, and brain. It’s a frequent contaminant of soil and ground water found at Superfund sites and is commonly detected in our air.

Yet the Trump Administration is taking every opportunity to delay proposed bans on key uses of this toxic chemical while simultaneously ignoring many sources of exposure in an ongoing larger assessment of its risks.

It’s time for Congress to take action.