The Trump administration continues to use the coronavirus crisis as an excuse to sneak environmental rollbacks past the country. We will not stand for it.
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Proposed to distort and downplay benefits of clean air protections – June 11, 2020
The bottom line: The administration is trying to make it harder to justify clean air protections by distorting and ignoring their benefits.
The administration has proposed sweeping new requirements that threaten to distort how EPA assesses the benefits and costs of vital climate, clean air and public health protections – from health-based air quality standards to emission standards for toxic air pollutants like mercury. Administrator Wheeler has told the press that the proposal is intended to allow EPA to ignore the full benefits of clean air safeguards, such as lives saved from reductions in soot that result from controlling other harmful pollutants.
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Attacked fundamental environmental protections - June 4, 2020
The bottom line: The Trump administration uses the COVID-19 crisis to attack vital environmental protections that have stood for decades.
President Trump signed an executive order directing agencies to look for ways to waive compliance with long-standing environmental laws like the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. This order could allow major industrial projects like pipelines to be fast-tracked during the COVID-19 crisis, without public input or consideration of health and environmental impacts.
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Undermined safeguards against mercury and other toxic pollution - April 16, 2020
The bottom line: The administration is threatening the mercury and air toxics standards that protect our health.
Mercury causes brain damage in babies and young children. Other pollutants covered by the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards cause cancer and lung diseases. EPA’s analysis shows the standards save up to 11,000 lives each year.
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Refused to protect Americans from soot - April 14, 2020
The bottom line: The administration is dragging its feet on soot, which is linked to premature death and causes a variety of heart and lung diseases, including the underlying conditions that make some people more vulnerable to COVID-19.
The administration has proposed keeping outdated national protections against particulate matter pollution – commonly called soot – despite a mountain of scientific evidence showing that our current standard, set nearly a decade ago, is not adequate to protect public health.
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Weakened auto emissions standards - March 31, 2020
The bottom line: By lowering automobile fuel efficiency standards, the administration is potentially causing thousands more premature deaths while also costing families more money and jeopardizing American jobs.
The administration’s rollback of the successful Clean Car Standards will add more dangerous pollution to our air.
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Relaxed environmental enforcement and monitoring - March 26, 2020
The bottom line: Industrial companies likely will not be penalized for failing to comply with pollution protections due to the pandemic.
The Trump administration announced an expansive waiver of environmental enforcement — including pollution monitoring programs — allowing power plants, factories and other industrial operations to determine for themselves if they can meet legal requirements for protecting the public from air and water pollution.
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Expanded proposal to censor science - March 18, 2020
The bottom line: The administration’s proposal would cast aside thousands of widely accepted studies that support limits on toxic chemicals and pollution, undermining safeguards for our families and letting polluters off the hook.
The EPA is trying to rush through an expanded proposal to censor the science that guides public health and environmental protections — ignoring well-established procedures for vetting scientific research. Even vital coronavirus and cancer research could be disregarded by the agency.
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Rushed, flawed review of toxic chemical - February 21, 2020
The bottom line: The EPA rushed ahead with its peer review of trichloroethylene despite key public health experts being absent due to the crisis.
The EPA issued a draft risk evaluation for the highly toxic chemical, trichloroethylene, also known as TCE. Major scientific flaws let the agency knowingly and drastically underestimate the risk this chemical poses to pregnant women and children.