Public health experts and environmentalists expressed alarm Thursday at the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) recently announced cuts in enforcement of clean air and clean water rules.
“The Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act are fundamental to making sure that the water is safe to drink, the air is safe to breathe, and our food is safe to eat,” Georges Benjamin, MD, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said at an online event hosted by the Climate Action Campaign. “I remind us all that what goes in the air does not stay in the air. It goes into our water, it goes into our food sources, and then ultimately goes into our bodies, where it can cause enormous damage. So we at the American Public Health Association oppose [EPA] Administrator [Lee] Zeldin’s decision to roll back what we believe are really critical regulations at the Environmental Protection Agency, which quite frankly are meant to protect the public’s health from the dangerous and deadly effects of pollution.”
On March 12, the EPA announced that it would undertake 31 actions as part of the “greatest and most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history,” in order to “power the Great American Comeback.” Those actions included a rollback, or “reconsideration,” of:
- Regulations on power plants
- Regulations “throttling the oil and gas industry”
- A mandatory Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program “that imposed significant costs on the American energy supply”
- Wastewater regulations for oil and gas development
- National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants for American energy and manufacturing sectors
The EPA also said it will be “restructuring the Regional Haze Program that threatened the supply of affordable energy for American families” and revising a calculation known as the “social cost of carbon,” a measure used by the Obama and Biden administrations to assess the harm to the economy caused by 1 ton of carbon dioxide pollution. In addition, the EPA said it would be decreasing enforcement of environmental rules in order to adhere to “EPA’s core mission to relieve the economy of unnecessary bureaucratic burdens that drive up costs for American consumers.”
“We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more,” Zeldin said in a press release. “Alongside President Trump, we are living up to our promises to unleash American energy, lower costs for Americans, revitalize the American auto industry, and work hand-in-hand with our state partners to advance our shared mission.”
This list of rule rollbacks can more accurately be called a “hit list,” said Joe Goffman, JD, former assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, who also spoke at Thursday’s event. “But let’s be clear about the targets on that hit list,” he said. “They’re not science; they’re not law; they’re not regulations. They are the actual human beings who live in this country. What these regulations do is provide in the real world … a comprehensive system of public health protection that none of us can achieve individually.”
One particularly important EPA standard that was finalized in February 2024, according to Goffman, was that for fine particulate matter air pollutants measuring 2.5 micrometers or less (PM2.5). The EPA set an annual average standard of 9 µg/m3 for that pollutant.
“If you had just one pollutant you could target to protect public health, in my view, it would be PM,” he said. “PM is the most devastating pollutant that affects public health … What the PM standard did was distill hundreds of peer-reviewed studies that really gave a vivid picture of how important it is to continue to reduce fine particle pollution to guarantee not only the avoidance of premature death, but really prevent people from getting sicker than they otherwise would.”
Fine particulates impact people with chronic conditions like asthma and heart conditions, those who are susceptible to cancer, old and young alike, Goffman added. “The car rules, the truck rules, the power plant rules, the oil and gas rules also bring down PM, and so essentially, what we saw in this so-called hit list was the targeting, not just regulations that happened to be promulgated by earlier administrations, but really targeting people themselves and all of our public health.”
David Doniger, senior strategic director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that what worries him “is the destruction of the institution — the EPA — which is charged with carrying out these laws, and which the American people depend upon to hold polluters to account.” He mentioned the news stories suggesting that the administration may strip the agency of its science and research arm.
“How can you tackle … any pollutant if you strip the agency of scientists?” he asked, adding that he has also heard that Zeldin is considering a steep reduction in the EPA’s funding. “It takes only a little while to bomb a city into rubble, but it takes decades to rebuild it … If we can’t stop this, we would be in very deep trouble, especially because climate change is accelerating and the window of time to minimize the damage is rapidly closing.”
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