4 ways the EPA may no longer be able to protect you
The Environmental Protection Agency's long-time mission has been to protect the environment — and people — from dangerous pollution.
But the Trump EPA has a new mission, according to Administrator Lee Zeldin: to “usher in a golden age of American success.” Instead of ensuring that his agency protects people from pollution, Zeldin has instituted mass layoffs and tried to undo dozens of vital EPA safeguards, calling them a “scam.”
Traci Donatto of Deer Park, Texas, says she wants to see more protection from the EPA, not less.
Donatto lives next door to several major petrochemical refineries and worries about their effect on her family’s health. “I can see ChemEx and Shell from my backyard,” she says. “When they flare at night, it lights up our whole street.”
Because a community group installed an air monitor in her yard, she knows she’s being exposed to cancer-causing benzene and ethylene oxide. “I know the pollution here puts us in danger, but this is where my family, my support system, lives,” she explains.
But after losing her father recently to a rare form of throat cancer and watching her 10-year-old son struggle with asthma, she is thinking of moving — especially as the Trump EPA continues its push to weaken and remove pollution safeguards.
"The Trump administration has made it super clear that it prioritizes short-term profits over people’s lives,” Donatto says.
Of the more than 30 regulatory rollbacks proposed by Trump's EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, here are four to watch. Two are now at the public comment stage, as required by law, which means you have an immediate opportunity to tell the EPA what you think of these proposed changes.
1. Clean car standards could disappear
Tailpipe pollution is harmful to your health. It’s linked to asthma, heart disease and cancer.
Yet the Trump administration has been trying to weaken vehicle emissions standards for several months, first going after California’s long-time authority to set its own standards to improve air quality in the state. Now, the administration is trying to roll back the EPA’s clean car and truck standards — falsely labeling them as an “EV mandate.”
“Rescinding EPA’s life-saving vehicle standards would be one of the most damaging actions the agency has ever taken,” said EDF attorney Andy Su. EDF researchers estimate that the loss of clean car and truck standards would lead to 12,000 more premature deaths.
When combined with the eight other clean air protections that Administrator Zeldin has proposed repealing, that number jumps to 184,000 deaths, plus 112 million asthma attacks and 40 million lost workdays and school absences.
In testimony before the EPA, Su also pointed out that cleaner vehicles save American families and businesses money — and that the EPA’s own analysis found that repealing these standards would increase costs for Americans, mostly by forcing them to buy more gas.
The proposed repeal would cause “trillions of dollars in health and climate harms,” Su says. “It’s at odds with EPA’s long-standing and solemn responsibility to protect public health.”
What you can do: The EPA is required to consider public input on all its proposals. These comments become part of the public record and can be used to help argue court cases. Click here to submit a comment on clean vehicle standards.
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2. Denying the link between pollution and climate change
The Trump administration released its most far-reaching proposal this summer: An effort to repeal the EPA’s Endangerment Finding.
What is the “Endangerment Finding”? Simply put, it affirms the EPA’s authority to protect the public from heat-trapping pollution, largely carbon dioxide and methane from burning fossil fuels, that is driving more dangerous heat waves, storms, flooding and wildfires.
EDF attorney Stephanie Jones testified against the move at an EPA hearing, calling it a “reckless act that has no basis in law, no basis in science” and an “attack on key protections for Americans.”
To justify its proposal, the Trump administration secretly convened a group of five climate deniers who produced a widely criticized report downplaying the risks of greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists, even those whose work was cited, say the report is full of cherry-picked data and outright errors.
On August 12, EDF and the Union of Concerned Scientists filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s use of this unlawfully convened group and its deeply flawed report. (Energy Secretary Chris Wright has since disbanded the group.)
“The administration tried to twist clear and undeniable facts,” Jones said. “But Americans know the truth: these disasters are devastating communities across the nation and costing lives.”
Further legal action is expected.
What you can do: Click here to submit written comments to the EPA regarding the Endangerment Finding until September 22.
3. No carbon pollution limits on power plants
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has also proposed repealing all standards that regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants that run on coal, oil and gas. When carbon pollution standards were issued in 2024, the EPA estimated they would result in a cumulative savings of $390 billion in prevented climate- and health-related costs.
Power plants burning fossil fuels are responsible for about a quarter of the heat-trapping pollution created by the U.S. If they were a country, they’d be the sixth largest emitter of planet-warming pollution.
EDF attorney Richard Yates says undoing carbon standards only serves to “expose Americans to more climate disruption and more pollution-driven death and disease.”
Public comment on this rule ended on August 7. The Trump administration is planning to release the final rule repealing the power plant carbon pollution standards in December.
4. More brain-damaging mercury pollution
Since taking office, President Trump has granted 71 coal-fired power plants “presidential exemptions” to dodge environmental rules.
The move allowed them to avoid complying with a 2024 update to the EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics standards, a safeguard that EPA Administrator Zeldin is now working to repeal. The EPA has proposed reverting to the outdated and flawed 2012 standards, which had a loophole that allowed power plants burning dirty lignite coal to emit three times more mercury than other plants.
Coal power plants are the largest source of toxic mercury pollution in the U.S. Exposure to mercury can cause lifelong brain damage in children, cardiovascular issues in adults and weaken the immune system.
“Stronger standards to alleviate these health risks are highly feasible given the significant advances in control technologies over the last decade,” said Yates.
EDF and other environmental and community groups have filed a lawsuit over the use of presidential exemptions, calling it an “illegal scheme” that gives harmful facilities a free pass to pollute.
Experts have also called on the EPA to hold more public hearings so all concerned Americans can weigh in on the proposed rollback.
What you can do: Check this map to find out if you live near a facility with a presidential exemption to pollute more. The map also guides you through the process of sending a letter to the EPA.
