Action Alerts

Protect your community from chemical emergencies

What's At Stake

Critical safeguards that protect our communities from chemical emergencies and disasters are under attack.  Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to end and weaken community safety rules after caving to pressure from big corporate polluters. We need to tell the EPA not to take these critical safeguards away from families.  

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A chemical emergency or disaster can happen when there is a toxic release, explosion, fire or other safety incident at an industrial facility that uses, stores, or manages highly hazardous substances. Millions of people in communities near these facilities live daily under the threat of a chemical disaster. Industrial chemical incidents happen on average every 2 days, according to EPA data. These are not flukes – they are often preventable and solutions are available now, including: sensible planning for extreme weather and power loss, evaluating and implementing safer technologies and alternatives, and ensuring workers can take action to prevent or stop an unfolding emergency.  

The EPA put long-needed health and safety protections in place based on the law and science in 2024 to save lives and prevent chemical emergencies. Now, the Trump administration wants to take our country backward on safety.  

Chemical safety isn’t a political yo-yo. Basic protections against industrial chemical fires, explosions, and toxic leaks aren’t something that the Trump administration should keep bouncing back and forth. Rolling back safety standards would leave communities, workers, and first responders to fend for themselves as more chemical emergencies continue, without vital safeguards like the requirement to ensure there is a community alert system in place. EPA took vital public access to chemical hazard information away last spring and is now considering whether to restore online access to this information. 

Urge the EPA to protect communities from preventable tragedies, not to take away critical safeguards from families nationwide.  

On August 6, 2012, a fire and explosion at a Chevron refinery in Richmond, Calif. caused 15,000 people to seek medical treatment.
On August 6, 2012, a fire and explosion at a Chevron refinery in Richmond, Calif. caused 15,000 people to seek medical treatment. (Nick Fullerton / CC BY-NC 2.0)

35 Days Remain

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Your Actions Matter

Your messages make a difference, even if we have leaders who don't want to listen. Here's why.

You level the playing field.

Elected officials pay attention when they see that we are paying attention. Read more.

They may be hearing from industry lobbyists left and right, but hearing the stories of their constituents — that’s your power.

Our legislators serve at the pleasure of the people who gave them their job — you.

Make sure your elected officials know whose community and whose values they represent. When you contact your elected official, you’re putting a face and a name on an issue.

Whether or not you voted for them, they work for you, for the duration of their term.

Make sure your elected officials know whose community and whose values they represent. (Find your local, state, and federal elected officials.)

Your action is with us in court.

If a federal agency finalizes a harmful action, the record of public comments provides a basis for bringing them into court. Read more.

Throughout each of the public comment periods we alert you to, Earthjustice’s attorneys are researching and writing in-depth, technical comments to submit — detailing how the regulation could and should be stronger to protect the environment, our communities, and our planet.

We need you to join us — your specific experiences, knowledge, and voice are crucial to add to the Administrative Record through the comment periods.

Lawsuits we file that challenge weak or harmful federal regulations rely on what was submitted during the comment period. The court can only look at documents that are in the Administrative Record — including the public comments — to decide if the agency did something improper.

Your actions aid our litigation. Taking action and submitting comments during a comment period is substantively important.

It’s the law.

Federal agencies must pause what they’re doing and ask for — and consider — your comment. Read more.

Many of us may have never heard of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), but laws like these require our government to ask the public to weigh in before agencies adopt or change regulations.

Regulations essentially describe how federal agencies will carry out laws — including decisions that could undermine science, or weaken safeguards on public health.

Public comments are collected at various points throughout the federal government’s rulemaking process, including when a regulation is proposed and finalized. (Learn about the rulemaking process.) These comments become part of the official, legal public record — the “Administrative Record.”

When the public responds with a huge outpouring of support for environmental protections, these individual messages collectively undercut politicians' attempts to claim otherwise.

What this means is each of us can take a role in shaping the rules our government creates — and ensuring those rules are fair and effective.