Polluters can now email their way out of clean air laws, courtesy of Trump
Trump is handing out pollution waivers, leaving millions breathing more toxic air
The announcement said it all: companies could simply send an email to the Trump administration asking for permission to pollute. No scientific review. No public input. No health protection. And within weeks, Trump granted blanket exemptions to dozens of coal-fired power plants, allowing them to release more mercury, arsenic, and acid into the air, poisoning communities downwind.
Indeed, without even a word about the impacts of his actions on people’s health, last month, Trump gave two-year exemptions from the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards to more than 62 coal-fired power plants. And if that wasn’t enough, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin said Trump is considering granting exemptions to bypass clean air rules for eight other polluting industries; laws that limit emissions of cancer-causing chemicals like ethylene oxide, chloroprene, and benzene.
The EPA and the Trump administration aren’t asking the public about the exemptions. They aren’t sharing details either. They’re leaving communities in the dark about when more exemptions may come or how far they’ll go. What is clear is that the chemical industry is asking for blanket exemptions, and they may get what they want.
In a letter, the American Chemistry Council (ACC) and the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) urged the Trump administration to grant across-the-board exemptions for more than 200 chemical manufacturing facilities through the email process Zeldin’s EPA created. If Trump and Zeldin deliver what industry wants, families in Texas, Louisiana, the Midwest, Appalachia, and beyond will pay the price: more children and families sickened — birth defects, heart disease, and cancers that should never happen.
Trump’s abuse of power relies on distorting Section 112(i)(4) of the Clean Air Act, a narrow provision never used by any president in the 55 years since its enactment. Congress meant this provision to be used only in extraordinary circumstances, where a specific facility, vital to national security, cannot meet emission standards because the necessary pollution control technology is unavailable.
But Trump and Zeldin are twisting it into a pass for the president to give blanket exemptions from Clean Air Act protections for scores of polluters, even though the technology is available. This isn’t actually about national security, it is to provide a massive giveaway to coal-fired power plants, chemical manufacturers, and metal smelters. These are the very facilities that polluted our air and poisoned communities before the EPA put stronger air protections in place — facilities where the need to cut emissions of chemicals linked to cancer, early death, and developmental harm in children has long been clear.
This isn’t the first time Trump has tried to dismantle clean air protections. Trump’s first administration delayed critical safeguards through a series of procedural tricks, which courts later found unlawful, thanks in part to lawsuits by Earthjustice, workers, and communities. Now, they are trying a new gimmick from the same playbook to tear down needed health protections. And they do so at a time when communities need more protection from the toxic mix of chemicals facilities pump into the air every day, not less.
The science is clear: the chemical facilities that ACC and AFPM asked to be exempt from standards put in our air more than 6,000 tons of toxic chemicals each year that need to be addressed. Moreover, pollution controls are already in use at many plants, and are available now to protect the health of more than seven million people who face increased cancer risk from exposure.
Clean air is not something to waive away with a special exemption for large corporations. We must remember that children, especially, who are more vulnerable to pollution harm, cannot afford to be collateral damage. Yet this administration is quietly stripping clean air standards from us by presidential decree, shifting pollution costs from corporate profit balance sheets onto our lungs.
Trump and Zeldin must stop concocting new ways to let polluters off the hook, and start defending the clean air they claim to support — and the law requires.
Earthjustice’s Washington, D.C., office works at the federal level to prevent air and water pollution, combat climate change, and protect natural areas. We also work with communities in the Mid-Atlantic region and elsewhere to address severe local environmental health problems, including exposures to dangerous air contaminants in toxic hot spots, sewage backups and overflows, chemical disasters, and contamination of drinking water. The D.C. office has been in operation since 1978.
