EPA Administrator Zeldin’s Plan Will Increase Pollution in Daily Lives

(Washington, D.C. – March 12, 2025) EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin today unveiled a plan to attack dozens of the nation’s most successful and vital environmental protections addressing industrial pollution – pollution limits that have saved lives, protected millions from severe health problems, helped Americans save money on fuel bills and health care costs, and launched hundreds of thousands of new U.S. manufacturing jobs. 

“EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin today announced plans for the greatest increase in pollution in decades. The result will be more toxic chemicals, more cancers, more asthma attacks, and more dangers for pregnant women and their children. Rather than helping our economy, it will create chaos.

“Just last week, President Trump promised to ‘get toxins out of our environment … and keep our children healthy and strong.’ Administrator Zeldin’s plan undercuts those words. Those seeking to make America healthier should be deeply concerned. 

“We will vigorously oppose Administrator Zeldin’s unlawful attack on the public health of the American people that seeks to tear down life-saving clean air standards – putting millions of people in harm’s way. 

“Administrator Zeldin is promising to undo scores of health and safety standards, pulling from a wish-list from lobbyists. Among the rules under attack are the Good Neighbor Rule, which protects Americans from air pollution from other states; the Mercury and Air Toxics standards that protects children’s’ developing brains; the finding that climate pollution endangers our health and our kids future; and standards that keep drinking water clean.

“These actions will create chaos for American families. It was proposed by Washington insiders to benefit narrow interests. It puts the needs of the American people last.”

• Amanda Leland, Executive Director of Environmental Defense Fund 

Administrator Zeldin is promising to undo dozens of health and safety standards, including:

• Climate pollution limits on fossil fuel power plants
• The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, which limit toxic pollution from coal plants that causes brain damage in babies and other deadly diseases
• Common sense limits on the tailpipe pollution from new cars and new trucks – the largest sources of climate pollution in the country and one of the largest sources of the smog and soot that are hazardous to human health
• Cost-effective limits on harmful methane pollution from the oil and gas sector, which will reduce this potent climate accelerant and other toxic and health-harming pollutants that impact millions of Americans 
• The national health-based standard for deadly particles (PM 2.5 NAAQS) which addresses the pollution – commonly called soot – that causes lung disease, asthma attacks and heart attacks when breathed
• The Regional Haze Program that reduced the thick clouds of pollution people could see in the air
• The Good Neighbor Plan, which protects millions of people who are breathing unhealthy air in downwind states from the upwind smokestacks lacking modern pollution controls
• The “Social Cost of Carbon” – which allows the American people to know the full damage of climate-destabilizing pollution

Administrator Zeldin also formally announced he would reconsider the “2009 Endangerment Finding and regulations and actions that rely on that Finding.” The Endangerment Finding is EPA’s determination that climate pollution harms human health and welfare. It was required by Congress through the Clean Air Act and by a Supreme Court decision, is built on a mountain of scientific evidence, and has been reaffirmed the U.S. Supreme Court multiple times. It is also the basis for almost every step the U.S. has taken to safeguard people from climate change. Undermining the “regulations and actions that rely on that Finding” would leave Americans with no protections at all, at a time when everyone is seeing the extreme weather and worsening disasters that climate change is bringing.