Trump’s EPA is Gutting Decades of Protections to Put More Toxic Chemicals in Our Air and Water

Washington, D.C. — Trump’s EPA Administrator, Lee Zeldin, announced a series of actions that will gut critical health protections, raise costs for families, and make it easier for corporations to pollute our air and water.

Climate Power executive director Lori Lodes issued the following statement: 

“Donald Trump’s EPA is throwing the door wide open for corporate polluters to dump dangerous chemicals into our air and water. Trump is gutting decades of protections designed to keep our communities safe and healthy. He is more interested in protecting the bottom line of his big oil billionaire donors than protecting our kids and communities. Trump’s priorities are clear: he is willing to make us sicker if it makes his friends richer.” 

Trump’s EPA is gutting protections and giving corporate polluters free rein – again: 

• Trump’s Project 2025 agenda will slash the EPA’s capabilities to protect the public, reduce climate pollution, and end or weaken essential environmental and public health protections. 

• Trump is staffing the EPA with oil, gas, and chemical lobbyists, lawyers, and employees, including many of the same people who gutted health protections during his first term. 

• The Guardian: “Second Trump term could boost toxic ‘forever chemicals’, experts warn.”

• Trump is already gutting protections that prevent chemical disasters at hazardous chemical sites.

• Trump gutted more than 125 environmental protections during his first term, including “bans on toxic chemicals known to pose serious health threats” and critical safeguards against noxious chemicals in the air we breathe and water we drink. 

• Trump bowed to the chemical and fossil fuel industries during his first term, with his own EPA was often forced to concede that the moves would cost thousands of American lives.

• During his first term, Trump allowed corporate polluters to pump chemicals linked to cancer and brain damage into our air and water, disproportionately hurting children. 

• Trump rejected a ban on a pesticide during his first term that “has been linked to neurological damage in children, including developmental disorders in toddlers.”
• Trump reversed protections against chemicals during his first term “that have been found to cause miscarriages; reduced male fertility; and damage to the liver, kidneys, and immune and nervous systems.”