Trump EPA Ignores Science on Air Pollution and Public Health Amid Deadly Pandemic
The EPA’s administrator insists the United States has ‘some of the cleanest air on the planet’
On Monday, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency announced that it will not update a rule limiting soot emissions from industrial sites. By declining to do so, the agency’s leadership is disregarding its own scientists, who say that the rule, if strengthened, could save the lives of more than 10,000 people a year.
By law, the EPA is required to review the latest science on the rule every five years and update it accordingly. This year, thanks in part to the Covid-19 pandemic, the link between air pollution, respiratory illness, and death has become starkly clear. The EPA’s leadership seems to be ignoring what’s plain to so many.
Beginning in April, cities in the United States began reporting racial disparities in death rates from Covid-19. Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people are all more likely to die of the disease than white people, according to researchers. A major contributor to these disparities, say doctors and environmental justice activists, is the fact that people of color tend to live in neighborhoods where air pollution had already been causing respiratory illnesses like asthma, chronic…
