Trump’s latest EPA administrator, former New York Republican congress- man Lee Zeldin, is attempt- ing to roll back regulations that have reduced emissions of brain-damaging mercury and lead, lung-damaging soot and cancer-causing chemicals, among other things.
Zeldin is encouraging polluters to email the EPA seeking exemptions from clean air regulations. Trump himself gets to decide if the
exemptions are granted.
The Trump administra- tion also is stifling efforts to counter the impacts of climate change, leaving the nation more vulnerable to extreme weather.
Decades of research confirm these threats to human health, wildlife and the economy. In response, Zeldin wants to eliminate the EPA’s science division and purge up to 75% of the people who work there, a move that would effectively kneecap the agency’s ability to hold polluters account-
able.
“The news here is much worse than it seems,” William K. Reilly, who led the EPA under Republi- can President George H.W. Bush, said during a recent call with journalists.
Reilly and other former EPA leaders, both Repub- licans and Democrats, fear Trump is plummeting the United States back to the days of unchecked pollution atthe behest of his campaign donors.
Illinois — and other Great Lakes states with a
long history of industrial pollution — will suffer if hard-won protections are eliminated or weakened.
“When the next train derailment occurs, when the next hurricane hits, wildfires, when any of these disasters happen, if all these changes go through the government will not be there because we won’t have the resources and we won’t have the manpower,” LuisAnto- nio Flores, a chemist in the EPA’s Chicago office, said during a March 25 protest organized by the union for
local agency workers.
Trump’s latest moves to gut the EPA are led by Zeldin, far-right ideo - logues in the White House and billionaire Elon Musk, whose companies Tesla and SpaceX have been fined by the agency for multiple violations of environmental laws. The mass firings and regulatory rollbacks come as scientists routinely deter- mine pollution is far more damaging than previously thought.
For instance, lead is so harmful that the EPA and
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say there is no safe level of exposure. During the 1960s it took 65 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood in a child to merit interven- tion by public health offi- cials. Despite significant progress in reducing lead poisoning, there are more than 400,000 pipes made of the toxic metal connect- ing Chicago homes and two-flats to the municipal water system.
The U.S. historically is the world’s biggest emitter
of carbon dioxide, the chief gas altering the planet’s climate. There now is wide- spread understanding that the buildup of heat-trap-