Clean Air Act protections are driving down heavy metal pollution, but there’s more work to do: [link removed]

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Dear Friend,

The idea of the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) is to get all the air toxics out of power plants, not just mercury. On April 5, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed updates strengthening its Mercury and Air Toxics standards (MATS), which has already proven to be one of the agency’s most successful air pollution rules. The proposed rule will require the dirtiest plants, which account for a disproportionate amount of power plants’ toxic pollution, to reduce their emissions.

But to safeguard public health and reduce the environmental injustice caused by previous administrations’ failure to require adequate controls on power plants’ pollution, EPA needs to do more. The Biden administration should finalize the strongest possible updates to these vital protections. [link removed]

Until the MATS rule came online, coal plants accounted for half of the total man-made emissions of mercury in America and more than half of all arsenic, hydrochloric acid, hydrogen fluoride, and selenium emissions. The MATS rule, which has been in place since 2012, has reduced mercury emissions by 86% from 2010 levels. Nonetheless, the Trump administration sought to jeopardize the MATS rule in 2020 by withdrawing the agency’s original finding that controlling power plants’ toxic emissions is “appropriate.” Since 2016 when every power plant came into compliance, the MATS rule has prevented between 4200 and 11,000 premature deaths, 4,700 non-fatal heart attacks, 2600 hospitalizations for respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, and 540,000 lost workdays every year.

Controlling pollution from power plants improves public health for people across the country by reducing fatal heart attacks, reducing cancer risks and avoiding neurodevelopmental delays in children. These public health improvements are also important for Indigenous communities, low–income communities, and people of color, whose neighborhoods have been disproportionately targeted as places where it's acceptable to place polluting facilities.

MATS can be strengthened, and the EPA can do this by setting more protective limits for particulate matter and mercury to better reduce the impacts of these emissions, including neurocognitive health impacts and cardiovascular impacts and to advance the Biden administration's environmental justice goals.

We thank the EPA for restoring this commonsense rule and are calling on the Environmental Protection Agency to strengthen this rule. Everyone, no matter their zip code, has the right to clean air and a healthy environment. Tell the EPA to strengthen MATS today. [link removed]

Sincerely,
James Pew
Director, Federal Clean Air Practice, D.C.

TAKE ACTION: [link removed]

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