THE EPA MUST ACT TO PREVENT DEATHS FROM POLLUTED AIR

Everyone deserves to breathe clean air. A recent rule proposed by the EPA could create cleaner air for families and drastically reduce the number of pollution-related deaths and illnesses that overwhelmingly affect children and seniors.

Here’s the problem: corporate polluters are lobbying for dangerous standards to protect their profits. We need your help: Tell the EPA to set clean air standards that will protect the health of our children, our parents, and our grandparents.

TAKE ACTION

Friend —

63 million Americans are currently exposed to unhealthy spikes of daily soot air pollution, and more than 20 million Americans experience dangerous soot pollution year-round.

This is unacceptable. The EPA must act to stop it.

Soot pollution standards haven’t been reviewed in over a decade, but right now, the EPA is accepting public input on a proposal to strengthen those pollution limits. We must demand that the EPA seize this moment to clean up our air, advance environmental justice, and protect our health by enacting the strongest science-based safeguards against soot pollution.

We’re calling on every LCV member to take action NOW: Add your name and urge the EPA to enact the strongest possible standards to limit soot pollution and protect public health.

Preventing soot pollution is critical to meeting President Biden’s promise to address environmental racism and systemic injustices affecting communities of color.

A recent study found that soot exposure from power plants, cars, trucks, and other industrial sources disproportionately burdens Black and Hispanic populations who are more likely to work and live near these highly-concentrated pollution areas.

For generations, Black activists have fought to address the disproportionate harm from toxic pollution, climate-induced disasters, and public health crises afflicting communities of color. The modern environmental justice movement was born in 1982 when activists in Warren County, North Carolina protested for weeks against an EPA decision establishing a landfill in their majority-Black community that would expose residents to more cancer-causing toxins.

The residents of Warren County brought long-overdue attention to the inequities that result from decisions to burden predominantly Black and other communities of color with pollution — inequities that continue to persist in our society to this day.

Justice for communities impacted by environmental racism is long overdue — the EPA has a chance here to make a real impact and they have to get this right.

TAKE ACTION TO
FIGHT SOOT POLLUTION

The Biden administration has the opportunity to protect public health and advance environmental justice by listening to the 167 public health and environmental organizations urging adoption of stronger soot standards that could save 20,000 lives a year.

Setting stronger soot safeguards will not only protect our health from dangerous and deadly pollutants, but also accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy by reducing our dependence on polluting energy sources like coal.

Tell the EPA and the Biden administration to swiftly pass a strong rule that matches the president’s commitments to cut dangerous pollution and protect our health and environment.

Thank you for using your voice to advocate for cleaner air for all Americans, for generations to come.

Onward,

Madeleine Foote
Deputy Legislative Director
League of Conservation Voters