March 13, 2025
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact
Milagros R. Elia
Program Manager, Climate and Clean Energy Advocacy
Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments
milagros@envirn.org
914.455.1165
Nurses Push Back on “Historic” EPA Deregulatory Action
WASHINGTON – On March 12th the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced plans to reverse 31 regulations, threatening to undermine health gains and progress made to clean up air and water pollution, and protect Americans against climate change. Yesterday’s decisions push for the reconsideration of health protections from tailpipe emissions standards for new cars and trucks while also proposing to reconsider standards for particulate matter and mercury air toxics. The announcement took particular aim at the agency’s environmental justice efforts effectively stating that all such programs will be ceased.
In response to the announcement, the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments’ Executive Director Katie Huffling, DNP, RN, CNM, FAAN released the following statement:
“Yesterday’s announcement proposing to undo dozens of regulations, with some of the regulations decades in the making, threatens the health and safety of millions of Americans. The Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments has long advocated for strengthening of standards like the Mercury and Air Toxic Standards and the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for years because nurses know the significant health benefits these safeguards achieve. More than 160,000 lives have been saved since the adoption of the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards more than a decade ago.
Many of the standards at risk are consistent with decades of federal government practice, such as standards to reduce emissions and improve the fuel economy of vehicles. Rolling back clean vehicle standards would expose American families to significantly more toxic air pollution from vehicle exhaust, exacerbating the risks of asthma, lung disease, and heart attacks. Especially concerning is Administrator Zeldin’s targeting the legal basis for enforcement of the Clean Air Act, known as the “endangerment finding”. Making changes to this could ultimately impact the EPA’s ability to regulate carbon dioxide, methane, and other climate-changing pollutants. Rolling back health protective standards that Americans depend on is in direct opposition to Administrator Zeldin’s promise to “defend every American’s access to clean air, clean water, and clean land.
The multitude of proposed deregulatory actions goes against EPA’s core mission to protect human health and the environment. Dismantling environmental justice programs will further allow health disparities to continue and worsen in some of the most polluted communities in the country. As nurses, we know that loosening protections on power plants or making it easier for industry to release hazardous air pollutants will harm health. Today’s announcement only outlines the Trump Administrations’ plan to roll back these protections, and these lifesaving safeguards are currently still in place. EPA is required by law to go through the regulatory process to reconsider or revoke the listed standards. Nurses stand ready to fight for these health protections to ensure that people living in the United States, regardless of where you live or what you look like, have access to clean air, clean water, and a healthy future.”
Advocates expressed immediate concerns on Wednesday stating that reversing regulations for programs like the Risk Management Program (RMP) could allow EPA to weaken rules requiring nearly 12,000 highly hazardous industrial facilities to prevent and plan for chemical disasters.
Yesterday’s announcement occurred the same day that the Trump Administration’s internal memo was made public delineating the EPA Administrator’s plan to pursue “the reorganization and elimination” of the offices of environmental justice at all 10 E.P.A. regional offices as well as the one in Washington.
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The Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments is a global nursing organization focused solely on the intersection of health and the environment. The mission of the Alliance is to support nurses in promoting planetary health and equity globally by educating and leading the nursing profession, advancing research, incorporating planet-safe practice, and influencing policy.
