Two leading environmental health experts are calling on Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to speak out against the Trump administration’s efforts to roll back coal plant regulations.
Former government scientists Linda Birnbaum and Betsy Southerland asked Kennedy in a letter to “intercede with EPA and the White House” to help stop the agency from weakening rules that prevent coal plants from releasing mercury, arsenic and other carcinogens into waterways.
“You have a powerful voice in this moment,” the scientists wrote. “We urge you to use it.”
Birnbaum, a former director of the National Institute for Environmental Health Science, and Southerland, who led the technology wing of EPA’s water office, left their federal jobs during the first Trump administration.
