Environmental groups are condemning the Trump administration’s decision to drop its legal defense of a key air pollution standard strengthened only last year.
While an EPA spokesperson said Tuesday that the stricter soot limit would cost Americans hundreds of millions of dollars if implemented, advocates highlighted the agency’s previous forecast that it would yield much more valuable health gains.
“Walking away from these clean air standards doesn’t power anything but disease,” Patrice Simms, vice president of healthy communities at Earthjustice, said in a joint news release with more than a half-dozen national and regional organizations.
“Our communities already carry the burden of polluted air and higher rates of asthma and heart disease,” Yvonka Hall, executive director of the Northeast Ohio Black Health Coalition, said in the same release. “Weakening soot protections will only deepen these disparities and cost more Black lives.”
