[DATE]

Dear Administrator Zeldin,

As health experts we write to share our grave concern at EPA’s effort to rescind dozens of pollution protections for millions, a direct contradiction to the Environmental Protection Agency’s mission of protecting public health and the environment and your expressed promise to ensure every American’s access to clean air. It would lead to the biggest pollution increases in decades and is a blatant give-away to polluters.

Everyone knows that climate and clean air protections improve public health. Combined, the air pollution standards finalized by the EPA for smokestacks, tailpipes, and pipelines between 2021 and 2024 will save over 200,000 lives and avoid over 100 million asthma attacks in the U.S. through 2050, and these standards will deliver more than $250 billion in net benefits each year.

The agency’s assault on over thirty climate and health safeguards will increase health-harming pollution, such as soot pollution that contributes to asthma attacks, heart attacks, and stroke, and mercury and air toxics pollution linked to cancer and fetal brain damage, in addition to exacerbating environmental racism and injustices. Dismantling these protections would endanger the lives of millions.

We will not stand by as the agency takes steps to rescind the Endangerment Finding, the scientific and Court-affirmed finding that climate-changing pollutants are dangerous to people’s health and wellbeing and must be regulated under the Clean Air Act. Any attempt to reverse the endangerment finding would be legally baseless, without scientific justification, deeply unpopular, and would harm communities across the country already facing the devastating health impacts of climate change, such as extreme heat.

The public health benefits of limiting climate pollution are tangible. Each year, carbon pollution standards for power plants will deliver $6.3 billion in health benefits and clean car standards will deliver $13 billion in health benefits. Stripping away these protections not only deprives the public of billions in annual health benefits but also increases climate pollution at the root of extreme weather, with harmful and costly consequences. Extreme heat caused over 2,000 deaths and there were almost 120,000 heat-related hospital visits across the country in 2023, while health care costs due to extreme heat amount to approximately $1 billion every summer.

We will continue to speak out and take action against this unjust, unfounded attack on the endangerment finding and all the climate and health safeguards for what it is: an attempt to line the pockets of fossil fuel companies at the expense of science,  the health and wellbeing of our patients, communities across the country, and future generations.

Sincerely,