This Earth Day arrives at a sobering moment as the EPA continues to erase the safeguards it was created to uphold.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was established in 1970, following the first Earth Day, expressly to protect human health and the environment. But, since President Donald Trump’s second term began, rapid-fire policy shifts have pivoted the agency away from public health.
Since January of 2025, the agency has lost thousands of scientists and experts, cemented by budget cuts that cripple research and enforcement. The EPA effectively shuttered its environmental justice programs, abandoning the marginalized communities the programs were designed to protect.
Human Rights Watch has documented how extreme pollution from fossil fuel operations is linked to elevated health harms. In a Louisiana region known as Cancer Alley, residents face higher rates of cancer, respiratory ailments, and severe maternal, reproductive, and newborn health complications. These harms are disproportionately borne by the area’s Black residents.
In a dramatic shift, the EPA announced on January 12 that it will no longer factor the economic value of human health into the cost of curbing harmful pollutants, even though it acknowledges that they contribute to serious illnesses and early deaths. By doing so, the agency has cleared the way for weaker emissions standards that directly imperil fenceline communities, often communities of color who face the first and worst impacts of environmental hazards and climate change. If the EPA only considers costs to businesses in regulating pollutants, it is effectively assigning a zero-dollar value to human life.
In February, the agency took the drastic step of rescinding the 2009 Endangerment Finding, a vital legal tool for regulating climate-warming pollutants. This move effectively strips away the legal foundation for the EPA’s regulations of greenhouse gases, an unprecedented retreat even within the current administration’s aggressive anti-climate agenda.
A February 2026 report by former EPA scientists identified 12 high-risk pollutants now lacking federal safeguards. These pollutants have been linked to respiratory diseases, reproductive health harms, and early deaths. The report was blunt: the EPA has abandoned vital protections, leaving communities of color to bear the brunt.
However, states and advocates are challenging the legality of these changes, and our collective voices remain a powerful tool to reclaim a future where government policy protects every life and every community.
