(WASHINGTON) — Environmental lawyers would argue that part of the American dream is the right to live in a clean environment – a freedom from worry that the air you breathe, the food you eat and the water you drink are without pollutants and toxins that could make you sick.
But several of the environmental freedoms Americans experience today – clean air, clean water and clean rain among them – could soon be in jeopardy from the Environmental Protection Agency’s deregulation plans, several experts told ABC News.
On March 12, the EPA announced sweeping moves in its effort to walk back environmental protections and eliminate a host of climate change regulations, changes described by the agency as the “biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history.”
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced earlier this month that the agency will undertake 31 actions, including rolling back emission regulations on coal, oil and gas production. The announcement also said the EPA will reevaluate government findings that determined that greenhouse gas emissions heat the planet and are a threat to public health. In addition, the EPA plans to eliminate its scientific research office and may have plans to fire more than 1,000 employees, The New York Times reported last week.
“Alongside President Trump, we are living up to our promises to unleash American energy, lower costs for Americans, revitalize the American auto industry, and work hand-in-hand with our state partners to advance our shared mission,” Zeldin said in the EPA announcement.
The EPA, with its mission to protect human health and the environment, is fundamentally a public health organization, Patrick Simms, vice president for healthy communities at Earthjustice, the nation’s largest public interest environmental law firm, told ABC News.
Revoking these regulations would hamper the EPA’s ability to keep Americans from getting sick from the exposure to environmental pollutants, experts said.
“Any policy changes that may occur under this Administration will continue to protect human health and the environment,” and EPA spokesperson said in response to an ABC News request for comment. ”They will be guided by science and the law, as well as input from the public. They will also be guided by many of the Executive Orders issued by the President and EPA Administrator Zeldin’s Powering the Great American Comeback Initiative.”
Impacts some experts fear most from EPA deregulation
Environmental impacts such as toxic air, poisoned water and acid rain that killed forests and caused crop failures were all occurring prior to EPA regulations, the experts said.
Bedrock environmental laws such as the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act were all established after the EPA was created in 1970 under Republican President Richard Nixon.
Some of the regulations Zeldin has proposed eliminating could negatively affect the safety of drinking water and the amount of pollutants that are released into the atmosphere, Simms said.
Additionally, the rollbacks having to do with air pollutants means those toxins will be deposited back into the soil, Murray McBride, a soil and crop scientist and retired Cornell University professor, told ABC News. Coal ash, for example, contains heavy metals, which are absorbed especially by crops like leafy greens, McBride said.
Loosening wastewater rules will pollute soil and negatively impact crops even more, McBride said.
Should the EPA cease monitoring environmental pollutants, it would be especially dangerous for people with underlying health conditions, such as asthma or heart illness, Paul Anastas, director of the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering at Yale University and former assistant administrator for the EPA, told ABC News.
“People don’t know what they’re breathing when data is not being collected,” Anastas said. “You don’t know whether or not your water is contaminated.”
Deregulation would greatly reduce the country’s momentum in transitioning away from fossil fuels as well, Michael Gerrard, a professor of environmental law at Columbia Law School, told ABC News.
“This moves us even further behind, and it inevitably will mean that the extreme weather events we’ve experienced, the floods and the heat waves and the wildfires and so forth, will get worse,” he said.
U.S. environmental issues prior to the EPA
In the late 1960s, there was an “explosion” of public concern about environmental conditions in the country said A. James Barnes, a professor of law and environment and public affairs at Indiana University and former EPA general counsel and deputy administrator.
The year 1970 was monumental for progress in environmental protection, Barnes said. The first Earth Day occurred in April 1970, and when the EPA was established in December of that year, Barnes served as chief of staff to William Ruckelshaus, the first EPA administrator.
“In 1970, when most of the current environmental laws were initially adopted, we lived in a very different and much more hazardous and toxic country,” Simms said.
Smoke pollution and disposal of waste and sewage were at the top of the list of concerns, Barnes said. A significant portion of untreated municipal sewage was still being dumped into rivers and lakes. Hazardous waste was being dumped into landfills along with household garbage and was often incinerated, which in turn sent the toxic materials into the atmosphere. Some rivers were so polluted that they caught fire, as did Ohio’s Cuyahoga River in 1969, Barnes noted.
Lake Erie was considered to be “dying” because it was choking on an uncontrolled growth of algae due to the pollution, according to Barnes, who grew up in industrialized Michigan and recalled fishing in Lake Erie, where he caught carp that had “huge sores” on them.
“You wouldn’t want anything to do with possibly eating it,” Barnes said.
All major U.S. cities had unhealthy levels of carbon monoxide from motor vehicle emissions, before the EPA required that cars manufactured after 1975 be equipped with a catalytic converter to remove pollutants from automotive emissions, said Gerrard.
A chronic smog of air pollutants that hung over Los Angeles was viewed as a “national joke” at the time, Barnes said, while in places that had steel mills, like Pittsburgh and Birmingham, it was not unusual to see blackened skies from the heavy amounts of pollution in the air.
“Your eyes burned,” Barnes said. “Your lungs were aggravated by the quality of the air.”
Additionally, exposure to lead and mercury contaminants in the environment was causing brain damage in some people, according to Anastas.
Coal was the dominant source of electricity production, the burning of which reduced air quality due to high levels of sulfur dioxide and particulates emitted during production and use, Gerard said.
Atmospheric ozone pollution and acid rain would often damage crops, McBride said.
“In general, the air quality and water quality in 1970 were much, much worse than they are today,” Gerrard said.
History serves as a reminder of what could again happen if actions are not taken to protect health and the environment, experts warned.
“If we don’t understand our history, we’re doomed to repeat it,” Simms said.
ABC News’ Matthew Glasser, Kelly Livingston and MaryAlice Parks contributed to this report.
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