Environmental lawyers would argue that part of the American dream is the right to live in a clean environment – the freedom of worrying that the air you breathe, the food you eat, and the water you drink are without pollutants and toxins that could get you sick.
But several of the environmental freedoms that Americans are experiencing today – clean air, clean water and clean rain among them – may soon be at risk of plans to deregulate the Environmental Protection Agency, several experts told ABC News.
On March 12, the EPA announced extensive movements in its efforts to restore environmental protection and eliminate numerous rules for climate change, the changes described by the agency as “the largest deregulant actions in US history”.
EPA administrator Lee Zeldin has announced earlier this month that the agency will take 31 actions, including repealing rules for emissions on coal, oil and gas production. The announcement says the EPA will re -evaluate the government’s findings, which determine that greenhouse gas emissions heat up the planet and pose a threat to public health. In addition, EPA plans to remove its research service and may have plans to fire more than 1,000 employees, New York Times reported last week.
“In addition to President Trump, we are fulfilling our promises to unleash American energy, lower costs for Americans, we revive the US automotive industry and work hand in hand with our state partners to develop our shared mission,” Zeldin said in an EPA message.
Strong winds carry coal dust from a pile of coal at the Comanche Generation Station in Pueblo, Colorada, February 4, 2025.
RJ Sangosti/Medianews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images
EPA, with its mission to protect human and the environment, is a major organization for public health, Patrick Sims, Vice President of Healthy Communities in Earthjustice, the most big law firm for environmental interest in the country told ABC News.
The cancellation of these regulations would prevent the EPA’s ability to prevent Americans from getting environmental exposure, experts said.
“All changes to the policy that may occur in this administration will continue to protect human health and the environment,” and the EPA spokesman in response to ABC News request for comment. “They will be guided by science and the law, as well as the contribution from the public. They will also be guided by many of the executive orders issued by the President and EPA Administrator Zeldin, which feeds the initiative of the big American return.”
Affects some experts who are most afraid of the EPA deregulation
Environmental impact such as toxic air, poisonous water and acid rain that kill forests and cause crop failures, all appear before the EPA provisions, experts said.
Environmental Laws are based on the Clean Water Act, the Safe Water Act and the National Environment Policy Act were created after the EPA was established in 1970 under the Republican President Richard Nixon.
Some of the regulations that Zeldin suggested that elimination can adversely affect the safety of drinking water and the amount of pollutants to be released into the atmosphere, Sims said.
The emissions come out of smoke to a building while the sun rises, February 18, 2025, in Hobken, New Jersey
Gary Herschorn/Getty Images
In addition, the associated air pollutant connections mean that these toxins will be delayed back into the soil, told ABC News Murray Mcbrid, a soil and crop scientist and a retired Professor at Cornell University. Coal ash, for example, contains heavy metals that are especially absorbed by crops such as leafy greenery, McBride said.
The rules for loosening wastewater will pollute the soil and will negatively affect the crops, McBride said.
If the EPA ceases to monitor environmental pollutants, it would be especially dangerous for people with basic health conditions, such as asthma or heart disease, told ABC News, director of the Green Chemistry and Green Engineering Center at Yale University and former EPA assistant administrator.
“People don’t know what they breathe when the data is not collected,” Anastas said. “You don’t know if your water is contaminated or not.”
Air view of collected contaminated water and a large coating, which will eventually extend over about 30 acres to better suppress the smells and emissions of the landfill at the Chikita landfill in Castaik, California, February 22, 2024.
All J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times through Getty Images
Dragulation will significantly reduce the country’s inertia in the passage of fossil fuels, Michael Gerrard, Professor of Environment Law at the Colombian Law Faculty, told the ABC News.
“It moves us even more and inevitably means that the extreme weather events we have experienced, floods and heat waves and wild fires, etc., will deteriorate,” he said.
American Ecological Problems Before EPA
At the end of the 1960s, there was a “explosion” of public concern about environmental conditions in the country, said A. James Barnes, Professor of Law and Environment and Public Affairs at the University of Indiana and a former EPA general advisor and deputy administrator.
1970 is a monumental for the advancement of environmental protection, Barnes said. The first day on Earth happened in April 1970, and when the EPA was established in December of the same year, Barnes served as the head of the headquarters of William Rukelshaus, the first EPA administrator.
“In 1970, when most of the current environmental laws were originally adopted, we lived in a very different and much more dangerous and toxic country,” Sims said.
One leaves the building of the Environmental Protection Agency’s headquarters, March 12, 2025 in Washington, Colombia County
Mark Schiefelbein/AP
Dima pollution and waste disposal and sewage were on the list of concerns, Barnes said. A significant part of the untreated municipal sewage was still thrown into rivers and lakes. Dangerous waste is discarded on landfills along with household households and often burned, which in turn sends toxic materials to the atmosphere. Some rivers were so contaminated that they were lit as well as the Kuyahoga River in Ohio in 1969, Barnes notes.
Lake Eri was considered “dying” as he was suffocating uncontrolled algae growth due to pollution, according to Barnes, who grew up in the industrialized Michigan and recalled that fishing in Lake Eri, where he caught a carp, which had “huge wounds” on them.
“You would like nothing to do with the possible meal,” Barnes said.
All major cities in the United States have had unhealthy carbon monoxide levels of motor vehicle emissions before the EPA requires cars produced after 1975 to be equipped with a catalytic converter for the removal of car emissions, Gerard said.
A chronic smog of air pollutants hung over Los Angeles was regarded as a “national joke” at the time, Barnes said, while in places where there were steel mills, such as Pittsburgh and Birmingham, it was not uncommon to see the blackened sky from heavy pollution in the air.
“Your eyes burned,” Barnes said. “Your lungs get worse by air quality.”
In addition, exposure to lead and mercury pollutants in the environment causes brain damage in some people, according to Anastas.
Coal is the dominant source of electricity production, the burning of whose reduced air quality due to the high levels of sulfur dioxide and particles emitted during production and use, said Gerard.
Atmospheric pollution of ozone and acid rain will often harm the crops, McBride said.
“Overall, the air quality and the quality of water in 1970 were much worse than today,” Gerard said.
History serves as a reminder of what could happen again if no action is taken to protect health and the environment, experts have warned.
“If we do not understand our history, we are doomed to repeat it,” Sims said.
Matthew Glasser, Kelly Livingston at ABC News and Maryalice Parks have contributed to this report.
