Gina McCarthy is the former administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency and former White House national climate adviser.
As I follow the trials and tribulations of my beloved US Environmental Protection Agency and the words of wisdom from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., I wonder: Can somebody tell me what the White House’s “Make America Healthy Again” strategy is actually intended to accomplish? President Trump signed his name to it. Making our children healthy again seems like a winning proposition. But did anyone in the US government other than its authors actually read it?
You would think the HHS secretary, who served as an environmental lawyer for decades, would be tracking the actions and outcomes identified in the White House MAHA report rather than being hellbent on changing recommendations for vaccines that keep our kids safe. The EPA added its logo to the report, so you would expect EPA administrator Lee Zeldin to do more than pay lip service to it; instead he is focused on dismantling the EPA’s ability to protect public health and the environment.
Both of these so-called leaders are actively derailing any ability our country has to make America — and its children — healthy again. And yes, that ticks me off. I spent eight years leading efforts at the EPA to clean up our air and water and protect our health and natural resources. Now Zeldin is claiming to be doing his job while he rewrites the agency’s mission to focus on “powering the great American comeback,” which means more burning of fossil fuels, more health impacts from increased pollution, and more climate change denial.
The EPA administrator is sabotaging the MAHA strategy as he pretends his actions have no consequences for our nation’s health and well-being. He’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing, actively spiking any attempt to improve kids’ health and taking actions that could make it worse. The Environmental Protection Network, an organization of former EPA staff, estimates that Zeldin’s rollbacks of air pollution protections will lead to 200,000 premature deaths.
If the MAHA movement isn’t aware of what the EPA is up to, it’s understandable. It’s really easy to miss all the ways the EPA is making our health worse, because it hides the ball. There are so many deregulatory actions that it’s hard to process them all. And it’s often because officials act in cowardly ways by making controversial announcements on a Friday or right before a holiday.
Limiting “chemical exposure” to better protect children is one of the White House’s four MAHA priorities. So let’s look at a small sampling of the EPA’s actions this past year related to chemicals.
The EPA administrator is:
- Filling the agency’s executive ranks with chemical industry lobbyists, who are weakening requirements to review the safety of chemicals, including forever chemicals like PFAS.
- Giving chemical plants, power plants, the sterilizer industry, and other facilities a free pass to release more pollution. All they had to do was send a quick email request to the agency.
- Delaying compliance and enforcement of protections against chemicals found in paints, adhesives, and household cleaners, such as methylene chloride and trichloroethylene, which are known to harm the central nervous system and cause cancer.
- Weakening pollution limits and the monitoring of brain-damaging mercury and greenhouse gas emissions from coal plants. If the EPA doesn’t track pollution, it doesn’t have to do its job of cleaning it up.
There is no other public agency, private business, advocacy organization, or non-governmental organization that can advance our nation’s health and well-being based on sound science, collaboration, community outreach, and ongoing engagement like the EPA.
Anyone who has children, cares about the elderly or the infirm, wants to help communities in need, or simply worries about the future of America needs to take a hard look at how the EPA’s work is being undermined and its staff is being tossed aside by its own leadership. It’s time we stop allowing this EPA to make it harder to protect children’s health in the name of “energy dominance,” which is, of course, just a code for helping the fossil fuel industry.
Someone should tell the MAHA movement what the leader of the EPA is actually up to.