WASHINGTON, D.C. — On March 12, 2025, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced more than 30 actions rolling back rules that were specifically designed to protect all of us from air and water pollution, exposure to harmful chemicals, and the damaging impacts of climate change. The EPA has celebrated this move as the “biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history.”
“This mass deregulation of the EPA is an explicit attack on the health and safety of the American people,” said Drew Guillory, Policy Advisor with Food & Water Watch. “Everyone wants cleaner air and water, and it’s the EPA’s job to provide it. Instead, Administrator Zeldin is intent on helping his friends in the government loot the country and poison us in the process.”
“There is no denying now that the EPA is a captured agency,” added John Beard, Jr., Founder of Port Arthur Community Action Network. “When the agency responsible for regulating an industry issues a news release celebrating the ‘biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history,’ that is the textbook definition of ‘regulatory capture’ – a form of corruption whereby a regulator prioritizes special interests over the needs of the public. Put simply, the EPA has been hijacked and corrupted by the industry’s monied interests.”
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin declared the new mission of the agency is to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home and running a business.” The corresponding EPA press release also references “EPA’s core mission to relieve the economy of unnecessary bureaucratic burdens that drive up costs for American consumers.”
Graham Hamilton, Break Free From Plastic US Policy Officer, offered this response: “Unfortunately, it appears that protecting public health is no longer a part of EPA’s mission today, despite the fact that this principle has helped guide the agency since its founding in 1970. Ironically, Zeldin’s calculations omit the significant and rising costs of plastics to Americans’ health: the hazardous chemicals in plastics alone cost the U.S. healthcare system nearly $250 billion in 2018 and the toll is rising. This cost doesn’t even begin to account for the health costs of living on the frontlines of industrial facilities, reduced property values, increased costs of disasters like urban plastic-fueled wildfires, and the many other costs associated with destruction of human and environmental health.”
Among the critical environmental and public health protections the EPA is set on rolling back are rules and standards that Break Free From Plastic US members have helped make possible, including:
Hazardous Organic NESHAP (HON)
- In April of 2024, the EPA took final action to strengthen critical Clean Air Act protections that will impact hundreds of thousands of people living near over 200 petrochemical plants across the country. This National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) rule is designed to significantly reduce exposure risks for six of the EPA’s high priority toxic chemicals, including chloroprene and ethylene oxide, which are known to cause cancer even in small quantities.
- Key provisions of the rule include stronger controls on toxic air emissions, increased air quality monitoring for priority chemicals of concern at the facility fenceline, stronger protections against pollution from flaring and closing the loophole that allows facilities to pollute during periods of startup, shutdown and malfunction (SSM) events.
- These standards are expected to slash 6,000 tons of air toxics each year and reduce air toxics-related cancer risks in nearby communities by 96%.
Risk Management Program (RMP)
- Set to take effect in 2026, the RMP rule bolstered industry accountability by requiring polluting facilities to implement sound disaster prevention plans that involved workers in safety training, and increased community transparency around the threats to facilities in the face of extreme weather events.
- The EPA is now working to dismantle these safeguards for people that live near and/or work in the roughly 12,000 chemical facilities that have been operating under the RMP.
- A hazardous chemical incident occurs every 2.5 days in the U.S., and over half of the population lives in worst-case scenario zones. As a country, we will be less prepared for these chemical releases, fires, explosions, etc. as a result of removing the RMP. This makes all of us less safe.
Integrating Environmental Justice Into EPA Regulations and Guidance
- Since the issuance of Executive Order 12898 in 1994 by President Clinton, which ordered the integration of environmental justice principles across all federal agencies, fenceline and frontline communities have fought for the federal government to implement its provisions. Communities pushed for inclusion in agency decision-making processes, consideration of the cumulative health and socio-economic impacts of pollution, and creation of health-based national air quality standards to protect all communities from hazardous pollutants like particulate matter (PM 2.5).
Almost all of these examples repeat the same pattern: The EPA is weakening protections for the environment and human health especially for those in vulnerable communities. These actions will allow various parties to ramp up pollution of our air, land, and waterways, harming millions of people and reducing the long-term sustainability and economic value of our natural resources.
“What the EPA calls ‘unnecessary bureaucratic burdens that drive up costs for American consumers,’ we consider vital government protections from harmful industrial pollution,” according to Gwendalyn Jones, Founder & Executive Director of Climate Conversations Brazoria County. “We urge the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to actually protect public health and the environment.”
QUOTE SHEET
Note: The following quotes from Break Free From Plastic members and allies represent the respective positions of each individual organization:
“Eliminating these crucial protections will have a devastating impact on communities like mine in Wallace situated in the heart of Louisiana’s Cancer Alley. The industrial polluters behind these regulatory rollbacks do not need a policy to stop the poisoning of communities burdened by the toxic impacts from petrochemical production– all they should need is a heart. This action by the EPA will not go unnoticed and we will hold polluters and their enabling politicians to account.”
— Jo Banner, Co-Founder and Co-Director, The Descendants Project
"These unconscionable rollbacks make it clear that the EPA has abandoned its mission of protecting human health and the environment in favor of enriching the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries. From allowing more radioactive fracking wastewater to be dumped into our waterways to loosening air pollution and risk management standards at chemical plants, the administration is sacrificing the health and futures of people living near fossil fuel and petrochemical infrastructure, like our communities in Southwestern PA."
— Sarah Martik, Executive Director, Center for Coalfield Justice
“Make no mistake, these announced deregulation efforts are not intended to help the American people; they are intended to poison our children with toxic pollution & line the pockets of greedy industry executives. Black communities across the Country already bear too high a burden from environmental hazards, and getting rid of these protections will only exacerbate present harm. As environmental justice communities around the world are actively working to rein in toxic industries, the US is choosing to dig its heels in the ground and reject basic protections - some of which will have global implications. We deserve clean air. We deserve clean water. We deserve safe soil, and we deserve an Environmental Protection Agency that is working to actualize these basic human rights.”
— Tianna Shaw-Wakeman, Environmental Justice Program Director, Black Women for Wellness
“Richard Nixon established the EPA 55 years ago with bipartisan support, and now we see President Trump and Elon Musk attempting to unravel 55 years of environmental progress. If they succeed, we will all be breathing in more soot, drinking more toxic chemicals in our water, and having more plastic fragments throughout our bodies. Environmental justice communities will be especially hurt. This new attack on the EPA is currently just a series of fact-free news releases and social media posts. Many of the new administration’s deregulation efforts will be challenged in court and will not be adopted. But, state and local governments need to step up, and the residents of this country need to fight back.”
— Judith Enck, Beyond Plastics president and former EPA regional administrator
“Our children in the neighborhood have toenails testing positive for nickel. To say nothing of all the toxins we are all breathing into our lungs in this small neighborhood in Pascagoula, Mississippi.”
— Barbara Weckesser, Founder, Cherokee Concerned Citizens
“As a healthcare professional, these chemical and other pollutant exposures will prove more costly to the health of all Americans. Rejecting basic protections will create more asthma, dermatitis, cancers, and other autoimmune disorders increasing healthcare costs. The EPA is now quisling to the American people for the chemical industry.”
— Peggy Ann Berry, PhD, RN, COHN-S, FAAOHN, Between the Waters Executive Director
“The Trump Administration’s reckless rollback of environmental protections isn’t just an attack on our air, water, and climate—it’s an assault on public health and future generations. Science doesn’t take a backseat to politics, and neither should our right to a livable planet.”
— Nick Lapis, Director of Advocacy, Californians Against Waste
“For decades, Southwest Louisiana has been treated as a sacrifice zone for the petrochemical industry—our air poisoned, our water contaminated, and our health disregarded. Now, with these reckless rollbacks, the government is telling us that our lives are worth even less. This is not about economic relief for everyday Americans; it’s about maximizing profits for polluters at the expense of our families’ health and safety. We refuse to be silent while our children breathe in cancer-causing chemicals, while our communities bear the brunt of disasters made worse by deregulation. We will fight for our right to clean air, clean water, and a government that values people over polluters.”
— Cynthia P. Robertson, MSW, Executive Director, Micah Six Eight Mission
“If the Trump Administration was serious about Making America Healthy Again, they would be working to eliminate air pollution and exposure to toxic chemicals. These deregulations do the exact opposite, ensuring a dramatic increase in the risk of illness and death for many Americans. Ironically, some of the corporations who will profit the most from this harm are foreign-owned, while the jobs and economic prosperity promised by the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries consistently fail to materialize for American communities. The EPA has gone astray, intent on propping up polluters at the expense of our health and safety.”
— Paloma Henriques, Senior Petrochemical Campaigner, Friends of the Earth
“This deregulation represents a profound and calculated injustice. It deliberately sacrifices the health, well-being, and very future of Indigenous Peoples, frontline, and fenceline communities, all in the pursuit of short-term corporate gains. This reckless decision condemns not just our communities but all future generations to a devastating legacy of toxic pollution, harm, violence, and irreversible ecological devastation. The Environmental Protection Agency's complicity in this human rights crisis is not merely a policy failure; it is a moral outrage, a betrayal of its fundamental mandate to protect human life and the environment. By prioritizing profit over people, the EPA has abandoned its responsibility, normalizing the systemic environmental racism and entrenched poverty that forces our communities to bear the disproportionate burden of industrial harm. We cannot, and we must not allow this to stand. We owe our children and all life on Mother Earth a better world – a world where clean air, clean water, and a healthy environment are not privileges but fundamental rights.”
— Frankie Orona, Executive Director, Society of Native Nations
“Houston claims to be the ‘Energy Capital of the World,’ home to over half of the nation’s petrochemical capacity and over 500 toxic release sites. These industries and our state regulators have been unleashing their air pollution on Houstonians for decades; they do not need EPA’s help.. With these announced regulatory roll-backs, we know what happens next. Houstonians will continue to suffer the poor health outcomes of PM2.5 exposure and to evacuate, shelter-in-place, and even perish for chemical explosions. What we also know is that groups like ours, our partners, and our communities will never stray from our mission to protect air quality and public health. We will unleash our power, too.”
— Jennifer Hadayia, MPA, Executive Director, Air Alliance Houston
“EPA administrator Zeldin talks about savings for business but does not mention the terrible cost these policies will bring to our communities in terms of air and water pollution. Any thought that the polluting industries regulated by EPA will “do the right thing” and clean up after themselves is cancelled out by decades of evidence that they will do the exact opposite. These industries pollute exactly as much as they are allowed to and fight regulations on their pollution the whole way. This is not good government, this is a give-away to industry that will cost American taxpayers money, health, and well-being.”
— Sandy Field, PhD, Save Our Susquehanna, PA
"Without the support of the EPA, our community and many communities like ours will continue to suffer from underregulated industry pollution. The (now closed) EPA District 5 office that oversaw the entire Great Lakes region acted as our community's watchdog over EGLE, Michigan's environmental regulatory agency. For years EGLE neglected to fine polluters for hundreds of air quality violations in our community. The EPA assisted us when our own state regulatory agency would not or could not because of lack of funding, staffing, and regulatory authority. We are now left relying on an even more weakened state regulatory agency that is not equipped to protect human health or our environment."
— KT Morelli, Campaign Organizer, Breathe Free Detroit, Michigan
“Seemingly forgetting that “environment” is literally the first word in the name of the agency he runs, Administrator Lee Zeldin announced 30 agency actions to gut human and environmental health protections that already didn’t go far enough. This massive dereliction of duty is all about profits for polluters, while gaslighting the entire population that they are being protected while people are dying. Instead, this is a great “Go Back” to the 70s and its pervasive, toxic pollution will harm front and fenceline, Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities worst and first. But make no mistake, it will rob everyone of a safe and healthy environment and future. This administration has once again shown it is committed to sacrificing everything for its own and its funders’ enrichment.”
— Jessica Roff, Plastics & Petrochemicals Program Manager - US & Canada, GAIA (Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives)
“For the health and safety of all Americans, the U.S. Government needs to drastically ramp up—not loosen and eliminate—regulations that curb pollution. Pollution from plastic and fossil fuels is increasing rates of cancer, heart disease, hormone disruption, infertility, neurodegenerative disorders, and other serious health problems, especially in children. The current EPA's promises that deregulation will 'lower the costs' of living are unfounded; in fact, all Americans will pay for politicians' and corporations' greed with their health, and in some cases, their lives.”
— Julia Cohen, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Plastic Pollution Coalition
“EPA Administrator Zeldin has proposed the wholesale dismantling of environmental protections in America, through regulatory rollbacks that would increase pollution and endanger people and the planet. But making pronouncements does not change the law or erase the rules on the books. The agency cannot remove protections of clean air and water or eliminate controls on toxics by fiat, without due process, public comment and adequate justification. And the measures proposed are so facially at odds with the agency’s purpose that it’s inconceivable they could withstand scrutiny. More importantly, no action by this administration can erase the abundant facts, clear science, and indisputable evidence that fossil fuels are behind the planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change, and that certain industry practices harm people and the environment. If companies take Zeldin’s announcement as an invitation to return to dirtier and more dangerous operations, they do so with full knowledge of the harm that will ensue and they will be held accountable. The rule of law endures—not by the will of those in power, but by the vigilance of those committed to defending it. CIEL is ready to work with communities, advocates, and all who refuse to let this administration and the corporate greed it serves strip away these vital protections on which our lives and the lives of future generations depend.”
— Nikki Reisch, Director of Climate & Energy, Center for International Environmental Law
“The deregulation of the EPA is a devastating blow to public health, giving polluting industries free rein to poison our air, soil, and water. This is an attack on human rights. One that will further sacrifice the health of environmental justice communities, like in South Los Angeles, home to high rates of asthma, heart disease, and cancer. The message is clear: the EPA has chosen profit over people. While the EPA may no longer be protecting public health, we can.”
— Maro Kakoussian, Director of Climate & Health Programs, Physicians for Social Responsibility - Los Angeles
“This is infuriating news. Ohioans can easily recall the days when the Clean Water Act was passed, because the Cuyahoga River was so dirtied with oil and industrial pollution that it repeatedly caught fire and sparked public outrage. It is not only disheartening to see industry wheel us so far into the past, but once again demands public outcry for accountability. We deserve better, and so does our planet.”
— Vicky Abou-Ghalioum, Petrochemicals Organizer, Buckeye Environmental Network
“The attacks on clean water launched by Administrator Zeldin last week will leave our families, neighborhoods, and businesses more vulnerable to dangerous pollution in our drinking water, rivers, and streams. These dangers will only be made worse by EPA’s move to eliminate offices and staff focused on curbing the devastating and disproportionate burden of pollution in low-income communities and communities of color. Zeldin’s EPA is doubling down on policies that will make American families sicker, all just to help a handful of wealthy CEOs make more money by allowing them to pollute without limit.”
— Jacqueline Esposito, Advocacy Director, Waterkeeper Alliance
“People living near petrochemical plants and other polluting industries have never been protected enough from the harms these facilities inflict. EPA’s changes will amount to an unconscionable attack on our communities and environment for profit. The ‘protection’ part of EPA is being forcefully and unacceptably cast aside. We’ll keep fighting hard to get federal agencies back to protecting Americans and our planet, like they were created to do.”
— Julie Teel Simmonds, Senior Counsel, Center for Biological Diversity
“It is hard to imagine that we don’t all ultimately want the same things: clean water and air for our families and communities, sound policies that protect the resources that we ALL depend on for future survival, and safeguards to ensure that our most vulnerable populations are protected from toxic pollution. If we can agree that these values are shared, we must come together to talk about a roadmap, one that doesn’t disregard decades of history, or leave the fate of our health to market forces that time and time again favor short term gains over longer term benefits for humanity. The Trump Administration's massive deregulation of the EPA, our nation’s regulatory framework, is a short sighted approach that will result in such devastating long term impacts.”
– Anna Cummins, Executive Director, The 5 Gyres Institute
“The EPA’s mass deregulation is a betrayal of its fundamental purpose — protecting public health and the environment. By rolling back these critical safeguards, the agency is giving the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries a free pass to pollute, leaving communities across the country to bear the devastating consequences. In places already burdened by fracking and petrochemical development, this will mean more toxic air, more contaminated water, and more lives put at risk. The public deserves better than an EPA that prioritizes corporate profits over human health.”
— Shannon Smith, Executive Director, FracTracker Alliance
About BFFP: Break Free From Plastic is a global movement envisioning a future free from plastic pollution. Since its launch in 2016, more than 3,400 organizations and 14,000 individual supporters from around the world have joined the movement to demand massive reductions in single-use plastics and push for lasting solutions to the plastic pollution crisis. BFFP member organizations and individuals share the values of environmental protection and social justice and work together through a holistic approach to bring about systemic change. This means tackling plastic pollution across the whole plastics value chain – from extraction to disposal – focusing on prevention rather than cure and providing effective solutions. www.breakfreefromplastic.org.
