To Whom It May Concern:

We, the undersigned health experts, write to share our deep concern about the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Zeldin’s abandonment of the agency’s core mission to protect human health and the environment. One year in, it’s clear that Administrator Zeldin is either unable or unwilling to uphold his oath of office. He must go.

Administrator Zeldin is pursuing a deregulatory agenda that will result in a massive increase in health-damaging air pollution, toxic chemicals, and climate-heating greenhouse gases. And just last month, the administration laid bare its decision to no longer count the economic value of health benefits when setting Clean Air Act rules–refusing to acknowledge the value of lives saved, hospital visits avoided, and lost work and school days prevented. As health experts, we understand the impacts of this agenda not just because of the mountains of peer-reviewed research, but because we’ve seen the negative impact of pollution on our patients and communities firsthand. These actions put our patients’ lives in danger and will harm the health of people in the U.S. for generations. Some impacts of Administrator Zeldin’s deadly agenda will include:

More mercury from coal-fired power plants. Mercury is a potent neurotoxin that damages the developing fetal brain. 

More soot. Soot, or particle pollution is lethal because it can go from our lungs to our bloodstreams, into our hearts and into our brains, contributing to heart attacks and strokes. It’s also linked to the kinds of inflammation that cancer cells thrive on.

More toxic chemicals. Administrator Zeldin’s EPA is trying to make it easier for thousands of toxic chemicals— like PFAS chemicals and phthalates linked to cancers and hormone disruption—to get into our food, water, air, and the products we live with every single day.

More petrochemical and plastics pollution, Administrator Zeldin has paved the way for industrial polluters to receive unwarranted presidential exemptions from hazardous air pollutant safeguards, giving the nation’s largest petrochemical facilities, steel plants, and others “free passes” to pollute and damage our health.

More carbon and methane pollution. Administrator Zeldin is delaying methane standards and rescinding the Endangerment Finding and standards for vehicles, and power plant pollution which will increase the frequency and severity of climate disasters.

More smog and toxic tailpipe pollution from trucks, buses, and cars, thanks to his proposal to eliminate all U.S. limits on climate pollution from tailpipes reaching back more than 15 years.

This EPA’s actions to put polluters first, at the expense of our health, is dangerous and will be deadly: It will cause more asthma attacks, more lung damage in children, more pregnancy complications and premature births, more dementia, more cancer, more heart attacks and strokes, more mental health harms, and more premature deaths. Administrator Zeldin has abandoned his sworn duty and must be held accountable for his agenda.

EPA Administrator Zeldin must go.

Sincerely,