Americans to face more disease and death due to Trump’s air quality rollbacks, health experts warn

By Dana Drugmand

American families will face increasing rates of environmental-related illnesses and premature deaths, including lung and cardiovascular diseases, due to the Trump administration’s sweeping rollbacks of air quality regulations, health professionals warn.

The moves to slash roughly two dozen environmental and public health protections weaken rules dealing with a range of health threats, including mercury emissions from power plants and tailpipe pollution from vehicles.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced March 12 what the agency is labeling the biggest and greatest deregulatory push in US history.

“We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the US and more,” Zeldin said in the announcement. 

Industry trade groups applauded the EPA actions. The American Petroleum Institute said the Trump administration is “answering the call” for more “affordable, reliable and secure American energy,” while the American Chemistry Council said EPA’s plan to revisit soot standards will help “foster continued industry growth.”

“Sicker and poorer”

Public health and environmental experts, however, said the Trump administration is ignoring the enormous health and economic benefits that clean air and climate protections provide.

“If Zeldin’s deregulatory jihad succeeds, he will leave America a sicker and poorer place,” Joseph Goff, former assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, said in a statement.

A September 2024 report from the Environmental Protection Network – a group of former EPA staff – found that air pollution regulations issued during the Biden administration would avoid over 100 million asthma attacks and save over 200,000 lives through 2050 while delivering over $250 billion in health and environmental benefits annually. New rules from Biden’s EPA to reduce carbon emissions and other air pollutants from power plants were estimated to result in the avoidance of 1,200 premature deaths, 870 hospital and emergency room visits, 1,900 cases of asthma onset and 360,000 cases of asthma symptoms by 2035.

“The Trump administration’s agenda seeks to roll back environmental regulations that are proven to have saved countless lives and prevented many illnesses, disabilities and hospitalizations,” said Ted Schettler, a physician and science director of the Science and Environmental Health Network. “The predictable increased costs of illness and added suffering will be borne by individuals, families, and communities across the country.”

The list of rules and standards on EPA’s chopping block include air quality standards for fine particulate matter (soot) that can lodge deep in the lungs and cause respiratory ailments, multiple national emission standards for hazardous air pollutants, mercury and air toxic standards and wastewater regulations on coal-fired power plants, Clean Air Act regulations on the oil and gas industry, limits on greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector  and from automobiles, a rule requiring highly hazardous industrial facilities to prevent and plan for chemical disasters, the social cost of carbon and the greenhouse gas reporting program, and more.

“Killing kids”

During Trump’s first term, the EPA pursed a similar agenda rolling back or attempting to reverse over 100 environmental regulations, said Phil Landrigan, a pediatrician and public health physician and director of the global public health program at Boston College.

An analysis he and colleagues conducted of the public health impacts of those actions found that they resulted in about 20,000 additional deaths, Landrigan said. The most air pollution-related deaths during Trump’s first term occurred in “red” states that voted for Trump, as these states tend to have weaker state programs for public health and environmental protection. 

“The downstream consequences of these actions are more pollution, more disease, and more death,” he said. “It’s important to point out, for an administration that portrays itself as pro-life, a group within the population that will suffer most seriously from those impacts are pregnant women, their infants in the womb, and young kids. Something that is portrayed as freeing up industry actually ends up killing kids. That is the bottom line.”

One action the first Trump administration did not undertake, but that the new administration is pursuing, is attempting to scrap EPA’s 2009 endangerment finding for greenhouse gases. This finding underpins EPA’s legal obligation to regulate climate pollution under the Clean Air Act.

“I’ve been told the endangerment finding is considered the holy grail of the climate change religion,” Zeldin said in a video message accompanying his announcement. He said he intends to reconsider all rules that stem from that science-based finding, such as standards limiting tailpipe pollution from cars and trucks.

Moves to roll back clean vehicle standards would expose American families to “significantly more toxic air pollution from vehicle exhaust, exacerbating the risks of asthma, lung disease, and heart attacks,” Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments Executive Director Katie Huffling said in a statement.

The American Lung Association and the American Public Health Association (APHA) also issued statements criticizing Zeldin’s massive deregulatory announcements. American Lung Association called EPA’s plan a “tragedy for health” and APHA said the rollbacks will lead to increased pollution that will “continue to harm communities across the US.”