Press Release

December 28, 2018

EPA’s Proposed Weakening of Mercury Pollution Reduction Standards (MATS) Threatens Children’s and Women’s Health, and Great Lakes Fisheries

Environmental Protection Agency’s Proposed Weakening of Mercury Pollution Reduction Standards (MATS) Threatens Children’s and Women’s Health, and Great Lakes Fisheries

STATEMENT BY HOWARD A. LEARNER
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ENVIRONMENTAL LAW & POLICY CENTER

“The Trump EPA’s proposal to weaken mercury and air toxics pollution reduction standards threatens children’s health and the Great Lakes. State public health officials continue to issue ‘mercury advisories’ warning people, especially young children and pregnant women, to limit their intake of fish from most of the Great Lakes and inland lakes in the Midwest. Sadly, it’s not safe for many people to eat the fish that they catch in the Great Lakes.

The Trump EPA’s proposal undermines MATS by retroactively recalculating the costs and benefits of the rule, which most utilities have already fully implemented. The misguided proposed changes leave MATS legally vulnerable and foolishly make it harder to strengthen mercury pollution reduction standards in the future to better protect children’s and women’s health, and Great Lakes fisheries.

Mercury is a known neurotoxin that impairs fetal brain development when it gets into pregnant women’s bloodstreams and crosses the placental barrier. Most coal plants have already installed pollution control systems for mercury in response to the MATS rule that the U.S. EPA issued in 2011. The U.S. EPA should not reverse course and loosen the way co-benefits are analyzed in the future that could lead to softening future standards. Coal plants’ owners should continue to install and operate modern pollution control equipment to reduce mercury and other toxic air pollution. These are common sense safeguards.

The Trump EPA’s rollback skews the regulatory benefit-cost analysis by excluding the important real world co-benefits of reducing pollutants that harm public health and the environment. This flies in the face of sound benefit-cost analysis, and it comes at the expense of our children’s health.

The Trump EPA should not lose sight of its core mission, which includes protecting the public’s health from mercury and other dangerous air toxics.”

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