Opinion | Trump’s Environmental Agenda Is Actually Toxic

Amid the near daily announcement of new initiatives, two documents stand out in the Trump deregulatory agenda: the Unleashing American Energy executive order and the March 12 Zeldin announcement, “E.P.A. Launches Biggest Deregulatory Action in U.S. History.”

The word “health” appears only once in the 3,464-word Unleashing American Energy order and is in the title of a Biden executive order that Trump revoked. The words “safety” and “toxic” do not appear at all. Safety and health are not mentioned in the Zeldin announcement, and “toxic” appears only once in a call to reconsider the regulation “of Mercury and Air Toxics Standards that improperly targeted coal-fired power plants.”

In his announcement, Zeldin proudly said:

Today is the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen. We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, to unleash American energy, to bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more.

Alongside President Trump, we are living up to our promises to unleash American energy, lower costs for Americans, revitalize the American auto industry and work hand in hand with our state partners to advance our shared mission.

In his email, Landrigan described the probable consequences of some of the specific proposals in the Trump-Zeldin agenda:

The plan to reconsider Mercury and Air Toxic Standards for coal-fired power plants, if implemented, will result in increased atmospheric emissions of particulate air pollutants and mercury. The particulate pollutants will increase risk of stillbirths, low birth weight and asthma in American children and increase risk of heart disease and stroke in American adults. The increased mercury emissions will cause brain injury in American children, including children still in the womb who are affected through their mothers’ mercury exposure, and will result in decreased intelligence, shortening of attention span, and behavioral disruption.

Reconsideration of National Ambient Air Quality Standards for particulate matter (PM2.5) pollution, relaxation of vehicle emission standards and dismantling of efforts to produce more electric vehicles will all increase levels of air pollution. Like airborne emissions from power plants, these emissions will increase risk of stillbirths, low birth weight and asthma in children and of heart disease and stroke in American adults.

President Trump’s undoing of President Biden initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will result in increased global warming and accelerate the pace of climate change. More violent storms, more droughts, more fires and more floods will result. All of those events will increase risk of disease and death that will be most highly concentrated in vulnerable populations. These climate-related health impacts are already occurring now and, if not checked, will worsen in the future.

Linda S. Birnbaum, a former director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the national toxicology program at the N.I.H., wrote by email that she found Trump’s claimed goal of ridding the environment of toxins and keeping children healthy hard to believe “when he plans to cut the E.P.A. by 65 percent, including dismantling of their office of research and development.”

Trump’s policies, she wrote, will result in

the complete loss of our science leadership with the cuts to the N.I.H., National Science Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, etc.

N.I.H. is the largest funder of biomedical research in the world and has allowed the U.S. to dominate this arena. With the proposed 15 percent cuts to overhead, there will be much less research able to be conducted. Currently, universities are not making or are rescinding offers to graduate students and postdoctoral trainees, as well as not offering faculty positions.

I asked Birnbaum whether Trump policies threaten lives. “Absolutely,” she replied by email:

Clearly those with less resources are most at risk. Climate has huge impacts on health — people die during heat waves; crops have lower nutritional content; flooding brings molds and increases the risks of asthma; droughts impact crop production and livestock; the range of vectors of disease change — we may yet see malaria in Maine. The warmer climate also means more and extended use of pesticides.

Liz Hitchcock, the director of federal policy for Toxic-Free Future, a nonprofit organization, voiced particular concern over the administration’s delay of a “ban on a cancer-causing chemical called trichloroethylene (TCE).”

For decades, Hitchcock wrote by email, “releases of TCE have contaminated drinking water supplies across the United States: 18.4 million Americans are known to be exposed to TCE from 420-plus drinking water systems in 43 states.”