Image by Greenpeace
The module essays you read in this curriculum were written in 2024 when the Joseph Biden U.S. Presidential administration was making huge advancements in protecting our Environmental Health and directing significant resources to communities for Environmental Justice.
As I write this addendum, all the decades of work of scientists, chemists, business people, human rights advocates, and others have built to protect Environmental Health and Environmental Justice is being destroyed. The Center for Biological Diversity is one of the groups reporting on Trump’s actions here.
Now
There has been so much dismantling of environmental health and environmental justice protections during the current U.S. Congress and presidential administration that it is impossible to detail each and every one. To give but one example, I want to share this news item from October 24, 2026 from the Parnas Perspective, which has turned out to be a media venue where whistleblowers share their knowledge of what is happening.
“Former industry lobbyists Trump installed at the EPA then worked from the inside to gut the rules entirely. Aaron Szabo, a former lobbyist for medical device trade group AdvaMed who helped write Project 2025’s EPA chapter, was put in charge of the agency’s air office and helped handle the waiver requests. In one meeting, chemical industry executives set the agenda and a chemistry council lobbyist effectively ran it, as the industry demanded the EPA scrap its cancer findings and drop requirements for monitoring pollution at plant fence lines. On Aug. 13, Szabo killed the fence-line monitoring mandate the same day EPA staff warned him it would be “difficult to justify” in court, and he has since resigned to join a law firm that has represented industry groups challenging the rules. Meanwhile, AdvaMed gave $125,000 to Trump’s inauguration fund and $1 million to MAGA Inc., then bragged to members that its lobbying paid off, writing, “Membership has its privileges.” The White House says the waivers were needed to protect American manufacturing from “crushing Biden-era regulations.”
Communities living next to these plants are paying the price. In Port Neches, Texas, a chemical plant within sight of a middle school has had more than 500 malfunctions or failures releasing pollution since 2003, and EPA testing found benzene levels nearly 50 times higher than the plant’s own estimates. The EPA concluded that one in 500 people living near the plant for most of their lives was likely to develop cancer from ethylene oxide exposure, 20 times the agency’s usual acceptable risk level, a danger better pollution controls could have cut by 95 percent. Outside Richmond, Virginia, a sterilizer that received a waiver leaked 580 pounds of ethylene oxide into nearby neighborhoods in April, more than its permit allows in an entire year. Near Pittsburgh, U.S. Steel says it won’t invest in new pollution controls at its Clairton plant while the rules are under review, as neighbors like Melanie Meade, whose sister died of cancer, say they can’t afford to move. “Making things great again, I thought that meant making all things great, including our health,” said one Texas man who voted for Trump in 2016.”:
June 17, 2025
Rob Bonta, the California State Attorney General, has led a total of 12 State Attorneys General in a fight to save Environmental Justice protections. Read more here.
Here are some other organizations that are monitoring Trump policies that harm our environment, our health, and our future. If you are feeling in despair and powerless, a good antidote is to find an organization that is doing the work that resonates with you and dive in! It is all hands on deck to protect our environmental health and to secure environmental justice!
If you know of additional resources, please let me know at eh.ej.oer@gmail.com and I will add them to this page.
Instructors and students: Having students research changes in regulatory and legislative rules for protecting our environmental and environmental justice might be great assignments.
Organizations
Environmental Working Group (EWG)
Friends of the Earth, monitoring attacks on the National Environmental Protection Act.
Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is watching Trump’s efforts to open up public lands for private profit, such as mining for uranium in the Grand Canyon.
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) supports government employees who stand up to environmentally harmful policies.
Southern Environmental Law Center, focusing on Southern U.S. States and environmental protection.