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Toxic Power: How Power Plants Contaminate Our Air and States
Presentation

The EPA recently finalized the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), requiring significant reductions in mercury and air toxic emissions, inlcuding those from the electric sector, the largest industrial source of toxic air pollution in the United States. Despite the significant benefit to public health, power companies and some in Congress continue to fight against the standards.

Benchmarking Air Emissions of the 100 Largest Electric Power Producers in the U.S., 2012
Report

The Benchmarking project uses public data to compare the emissions performance of the 100 largest power producers in the United States, and discusses market trends affecting the electric generating sector, including trends in fuel prices, technology developments, and environmental regulations.

Testimony of David D. Doniger, Policy Director and Senior Attorney, Climate and Clean Air Program, Natural Resources Defense Council
Testimony

Hearing on the U.S. Agricultural Sector Relief Act of 2012 Subcommittee on Energy and Power-Committee on Energy and Commerce-House of Representatives-July 18, 2012 Get document in pdf.

The Price of Pollution Politics
Eight Companies Attacking Clean Air Standards…and the Toll on America’s Health
Report

A handful of companies are spending millions to finance an assault on clean air -- lobbying and litigating to block, weaken and delay clean air standards that would save lives and protect Americans' health from the power sector's dangerous and deadly air pollution.

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Documents Tagged air pollution in All Sections

U.S. Latinos and Air Pollution
A Call to Action
Report

Air pollutants surround us wherever we are. On a daily basis, we are exposed to carbon, lead, nitrogen oxides, ozone, soot, and hundreds of other air pollutants emitted from our cars, factories, power plants, and heavy machinery. At certain levels, many of these pollutants become highly harmful to human health, and Latinos are especially vulnerable because they live in regions with the worst air contamination.

Gasping for Air: Toxic Pollutants Continue to Make Millions Sick and Shorten Lives
Fact Sheet

Forty years of Clean Air Act programs have brought steady and life-saving improvements to our air quality. Despite this important progress, however, many fossil fuel power plants, boilers, and cement plants continue to treat our skies like sewers. From soot to toxic heavy metals, dirty coal and fossil fuel smoke stacks emit vast quantities of dangerous pollutants that are well known to cause disease and death. The total cost of these health impacts is more than $100 billion per year. Until stronger standards to reduce toxic emissions from coal and fossil fuel burning industries are implemented, harmful toxic chemicals will continue to be released into the air of our communities, threatening public health. Get document in pdf.

The Clean Air Act at 40
A Clear Track Record of Success
Legislative Analysis

The Clean Air Act is a genuine American success story and one of the most effective tools in U.S. history for protecting public health. It has sharply reduced pollution from automobiles, industrial smokestacks, utility plants, and major sources of toxic chemicals and particulate matter since its passage in 1970. The law has saved tens of thousands of lives each year by reducing harmful pollutants that cause or contribute to asthma, emphysema, heart disease, and other potentially lethal respiratory ailments. Despite continued gloom-and-doom forecasts by polluters and their corporate lobbyists, the Clean Air Act has consistently provided huge health, economic, and environmental benefits to our communities over the past four decades that far outweigh any small costs associated with controlling life-threatening toxic pollution.

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The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative is a Model for the Nation
Overview

In the absence of a comprehensive national energy policy, ten northeastern and mid-Atlantic states are working together to shift their energy dollars to cleaner, local, job-creating resources through the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, RGGI.

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