House Passes New Attack on Clean Air Protections
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The House of Representatives has passed Senate Joint Resolution 31, which would allow more cancer-causing hazardous air pollution from more than 1,800 industrial facilities and evasion from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) longstanding clean air safeguards. The measure passed 216–212, with one Republican joining all Democrats in opposition.
The Congressional Review Act measure would overturn an EPA safeguard that prevented industrial facilities from scaling back pollution controls with respect to carcinogens and neurotoxins like lead, mercury, dioxins, and arsenic. If signed by the president, this resolution would mark the first time that Congress and the president have overturned an EPA safeguard against hazardous air pollution, allowing industrial facilities to increase hazardous emissions.
A slim House of Representatives majority disapproved a 2024 EPA rule that had prevented industrial facilities emitting the Clean Air Act’s seven worst supertoxins—including lead, mercury, dioxins, and PCBs—from escaping limits the facilities have met for decades.
The following reaction is from John Walke, senior attorney and director of federal clean air at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council):
“For the first time, a sharply partisan Congress voted to abolish EPA safeguards against cancer-causing hazardous air pollution. This unprecedented weakening of clean air protections will directly harm public health, leading to more cancer, birth defects, brain damage, and premature deaths.
“If the president signs the measure, more than 1,800 industrial facilities nationwide can increase hazardous air pollution like lead, mercury, dioxins, PCBs, and arsenic, scale back pollution controls, and escape compliance with decades-old protections.
“We intend to reactivate our legal challenge to a 2020 Trump administration amnesty rule that allowed this retreat. We will fight for Americans’ right to clean air if the president and a narrow congressional majority will not.”
NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) is an international nonprofit environmental organization with more than 3 million members and online activists. Established in 1970, NRDC uses science, policy, law and people power to confront the climate crisis, protect public health and safeguard nature. NRDC has offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Beijing and Delhi (an office of NRDC India Pvt. Ltd).