Further legislation that puts people, families, and communities first.
Heat Kills—Congress Must Protect Workers
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Climate change is here, and unrelenting heat puts workers across the country at risk. A lack of federal mandated cooling protections such as access to water, rest, and shade means workers continue to get sick or die because of extreme heat. Every worker deserves to come home at the end of the shift, especially when climate-change driven heat is record-shattering.
We need Congress to support and pass legislation to protect workers from killer heat—take action today.
If we don't act on climate change, extreme heat would cause tens of millions of US outdoor workers to risk losing a collective $55.4 billion in earnings each year by midcentury, a peer-reviewed Union of Concerned Scientists analysis shows.
Even with bold action to limit pollution, outdoor workers would face severe and rising risks from extreme heat—and that's why we must act now. Workers must be able to access basic, life-saving measures without fear of retaliation or docked pay. The Asunción Valdivia Heat Illness, Injury, and Fatality Prevention Act will hold employers accountable to keep workers safe from extreme heat and prevent more senseless deaths.
Tell your members of Congress to support and pass the Asunción Valdivia Heat Illness, Injury, and Fatality Prevention Act.
Classify Heat as a Major Disaster, Save People From Deadly Heat and Smoke
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Last year record-breaking heatwaves and toxic wildfires devastated U.S. cities and ecosystems. More than 2,300 people died heat-related deaths. Thousands more suffered from respiratory distress.
We're about to enter another summer of dangerous heat and wildfire smoke events — but the government still doesn't classify these events as major disasters. To save lives and break the cycle of fossil-fueled climate disasters, the United States needs to take heat and smoke seriously.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is the country's premier disaster response agency. FEMA has the power to classify extreme heat and wildfire smoke as major disasters, which would unlock federal support — including financial support — for resource-strapped neighborhoods, cities, counties, and states. The resulting funds could help build life-saving cooling centers for people who can't keep their homes cool, install indoor air-filtration systems to keep out toxic smoke, and break the cycle of fossil-fueled disasters with rooftop and community solar systems.
Urge FEMA to act quickly and classify extreme heat and wildfire smoke as major disasters.
Build a clean and equitable electricity grid
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As we move towards a 100% clean energy future, we need to urgently build more power lines to move clean energy across the country.
Thousands of renewable energy projects in various stages of development are waiting years for approval to connect to the U.S. electric grid. More than 2,000 gigawatts of solar, wind, and battery storage projects are languishing in the queue, according to the Department of Energy. That’s more power than the U.S. currently generates. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) recently enacted significant reforms that will enable new transmission, connect clean energy projects to the grid, and ultimately result in cheaper electricity and a more reliable grid, even in extreme weather exacerbated by climate change.
Now FERC must continue to accelerate transmission infrastructure in an equitable way, with policies that support the rapid buildout of a clean, reliable, and affordable energy system across the country.
FERC has broad authority over the electricity sector, regulating the interstate transmission of electricity, among other things. FERC’s decisions drive investment, shape planning, and will determine how quickly the United States transitions to clean energy — or how much longer we rely on burning fossil fuels.
In 2023, Earthjustice and our partners released a set of solutions outlining how the agency can address the transmission bottleneck using its existing legal authorities. FERC enacted many of these reforms to strengthen transmission planning and interconnection and improve the siting and approval of high-priority projects. FERC must continue to implement reforms while preventing harm to impacted communities and making sure they are a part of the planning process from the beginning.
Join us in calling on FERC to continue to implement these reforms.
Tell the EPA to ban a significant source of lead now
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Regulators are ignoring a significant source of lead exposure that threatens public health and harms our environment.
Lead wheel weights —the unassuming metal bars added to your wheels by your local mechanic when rebalancing your tires—are a big source of lead in our communities. These weights fall off wheels and are worn down into dust, which introduces lead into our urban landscapes and waterways.
Join Earthjustice clients who are urgently challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s prolonged inaction on banning lead wheel weights. Tell the EPA to ban this source of lead pollution now.
Research links exposure to lead, especially among children who are most susceptible, to devastating health consequences. Even in small amounts, lead can cause irreversible neurodevelopmental harm in children, and in adults, low-level lead exposure is linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and mortality from all sources.
Federal action to regulate lead wheel weights is necessary to uphold this Administration’s stated commitment to protect children from lead. Nine states have led the way by regulating the sale, use, and installation of lead wheel weights within their borders. But a state-by-state approach cannot address the national market for lead wheel weights.
Alternatives to lead wheel weights exist and are readily available. There is no excuse for allowing lead wheel weights to continue polluting our communities and our environment. It’s time to hold the EPA accountable for protecting our health and the health of our environment. Demand that the EPA fulfills its duty and protects public health by banning lead wheel weights now and secure a lead-free future for everyone living in the U.S.
Residents in this community are still dealing with the aftermath of a toxic train derailment
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In February 2023, a train carrying a petrochemical called vinyl chloride, which companies use to make plastic, derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, exposing residents to toxic gases linked to serious health risks such as cancer and contaminating the air, soil, and a major water source used by millions of people. Now, a year later, residents are still suffering from the aftermath of the toxic train derailment.
This disaster was – and is – one of the worst in U.S. history.
Show your support for residents in East Palestine, Ohio, and surrounding communities by calling on the Biden administration to sign the pending disaster declaration in East Palestine. This would enable the federal government to give residents and small businesses the financial relief, health services, and comprehensive environmental testing that they desperately require.
Today, businesses have closed, gardens rot, and many can’t access independent testing to see what toxins are in their home, food, and water. Previously healthy residents now suffer from bloody noses, burning throats, nausea, and in some cases, life-threatening health conditions. Scientists say the poisonous chemicals could stick around for decades.
To make matters worse, the clean-up effort has been led by Norfolk Southern – the same company responsible for the disaster. This is the same company that has recently lobbied against stronger federal rules for trains carrying hazardous chemicals.
Government officials should listen to the people most impacted regarding the help they need to recover from this chemical disaster. Tell the Biden administration to use its power to declare the train derailment in East Palestine a disaster so that the community can access much-needed resources.
Tell the EPA to keep this toxic pesticide out of our food
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Children and farmworker communities will yet again be in harm’s way, as a harmful pesticide is allowed to return to the market. For nearly half of a century, U.S. staple foods such as apples, cherries, peaches, and citrus were sprayed with chlorpyrifos (pronounced: klawr-pir-uh-fos), a dangerous pesticide that poisons farmworkers and in even smaller doses harms the developing brains of children. In 2021, thanks to a court win for Earthjustice and its clients, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned all food uses of chlorpyrifos. Unfortunately, that ban didn’t last. After a lawsuit from Gharda, a chemical company, and agri-business groups, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals revoked the ban and ordered EPA to reconsider some food uses. Tell the EPA to protect children from neurodevelopmental harm and put the chlorpyrifos ban back in place.
Based on an extensive body of peer-reviewed science, the EPA and its Scientific Advisory Panel have repeatedly found that chlorpyrifos harms the developing brain at exposures below what EPA has allowed. In the 2021 ruling in Earthjustice’s lawsuit, the 9th Circuit Court directed the EPA to end food uses of chlorpyrifos based on these findings unless it can affirmatively ensure children would be protected. Gharda and the agri-business groups that appealed the 2021 ban and obtained the 8th Circuit Court ruling this year are relying on a 2020 EPA proposal that fails to protect children from learning disabilities and behavioral disorders and cannot be pursued consistent with EPA’s past findings and the 9th Circuit’s 2021 ruling.
This decades-long fight is an indictment of the systems we have in place to protect public health. We’ve known for well over a decade that chlorpyrifos and other organophosphates harm children’s brain development. With the ban overturned and sent back to EPA for a do-over, we must fight this battle again. Our children are too precious to allow them to be exposed to a dangerous pesticide that could subject them to lifelong learning disabilities. It’s time for the EPA to act on the science and ban chlorpyrifos.
Chlorpyrifos is in our bodies, water, air, and food, and it’s not going to get any better without decisive action from the federal government. Our government has a responsibility to protect us — as the EPA did when it banned chlorpyrifos from our food in 2021. We must pressure the EPA to follow the science and reinstate the chlorpyrifos ban. Join us in telling Administrator Regan that the EPA must follow the law and the science and put the chlorpyrifos food ban back in place.
Get these hormone-disrupting chemicals out of our food
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If you think the plastics industry shouldn’t be allowed to contaminate our food with toxic chemicals, we need you to let the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) know you disagree with its decision taking the chemical industry’s side on this.
Earlier, the FDA refused to ban phthalates (pronounced THAL-ates), a type of petrochemical used in packaging that leaches into food and causes serious harm to human health. No matter how careful you are about what you eat, your food likely contains phthalates because the FDA allows these chemicals to be used for producing and packaging food.
Phthalates are linked to birth defects, infertility, and miscarriage. They can also harm children’s brain development, leading to reduced IQ and attention and behavior disorders. Babies and young children are most vulnerable to harm from phthalates and suffer the greatest exposure since they eat and drink more per pound of body weight. And people of color in all age groups, as well as economically insecure people, face disproportionately high levels of exposure to phthalates, placing them at heightened risks of serious health problems from phthalates.
Given the well-established — and growing — body of scientific studies linking phthalate exposure through food and drinks to serious health harms, Earthjustice and our partners asked the FDA to ban phthalates in food packaging and production materials in 2016. After years of stalling by the FDA, Earthjustice and our partners sued to force an end to the agency’s harmful inaction. The FDA had ample time and overwhelming evidence that allowing phthalates to get into our food is causing life-altering harm to people’s health — but when compelled to finally make a decision, it chose to let corporations keep adding these toxic chemicals to our food.
We deserve better from the Agency charged with ensuring our food is safe from toxic chemicals. Urge FDA Commissioner Robert Califf to reconsider this disastrous decision and ban phthalates from food packaging.
Ban these dangerous pesticides
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Organophosphates are a widely used class of pesticides commonly found in our drinking water and on our produce, including leafy greens, berries, and fruits. People living near fields where organophosphate pesticides are sprayed can become sick from just breathing the air. Workers are the most at risk from exposure on the job, plus increased contamination of their drinking water and food. The only way to protect people is to ban organophosphates.
Organophosphates are acutely neurotoxic. They make people sick with symptoms like headaches, nausea, dizziness, breathing difficulties, and at very high exposures even seizures and death. Even more troubling, children are at risk of reduced IQ, autism, and attention deficit disorders at very low levels of exposure.
The EPA has a legal and moral obligation to protect farmworkers, children and communities. We are going to do everything in our power to hold them accountable. Join us in continuing the fight by telling the EPA to ban organophosphates.
Tell Congress to ban organophosphates
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Our food system exploits the earth and poisons the farmworkers who keep everyone fed — but it doesn’t have to be that way. One small step Congress could take would be to ban organophosphates, a class of neurotoxic chemicals that are widely used as pesticides, in food production. Join us in telling your representative to support a ban on organophosphates.
Organophosphates are acutely neurotoxic — meaning that people who are exposed at high doses over a brief period can experience severe neurological symptoms. For children, even low levels of exposure have been linked to reduced IQ, loss of working memory, and attention deficit disorders.
In late 2021, Earthjustice filed a petition to ban organophosphates and two years later we have no indication that the EPA will follow through and implement this common-sense ban. It took us 15 years of advocacy — filing lawsuits, fighting delays, and making public comments — to get the EPA to stop dragging its feet on the use of chlorpyrifos on food, one type of organophosphate, and we expect to face the same resistance moving forward. In fact, EPA just announced its new approach to organophosphates, which will weaken protections for children based on new tests that the agency’s own Scientific Advisory Panel found are inadequate for determining whether these dangerous chemicals would cause learning disabilities.
But the EPA is just one avenue for change — Congress also has the responsibility to do right by the farmworkers and food eaters (that’s everyone) that are exposed to organophosphates. A bill was just reintroduced in the House of Representatives that would ban organophosphates in food (which is the vast majority of uses), and we need your help to advocate for its passage.
Rep. Nydia Velazquez (NY-07) reintroduced H.R. 5554, the Ban All Neurotoxic Organophosphate Pesticides (BAN OPs) From Our Food Act — and it would be a huge victory for public health. Join us in calling on your representative to cosponsor the bill.
No one is safe from organophosphate exposure. Farmworkers tasked with applying organophosphate pesticides are at the greatest risk, and farmworker advocacy groups have long fought to ban these toxic chemicals because of this. Organophosphate exposure isn’t limited to the farm — it lingers on produce like leafy greens and fruit and contaminates drinking water. People living near fields where organophosphate pesticides are used also experience dangerous levels of oral and skin exposure.
The only way to eliminate continued exposure is to ban all organophosphates as quickly as possible — and we’re going to need your help to make that happen. Urge your representative to support the organophosphate ban.
Support the EPA’s proposed ban of this cancer-causing chemical
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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed a ban on a chemical associated with fetal heart defects, increased risks of developing Parkinson’s Disease, and cancer – but industry is fighting to weaken the EPA’s proposal.
Trichloroethylene (TCE) is a highly toxic solvent commonly used in stain removers, degreasers, and a broad range of industrial processes and consumer products like paints and auto brake cleaners. This widespread use has contaminated drinking water supplies for 19 million people and is known to remain in soil and groundwater for long periods of time.
In Tucson, Arizona, high levels of TCE were found in the drinking water system of communities on the city’s south side, near an airport where the solvent was used to clean planes nearby. Many residents who drank the contaminated water developed leukemia and liver, kidney, and immune issues.
At Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, the use and release of TCE at a marine base contaminated drinking water supplies for between 500,000 and 1 million service members, their families, and other local residents. Veterans stationed at that base experienced a 70 percent greater risk of Parkinson’s disease than those stationed elsewhere, and their children faced increased risks of leukemia, lymphoma and neural tube defects.
Despite its devastating impacts, TCE remains in widespread production and use, with more than 150 million pounds manufactured or imported in the United States each year.
Under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the EPA is using its authority to protect the the public from chemicals’ unreasonable risks. The agency is working to finalize the rule but the chemical industry is fighting to weaken and delay that rule, leaving the public in harm’s way.
This proposed ban would save lives and prevent widespread suffering for workers, consumers, and communities across the country. It’s time for the EPA to finish the job and ban TCE once and for all, with protections for all impacted communities while the chemical is being phased out.
Electrify the school bus
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What if schoolkids could ride a magic carpet to school — swift, smooth, silent, with no tailpipe and no exhaust fumes? Alas, magic carpets don’t exist anywhere except in cartoons — but electric school buses do, and they come pretty close. School districts around the U.S. are starting to convert their fleets from dirty diesel buses to pollution-free electric ones, sparking a transformation in how 26 million of the country’s schoolkids get to school every day. You can help accelerate this progress.
Federal climate bills recently passed made billions available for electric school buses, putting school districts in a prime position to move ahead in electrifying their fleets. This has been a massive boon for district’s that have taken advantage of it, but there are two key ways the program can be improved moving forward.
First, the government needs to prioritize money for school districts where kids are breathing the dirtiest air. Diesel exhaust produces some of the dirtiest, most toxic pollution in existence that fouls the air in our neighborhoods and directly hurts kids riding in diesel buses.
Children are particularly vulnerable to harm from air pollution. Their lungs aren’t fully developed, and they tend to be outside and active more than adults — meaning they breathe in more of whatever junk is in the air. Research shows that children who grow up in more polluted areas are at greater risk for reduced lung growth, from which they may never recover. The average loss of lung function is about equal to growing up in a home with parents who smoke.
Additionally, the EPA needs to ensure the program does not continue to subsidize combustion buses. Right now, school districts can purchase buses powered by propane or methane gas — locking communities into further pollution. Propane and methane gas engines perform equal to or worse than diesel when it comes to health-harming air pollution. Combustion engine buses — whether they run on diesel or on methane gas — pump out pollution that hurts our lungs and cooks our planet’s climate.
It’s time for school buses to move into the 21st century. The technology is here now to replace dirty diesel school buses with something that truly is almost magic — clean, efficient, better for our kids’ health and able to save money for school districts and local communities.
You can help out by telling the EPA to prioritize clean, electric school buses for districts where kids breathe the dirtiest air in the country.
One step closer to getting lead out of our drinking water
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It’s 2024 — but millions of people across the country still drink water that passes through lead pipes, putting countless communities at risk of harmful lead contamination. After decades of community advocacy and lawsuits filed on behalf of multiple organizations and states, including Earthjustice clients, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has finally proposed changes to the Lead and Copper Rule (LCR), which regulates how water systems handle lead in water in according with the Safe Drinking Water Act. But we need to keep the pressure up to make sure the final rule is as strong as possible. Urge the EPA to adopt provisions that will help remove lead from drinking water, and to strengthen the weaker parts of the rule.
Lead service lines naturally corrode when water flows through them. This corrosion causes toxic lead to leach into our faucet water. Exposure to low levels of lead presents significant health risks. Lead is especially dangerous for children, infants, and fetuses. Even in small amounts, it can cause permanent and irreversible harm to the central nervous system, resulting in learning difficulties, hearing and speech impediments, developmental delays, and other lifelong impairments. In adults, exposure can lead to cardiovascular disease, decreased kidney function, and miscarriage.
And yet, even though Congress banned the installation of lead pipes in 1986, there are 9 to 12 million lead pipes in use according to EPA. Water to millions of people is still delivered through them,– which disproportionately impacts communities of color – the same communities that also are more likely to be exposed to other pollutants. Thankfully, the new rule requires replacement of all lead pipelines in ten years for most water systems, lowers the levels at which water utilities must take other actions to address lead in drinking water, and requires improved water testing. These are welcome changes for communities dealing with lead in water.
However, we need EPA to improve its final rule to ensure that the cities with the most lead service lines don’t receive lenient timelines – under the rule, places like Chicago would still have 40 years rather than 10 to replace all their lines. EPA should also ensure that those replacement lines are not made of plastics (and especially not PVC) – the creation of which devastates communities – but instead made from copper. We also need to push EPA to require utilities to pay for lead service line replacement, so that lower wealth families dealing with exposure don’t get stuck with toxic lead lines while affluent communities get safe water.
Finally, it is not just families in homes dealing with this crisis: children in schools are exposed to lead contamination because the water infrastructure in many schools and childcare centers is decades old and in desperate need of safe, lead-free pipes and fixtures. This is why it is crucial for EPA’s rule to focus on the installation of filters to prevent our kids from being exposed to lead at school.
Urge the EPA to be bold and quickly finalize a stronger rule that will fulfill this administration’s goal of removing all lead service lines in America in ten years, and do so without throwing low-wealth communities under the bus. Urge EPA to strengthen the weaker parts of this rule.
We need common-sense safety solutions for trains carrying hazardous materials
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In 2012, a train carrying a petrochemical called vinyl chloride, an input in making plastic, derailed in New Jersey, releasing 23,000 gallons into the air. A decade later, a train carrying the same toxic chemical derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, exposing residents to toxic gases linked to serious health harm and contaminating the air, soil, and a major water source used by millions of people.
The Department of Transportation, the federal agency that oversees our country’s railroads, can strengthen safety requirements that prevent these types of disasters. Urge Transportation Secretary Buttigieg to write commonsense safety rules for trains carrying hazardous materials.
Petrochemicals are toxic chemicals derived from oil and gas that are used to make paint, adhesives, plastics, and more. As the U.S. shifts to clean energy, fossil fuel companies are turning to petrochemicals to protect their profits. Vinyl chloride has been linked to deadly diseases like liver, brain, and lung cancers. Short-term exposure to high levels can cause dizziness, drowsiness, fatigue, and headaches. And vinyl chloride is extremely volatile. When trains carrying these hazardous and carcinogenic chemicals derail, explosions can happen, contaminating nearby waterways, soil, and air.
For years, the railroads have fought all kinds of basic safety regulations to keep spending at a minimum, even if it means risking chemical disasters that can irreversibly harm human health, animals, and the environment. A decade ago, Earthjustice and its clients sought to modernize braking systems on trains carrying explosive crude oil, and yet even that narrow safety measure was repealed. When it comes to the transport of hazardous and flammable cargo, we need strong regulations that will protect the health and safety of communities.
Join Earthjustice and our clients to call on the Department of Transportation to modernize the federal rail brake systems required for all trains carrying explosively toxic materials. Let the agency know that you are following their actions closely and that they must act on the rulemaking process to protect communities and the environment.
We All Have the Right to Breathe
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Take a breath. Does the air feel fresh? Clean? If so, be thankful, because that isn’t always the case. For more than 40 years, the Clean Air Act has fostered steady progress in reducing air pollution, allowing Americans to breathe easier and live healthier. But for many, air pollution still remains a public health threat.
Many of the protective standards have become outdated or are years overdue. The EPA and the White House are responsible to set strong protections under the Clean Air Act using the latest scientific findings that reduce pollution and save lives.
The EPA needs to move forward on overdue clean air protections that cut dangerous carbon pollution from power plants, clean up smog and haze, reduce toxic emissions and provide cleaner gasoline. These clean air standards will prevent illnesses like asthma attacks, heart disease, and even premature death and address the problems contributing to climate change and superstorms like Hurricane Sandy.
Earthjustice uses the power of the law to hold the government accountable for clean air protections. But our victories in court are made stronger when the people demand strong protections.
Please take a moment to write the Biden Administration and tell them that strengthening clean air protections and reducing carbon pollution is important to you!
Protect Indigenous lands
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Far too often, projects that affect Native American lands, waters, and cultural resources begin construction without proper consent, forcing tribal communities to the front lines to fight on everyone’s behalf for what should already be protected by law. Tell the Biden administration to fully recognize the rights of tribal nations and Indigenous peoples under tribal, U.S., and international law.
Earthjustice clients take on this fight every day to protect their sacred sites and ancestral homelands from destructive mining and fossil fuel projects. In Michigan and Wisconsin, the Bay Mills Indian Community and the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa are fighting to prevent the dangerous Line 5 oil pipeline from destroying their sacred waters, their economic livelihoods, and their treaty-protected rights to hunt, fish, and harvest wild rice. In Arizona, the Hualapai Tribe is facing rampant mineral extraction that could permanently damage their sacred hot spring. Further south, the Tohono O’odham Nation, Pascua Yaqui Tribe, and Hopi Tribe continue to fend off the open-pit Copper World Complex mine that would destroy their ancestral lands.
We must protect the most sacred places where Indigenous peoples pray, gather traditional foods and medicines, get drinking water, and visit to remind themselves of the ways their ancestors lived.
We are in an environmental, climate, and racial justice crisis. Indigenous peoples care for and protect 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity — environmental advocacy cannot succeed without Indigenous rights and leadership.
We call on the Biden administration to build on his 2022 memorandum on consultation by issuing an executive order directing all federal agencies to require the engagement and the Free, Prior, and Informed Consent of affected Tribal Nations early in the planning process and before a project is approved.
Tribal Nations must be part of the decision-making process. No more oil pipelines threatening water supplies without the consent of tribes. No more oil and gas drilling in ancient burial sites without tribal permission. No more large-scale mining projects without tribes’ participation in planning and consent.
The U.S. must uphold the rights of Tribal Nations and Indigenous peoples to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent, as set forth by the United Nations.
Biden administration: Follow through on your environmental justice commitments
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For too long, our government and the fossil fuel and chemical industries have perpetuated systemic racism by disproportionately exposing communities of color, Indigenous communities, and economically disadvantaged communities to the highest levels of toxic air and water pollution. Meanwhile, the same communities often don’t have access to affordable energy, transportation, and housing. Those most targeted by these unjust practices are also on the front lines of more powerful storms and floods, intense heat waves, deadly wildfires, devastating droughts, and other threats from the climate crisis. We need bold and concrete solutions to rebuild our country in a sustainable and equitable way.
That starts with the Biden administration implementing the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council (WHEJAC) recommendations to ensure that climate, clean energy, and other infrastructure investments benefit frontline communities who have been disproportionately harmed by pollution.
The Biden administration has made a promise to center environmental justice across policymaking, including its Justice40 commitment to target at least 40% of the benefits from investments in climate and infrastructure to disadvantaged communities. We know that clean, accessible energy and infrastructure as well as sustainable farming and other climate solutions can be engines of health and wealth in every community. We should be targeting those benefits where they are needed most.
The people at the frontlines of climate change must be at the forefront of climate solutions, and the people most impacted by toxic pollution should guide its cleanup.
The White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council consists of environmental justice leaders from across the country. The Biden administration sought their input and now he has the responsibility to act on it.
These recommendations from the WHEJAC are a roadmap to make the Biden administration’s promises into real and meaningful investments in communities — and we must work together to make sure the administration follows course with fair, just, and effective implementation.
We need a whole-of-government approach to develop bold national climate and public health policies that advance environmental justice and help to dismantle historic and systemic racial injustice. It’s time we set our country on a course to correcting persistent environmental and economic injustice – take action today.
Delayed ozone standards will harm our communities
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Ozone is among the most widespread of air pollutants. It contributes to what we often see in the air as smog. Ozone pollution is a byproduct of fossil fuel emissions from vehicles, factories, and other sources, causing severe health harms. It is linked to asthma attacks, bronchitis, heart disease—and thousands of deaths each year. We need to let the Environmental Protection Agency know that any delay in improving our air quality standards is inexcusable and will mean more asthma attacks, more missed school, more missed work, more hospital and ER visits, and more deaths.
The federal government is required by the Clean Air Act to protect public health by setting standards that limit the amount of ozone pollution people and the environment are exposed to, but the Environmental Protection Agency has failed to take urgent action to improve outdated air quality standards and instead wants to restart the rulemaking process, which will delay these important protections.
Ground-level ozone poses serious health risks, particularly to vulnerable populations, and failing to address this issue hampers progress toward cleaner air nationwide, for everyone. Ozone pollution also damages the environment. It slows plant growth, including for certain tree species and agricultural crops. Through its effects on vegetation, it can alter and harm entire ecosystems. It is also itself a powerful greenhouse gas.
The White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council recently explained that stronger ozone standards would help reduce burdens that disproportionately affect environmental justice communities. The EPA’s independent Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) said the science demanded that the EPA strengthen the ozone standards now to protect people’s health and the environment. But now, the EPA claims that because of the strong recommendation from CASAC, they must reassess the science and restart the process. However, CASAC has pointed out that there is already ample evidence that compels EPA to strengthen the standards. The EPA’s move is just further delay on the EPA’s part.
There was no need for the EPA to start over. The science backing stronger ozone standards is well established. We must demand that the EPA ensure that the ozone review moves quickly, without further unnecessary delay, so that communities finally have the ozone standards the science — and justice — demand.
Support Green Energy for Puerto Rico
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Congress recently passed $1 billion for Puerto Rico to jumpstart the transition from a dilapidated electricity grid to rooftop solar and battery storage. This major step forward happened because environmental groups in Puerto Rico pushed the Biden administration to help Puerto Rico transition to clean, affordable, reliable rooftop solar. The $1 billion is a significant down payment on a clean energy future for Puerto Rico that could provide solar for hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans. But far more needs to be done to fully transition Puerto Rico to 100 percent clean energy.
Tell the Biden administration that it should use $9.5 billion of $12 billion in Federal Emergency Management Agency funds, allotted after Hurricane Maria, to provide all 3 million residents of Puerto Rico with rooftop solar, the only sensible clean solution for the archipelago.
FEMA intends to spend billions on a dilapidated centralized grid in Puerto Rico that is 97 percent powered by fossil fuels. The grid is dependent on vulnerable power lines that traverse Puerto Rico from north to south, which fall down and cause massive outages with every major storm.
There’s an opportunity for revolutionary change. The Department of Energy has a legal mandate to ensure federal funds under its control are used in a climate-resilient way. And Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm was tasked with centralizing the money for energy modernization in Puerto Rico.
The climate-resilient solution in Puerto Rico is rooftop solar and battery storage, connected by small microgrids, that can supply clean energy even during storms. Rooftop solar eliminates the pollution caused by burning coal, oil and gas to supply a central grid and is far more affordable.
A rooftop solar revolution in Puerto Rico would help Biden fulfill his climate agenda. And Puerto Rico would be much further in achieving its goal of 100 percent clean by 2050.
Why is rooftop solar the solution?
Puerto Rico has an abundance of sunlight year-round that can generate more than four times the energy that residents need.
Rooftop solar is much cheaper, and would end the need to pay bills to an outside, polluting corporation.
Rooftop solar is very reliable and climate resilient. People who had access to rooftop solar kept their lights on during hurricane Fiona because they weren’t dependent on a centralized grid and damaged power lines.
Rooftop solar empowers Puerto Ricans. Puerto Ricans don’t need an outside corporation bilking the people with some of the highest electricity rates in the country. The sun is the only power we need for energy independence.
Rooftop solar is a healthy solution. We don’t need to burn toxic oil, gas and coal and use power lines for electricity, resulting in needless deaths when power lines fall and break, and life-saving medical equipment fails.
We can’t afford to leave these benefits on the table. Help us convince the Biden administration to provide rooftop solar and storage for everyone in Puerto Rico.
Get these toxic chemicals out of our household products
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Did you know that every day, you and I come in contact with toxic flame retardants? Many household goods — from the crib mattresses our babies sleep on to the sofa you may be sitting on right now or even the electronic device you are holding in your hand — could be manufactured with chemicals that migrate out of these products and are linked to serious health risks. That is why the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) made the groundbreaking decision to move forward with a ban on these chemicals in children’s products, furniture, mattresses, and the casings around electronics. The CPSC made the right decision to begin the process to ban the use of organohalogen flame retardants, but it has not yet finalized the ban. Keep the pressure on the CPSC to finalize the ban.
The decision to ban these chemicals came out of a multi-year effort by a diverse coalition including firefighters, pediatricians, consumer advocates, scientists and Earthjustice supporters like you, who sent over 80,000 letters urging the CPSC to ban toxic flame retardants from consumer products.
These chemicals don’t stay in the products we buy — they get into the air and stick to household dust. Children and adults alike breathe them in, eat them when they touch dusty surfaces and then handle food, and even absorb them through their skin. As a result, 97 percent of U.S. residents have measurable quantities of toxic flame retardants in their blood.
Your family’s health should not be endangered by the couch they sit on or the cell phone they use. Let’s keep the pressure on and tell the CPSC to honor its promise to protect consumers and uphold the ban on these dangerous chemicals.
It’s time to pass the Environmental Justice for All Act
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Federal lawmakers just introduced a landmark environmental justice bill in Congress that aims to address environmental injustices and hold polluting industries accountable.
Everyone has the right to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live without fear of toxic chemical contamination. Unfortunately, that’s not the reality for millions of people living with the disproportionately high impacts of dangerous pollution. From the ports of Long Beach, California, and Newark, New Jersey to the communities of Cancer Alley in Louisiana and Indigenous lands across the American West, polluting industries continue to poison the air, water, and land of communities of color and those of low income while facing little, if any, consequences.
As congressional leaders work to rapidly construct the clean energy infrastructure of the future, we can’t afford to repeat the same wrongs of the past and perpetuate a system that prioritizes reckless development and silence communities in the process. The Environmental Justice for All Act provides a blueprint for engaging communities from the start and developing projects in a better, responsible, and resilient way.
The Environmental Justice for All Act will help remedy decades of environmental racism while empowering frontline communities to hold polluters accountable. The time is now for Congress to support this inclusive, ambitious, and community-driven piece of legislation. Write to your member of Congress now.
Tell EPA to ban the toxic herbicide paraquat now
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Farmworkers and agricultural communities face an increased risk of developing Parkinson’s disease because of the continued use of a highly toxic herbicide called paraquat. In response to a lawsuit brought by Earthjustice on behalf of farmworker, public health and environmental organizations, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is currently reevaluating paraquat’s risks to public health and the environment. Tell EPA to follow the science, address this public health crisis, and join more than 50 other countries worldwide in banning the use of paraquat.
Pesticide companies and industrial agricultural operations across the U.S. expose farmworkers, nearby communities and the public to millions of pounds pesticides each year, including more than 10 million pounds of paraquat. A single sip of paraquat can kill, and repeated exposures are linked to an increased risk of Parkinson’s disease, a degenerative brain disease with no known cure. Multiple studies have found that farmworkers who used paraquat or people who lived near the fields where it was sprayed are far more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease. Yet, despite its severe risks, paraquat use more than doubled in the United States between 2012 and 2018.
More than 50 countries – including China, Brazil, and the members of the European Union – have banned paraquat to protect farmworkers and the broader public. However, in 2021, EPA reapproved the widespread use of paraquat for another 15 years.
After an Earthjustice lawsuit, the EPA agreed to reconsider its analyses of paraquat’s risks and benefits, including the connection between paraquat use and Parkinson’s disease. This reconsideration gives EPA the opportunity to correct its past mistakes and to finally protect the public from paraquat.
However, EPA’s preliminary reconsideration continues to understate paraquat’s risks and to defends EPA’s decision to authorize paraquat’s continued use. EPA ignored the overwhelming scientific evidence connecting paraquat exposure to Parkinson’s disease, among other flaws. EPA will be finalizing that reconsideration process by January 2025, giving the agency one more opportunity to change course and deliver needed protections for farmworkers, agricultural communities, and the environment.
Chemical companies like Syngenta that produce paraquat are facing a surge in personal injury lawsuits claiming exposure to the pesticide caused long-term health harms. The most effective way to reduce deaths and suffering is for the EPA to ban paraquat. Alternatives for weed control exist, making the continued use of this highly toxic pesticide unnecessary. We urge EPA to correct its flawed analysis, to accept the well-established connection between paraquat uses and Parkinson’s disease, and to finally ban paraquat.
Strong methane standards are essential to curb climate pollution
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Methane is the second largest contributor to the climate crisis, and it is 86 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Cutting methane pollution from the oil and gas industry is the fastest way to slow climate change. After years of advocacy, the Biden administration finalized a strong methane rule that will cut millions of tons of methane emissions, safeguard public health, and advance environmental justice. Send a message to thank the Biden administration for taking a critical step to cut methane pollution from oil and gas production.
Each year, fossil fuel companies leak or deliberately vent 13 million metric tons of methane into the atmosphere during oil and gas operations. Not only does methane pollution from the oil and gas industry jeopardize the continued habitability of our planet, but its extraction poisons communities. Methane is released alongside toxic pollutants such as benzene, formaldehyde, and ethylbenzene, which can cause debilitating health problems for millions of people.
So, these strong methane standards from the Biden administration are essential to curb climate pollution and better protect the health and safety of workers and communities living near fossil fuel extraction. This cost-effective rule is grounded in EPA’s longstanding authority under the Clean Air Act, and Earthjustice and our partners are prepared to defend it from unfounded industry attacks.
Tell the Biden administration that you will be there to defend this rule and will continue fighting for strong climate and health protections from the harms of fossil fuels.
Our chemical safety laws must protect people and the environment, not chemical company profits
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Our families and communities have a right to live in toxic-free environments. However, chemical companies are swamping the market with toxic chemicals found in products that we use, the air that we breathe, and the water we drink daily — and it is wreaking havoc on our health. Far too often, these chemicals go unregulated, and the agencies that are charged with protecting us fail to consider or address the threat these substances pose to public health and the environment.
The government cannot protect the public from harmful chemicals unless it accounts for all the risks those chemicals pose to human health and the environment. That is why the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed revisions to its rule governing chemical risk evaluations under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) – our nation’s main chemical safety law – are so important.
We need the EPA to strengthen that rule to address all of the ways that people are exposed to and harmed by toxic chemicals, including exposures to multiple chemicals from multiple sources, and to resist the chemical industry’s efforts to weaken existing protections and leave the public in harm’s way.
The Toxic Substance Control Act requires EPA to eliminate chemicals’ unreasonable risks to human health and the environment, including by restricting or banning toxic chemicals’ production, use, distribution, and disposal.
When the law was first enacted in 1976, however, it was a failure. It allowed chemical companies to put chemicals on the market without showing that they were safe and limited EPA’s ability to address chemicals that were widely known to cause cancer, developmental and reproductive harm, and other serious health effects.
For several decades, Earthjustice has been fighting alongside our clients and partners in the courtroom and the halls of Congress for badly needed upgrades to the Toxic Substances Control Act. We helped to pass important amendments to that law in 2016, and successfully challenged Trump administration rules that violated TSCA’s core requirements. Now we need to keep the pressure up.
A stronger risk evaluation rule is needed to protect communities, workers, and families from the most harmful chemicals on the market. If EPA continues to ignore known combinations of chemical exposures and to understate chemical risks, unsafe chemicals will remain in our air, water, homes, with the greatest impacts on overburdened, environmental justice communities. Tell the EPA to protect people and the environment and not chemical company profits.
Tell the Consumer Product Safety Commission to protect consumers from the dangers of gas stoves
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Gas may be a mainstay for our daily lives, but it has always been a deadly tradeoff. Gas appliances emit toxic particulate matter that we breathe every day. Without proper ventilation, a house with a gas burner can reach toxic indoor air quality levels that far exceed Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) health recommendation for outdoor air. It doesn’t have to be this way. Join us in urging the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to issue safety standards that reduce the risks to consumers from gas stoves.
In addition to contributing to indoor air pollution, gas infrastructure and distribution endangers public health and safety. In the last nine years, the systems that deliver gas have caused dozens of fatalities, hundreds of injuries, and forced over 30,000 people to evacuate their homes. Behind those numbers are the people whose lives have been disrupted by gas infrastructure. Along with endangering public health and safety, extracting fossil fuels and burning them in our homes creates climate pollution. However, there are steps we can take as we work on securing our clean energy future and one solution includes asking the Consumer Product Safety Commission to develop safety standards to protect families from the dangers of using gas stoves for cooking.
Send a message urging the Consumer Product Safety Commission to issue safety standards for gas stoves!
Tell the EPA to ban acephate
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Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a ban on almost all uses of acephate, a widely used organophosphate pesticide found in celery, tomatoes, lettuce, and various other crops, due to acute poisoning risks from drinking water contamination. Acephate is also extremely harmful to farmworkers.
This ban proposal comes three years after Earthjustice and our partners filed a petition urging the EPA to ban all organophosphates, including acephate.
Organophosphates, a class of nerve agent chemicals extensively used on food crops, including vegetables, citrus fruits, and berries, have been the subject of scrutiny due to their link to adverse health effects such as reduced IQ, attention deficit disorders, and autism spectrum disorder, as indicated by peer-reviewed studies.
Many organophosphates, including chlorpyrifos, remain in widespread use. Join us in thanking the EPA for proposing the acephate ban and calling on the EPA to ban all organophosphates.
The EPA’s proposed acephate ban comes on the heels of an 8th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that overturned the EPA’s 2021 ban on food uses of chlorpyrifos, the most studied organophosphate. This was an unexpected setback, but the EPA has the ability and the legal authority to reinstate the ban.
Regulating toxic chemicals is a core aspect of the EPA’s mission, but we need your help to make sure it doesn’t settle for half measures. Tell the EPA to protect our health by following through on the acephate ban, reinstating the chlorpyrifos ban, and put bans in place on all organophosphate pesticides.
Tell Coke: Bring Back Refillable Bottles
A new report reveals that, as early as the 1970s, the company knew switching to single-use containers would be worse for the environment — but did it anyway. To make matters worse, since then Coke has fought state and federal legislative efforts to ban single-use bottles and other throwaway containers.
Coke recently took a step in the right direction by committing to sell 25% of its beverages globally in refillable containers. But beyond one small pilot project in Texas, it hasn't circulated any refillable bottles in the United States — the company's flagship market.
That's why the Center has teamed up with like-minded groups to flood the Coca-Cola Company with as much support for reusable bottles as possible. Add your name to our petition now.
Educate and Share: Ethylene Oxide Resources
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Ethylene oxide is a chemical used to sterilize medical equipment and dried food products, and to make certain other chemicals. Ethylene oxide is a toxic threat to many communities across the United States and Puerto Rico. It's an invisible gas that can cause cancer, and it's often emitted from buildings that look inconspicuously like warehouses—no large smokestacks to signal potentially hazardous substances are being released.
Ethylene oxide is under-monitored and not yet regulated with the stringency needed to protect the public's health. There's no required fenceline monitoring and no rules to limit leaks or accidental releases. New research by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) shows that two types of facilities that emit this cancer-causing gas are disproportionately polluting communities of color, low-income communities, and non-English language speaking communities: this is an environmental injustice.
UCS is fighting this chemical on all fronts: on the ground with impacted communities, in the courts, with regulatory agencies, and we're analyzing the issue and creating tools that you can use to find out if you and your loved ones are impacted.
Find out if facilities that emit ethylene oxide are located in communities near you by using our interactive mapping tool. You can search addresses, zoom in, and click on facilities for additional information.
Share the tools with your family, friends, and colleagues on Facebook and Twitter, or by email.
Delay is Deadly: Protect Workers Now from Killer Heat
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Every May to October, Danger Season is in full force and unrelenting heat across the country puts workers across the United States at risk. A lack of federal mandated cooling protections such as access to water, rest, and shade means workers continue to get sick or die because of extreme heat. Every worker deserves to come home at the end of the shift, especially when climate-change driven heat is record-shattering.
We need Congress to support and pass legislation to protect workers from killer heat—take action today.
If we don't act on climate change, extreme heat would cause tens of millions of US outdoor workers to risk losing a collective $55.4 billion in earnings each year by midcentury, a peer-reviewed Union of Concerned Scientists analysis shows.
Even with bold action to limit pollution, outdoor workers would face severe and rising risks from extreme heat—and that's why we must act now. Workers must be able to access basic, life-saving measures without fear of retaliation or docked pay. The Asunción Valdivia Heat Illness, Injury, and Fatality Prevention Act will hold employers accountable to keep workers safe from extreme heat and prevent more senseless deaths.
Tell your members of Congress to support and pass the Asunción Valdivia Heat Illness, Injury, and Fatality Prevention Act.
Act Now to Protect Climate-Focused Investments on Farms
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In the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, Congress delivered a historic $20 billion investment in climate-focused conservation funding, enabling farmers to adopt practices that build soil health, sequester carbon, and reduce global warming emissions.
The Union of Concerned Scientists and our supporters helped deliver this once-in-a-generation investment that will begin to revitalize rural economies, improve climate resilience, and ensure that our nation's farmers, ranchers, and foresters are part of the solution to climate change.
But now some in Congress want to eliminate or repurpose these funds. Congress must safeguard this critical investment in resilience in the 2023 food and farm bill. Farmers across the country are depending on this funding to improve soil health, deliver clean water downstream, and fight climate change.
Agriculture contributes 10 percent of US heat-trapping emissions and therefore, conservation on farms must be a part of our country's climate solution. Many farmers and ranchers are ready to implement these practices on their land, but they need adequate funding to help make the shift.
Please urge your members of Congress to safeguard this critical long-term investment in resilience in the next food and farm bill.
Tell Your Legislators that Climate Change Hurts Health
Climate change is a public health emergency that is harming Americans now. Fossil fuels are driving climate change and increasing the impacts of climate change on our health, including causing heat stroke, heart disease, an increase in mosquito borne illnesses, mental illness, and crop shortages.
Send a letter now to let your Governor and State Legislators know that climate action is critical.