Wheeler Celebrates Children’s Health Day By Gutting Standards that Protect Children’s Health

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In celebration of Children’s Health Day today, former coal lobbyist and acting EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler held an event at the EPA courtyard. At the event, Wheeler was asked by reporters about the EPA’s recent rollbacks to the clean car standards and the Clean Power Plan. Wheeler’s response denied the negative impacts the rollbacks of both these safeguards will have on our health.

EPA’s own analysis has shown that their Dirty Power Plan would also lead to as many as 1,400 premature deaths from increased soot (as well as 230 deaths from increased smog), up to 15,000 new cases of upper respiratory problems, and more than one hundred thousand missed school and work days annually by 2030. Weakening the clean car standards increase carbon emissions by 1 billion metric tons, further contributing to climate change, which can worsen asthma symptoms for the 24 million Americans – including 6.3 million children – who suffer from asthma.

Yesterday,The New York Times reported that Wheeler finalized his proposal to undermine the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), which will increase the profits of his former coal clients and threaten the health of pregnant women and young children. MATS protects the public from mercury, arsenic, hydrochloric acid, and a variety of other toxic air pollutants from coal-fired power plants - which are especially harmful to vulnerable populations like infants and mothers.

The EPA estimates that the MATS protections prevent up to 11,000 premature deaths and more than 100,000 asthma attacks and heart attacks each year. EPA’s proposal, according to the Times, attempts to adjust EPA’s analysis of the standards’ benefits so as to ignore all of those public health benefits, and thereby tilt the EPA’s accounting decisively in favor of the coal industry.

In response, Sierra Club Senior Beyond Coal Campaign Director Mary Anne Hitt  released the following statement:

“If Andrew Wheeler actually cared about the health of our kids, he would be spending today strengthening life-saving protections that keep toxic mercury and arsenic away from our families instead of throwing them out at the behest of coal industry millionaires. Don’t be fooled by his rhetoric -- rolling back vital clean air and water safeguards tells us everything we need to know about how little Wheeler cares about our children’s health.

“The fact that Wheeler reportedly finalized a plan to repeal protections against mercury pollution just one day before he stood in front of a school bus celebrating Children’s Health Day is an insult to American families. We teach our kids to keep their hands to themselves, but Wheeler’s menacing actions today are a slap in the face. While Wheeler’s former employers reap the profits from rollback after rollback, our kids will be paying with their health.”