Pictured Above: EPA Administrator and former East End Congressman Lee Zeldin at his 2025 confirmation hearing.
Don’t Breathe Easy with EPA Rollbacks
Dear Editor,
Twenty-five years ago, I founded the nonprofit Community Health and Environment Coalition (CHEC) to confront Long Island’s unusually high cancer rates and investigate possible environmental causes. We worked with the New York State Department of Health, the Suffolk County Health Department, medical professionals, and residents, guided by science and public-health data. Yet it was not until the cancer diagnoses among 9/11 first responders that the public fully grasped the delayed and devastating effects of toxic chemical exposure.
Recently, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced a rollback of one of the most important public-health protections ever advanced: the Clean Air Act’s authority to curb dangerous pollution. By rescinding the 2009 Greenhouse Gas “Endangerment Finding,” the EPA is discarding a core scientific and legal determination that greenhouse-gas pollution endangers public health. This decision strips away the foundation for key vehicle emission standards and weakens safeguards against one of the largest sources of air pollution: vehicle exhaust.
As both a health advocate and former elected official, I experienced firsthand the resistance that often meets efforts to strengthen public-health protections. In today’s climate of distrust and misinformation, it is more important than ever to hold decision-makers accountable for protecting the health of our communities.
History offers repeated reminders about our government’s efforts, or lack of, to protect public health from toxic chemical exposure:
• Agent Orange, used during the Vietnam War to defoliate forests, was later proven to be highly toxic and cancer-causing. Although concerns about its dangers dated back to the early 1950s, it took decades of hearings and legislation, including the Agent Orange Act of 1991, before the government acknowledged its devastating health effects on veterans. A related chemical, 2,4-D, remains widely used today on crops, parks, schools, and residential lawns.
· Asbestos, a known carcinogen, was widely used in insulation, construction materials, and consumer products throughout the 20th century. Even after medical evidence showed it caused lung disease and cancer, meaningful regulation came decades later, leaving generations of workers and families at risk. In 2024, Johnson & Johnson finally discontinued talc-based baby powder after research raised concerns about asbestos contamination and shifted to cornstarch alternatives. The company has set aside billions of dollars for talc litigation.
· PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), known as “forever chemicals,” are now found worldwide in water, soil, and air. These persistent chemicals, used in products ranging from nonstick cookware to firefighting foam, accumulate in the human body and are linked to numerous health risks. The EPA has only recently established enforceable drinking-water standards and allocated more than $9 billion in federal infrastructure funding to begin addressing the contamination. Cleanup may take decades or longer.
· Heavy metals including lead, mercury, cadmium, and arsenic were widely used in consumer products until regulations slowly began phasing many of them out in the 1970s. Lead paint was banned in 1978, leaded gasoline in 1996, and mercury in certain batteries in 1996. Yet these toxic metals still appear in some industrial products, as well as in cosmetics, spices, jewelry, protein powders, toys, and, more recently, certain baby formulas.
· Microplastics, the tiny fragments produced as plastics break down, are now found in our air, water, and food, and even in the human body, raising growing concerns about their long-term effects on human health.
· Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) such as benzene and formaldehyde remain among the most dangerous air pollutants. Weakening pollution standards will inevitably increase exposure to these chemicals, raising the risk of respiratory illness, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.
Pollution is not an abstract issue; it is a documented health threat. By rolling back laws that have helped protect public health, we are putting Americans at greater risk of asthma attacks, emergency-room visits, missed school days, chronic disease, and cancer.
The EPA argues that weakening these regulations could save businesses more than $1.3 trillion. But has the agency accounted for the cost of increased illness, medical care, and lost productivity?
Protecting clean air is not just an environmental issue. It is a public-health responsibility and, ultimately, a moral obligation. When those protections are weakened, it is the public, not polluters, who pays the price.
Sarah Anker
Former Director, CHEC
Former Suffolk County Legislator
Mt. Sinai, NY
Who’s Holding the Cards?
To The Editor:
Trump’s day-by-day whirlwind actions are meant to keep us one step behind. Helping us to forget the last action and certainly the first statement. Remember when he said he would end the Ukraine/Russia war on day one. Then he said no more wars. We now fast forward to a few days ago, when the US invaded and unleashed new havoc on the Iranians, thus starting a new war. He threatened another one, with Cuba, and the forgotten one, with Greenland. Must be that there’s a problem because the old war (Ukraine vs Russia) has come back to haunt our president. Now he’s asking for help from, no, not his buddy Putin, but from Zelensky. Suddenly, he needs the man who doesn’t hold all the cards. Well, he does, because it’s drone technology 101. That’s something Trump doesn’t have.
Trump needs the man he degraded. The one who will help him. What’s the usual Trump payment for such help? Zilch. Ukraine will try to collect, but Ukraine will face obstacles. These promises will end up in the courts, the place where all Trump payments end up, in endless litigation — the Trump mantra — sue.
Joel Reitman
Peconic
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