By Karen Melton, Southeastern Pennsylvania Group Member; Sylvanian Volunteer
The mission of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), per their website and authorizing legislation from 1970 “is to protect human health and the environment.” The website goes on to say the “EPA works to ensure that: Americans have clean air, land and water; national efforts to reduce environmental risks are based on the best available scientific information.” And there are many more stated goals that we would all applaud. So you might be surprised to hear that the EPA has decided going forward it will only factor the cost of a regulation to industry and no longer consider lives saved.
Human health outcomes such as lives saved, premature deaths and asthma attacks prevented, plus missed school and workdays avoided, have long been incorporated into the EPA’s cost/benefit analysis when evaluating regulatory changes. However, based on a review of EPA internal emails and memos obtained by the New York Times, EPA workers have been informed that political appointees will now inject language in future regulatory notices that the science related to pollution and human health is too uncertain to take into account – specifically referring to the very extensive science around fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and the ozone and health impacts they have been documented to cause.
According to the Times, this language has already appeared as part of a final rule that weakens limits on nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions from combustion turbines used at gas-burning power plants.
This is the playbook created years ago by the tobacco industry and employed in the decades since by climate change deniers, detailed in books such as Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreski and Erik M Conway.
There is more. In January the EPA took final steps in the rule-making process to rescind the ‘endangerment finding’. This is the EPA finding from 2009 that greenhouse gases endanger public health and should be regulated. This has underpinned many subsequent rules and policies. According to the EPA, the immediate purpose for rescinding the finding is to relax vehicle emissions standards (transportation is currently the largest contributor to greenhouse gases in the U.S., (followed by power plants) but sets the stage for many other regulatory setbacks.
Other policies show us that human and environmental health is no longer valued by the EPA. In November two pesticides were approved that contain PFAS, known as ‘forever chemicals. The pesticides, cyclobutrifluram and isocycloseram, both made by Syngenta, are planned for use on vegetables such as romaine lettuce, broccoli, and potatoes as well as citrus fruits
The EPA announcement that isocycloseram is approved also said the following “EPA preliminarily concluded that the proposed use of isocycloseram may affect insect pollinators from spray application and aquatic invertebrates from spray, seed and soil treatments. It can also cause chronic risks to birds and mammals ingesting treated rapeseed.”
It is more than disappointing that the mission of the EPA has been perverted to one of protecting industry rather than the health of humans and the environment, as intended, but we do not need to buy vehicles from manufacturers who use relaxed standards to lower their own; and we can buy organic produce rather than food grown with PFAS laced pesticides. We can also keep showing up and speaking up until we get an EPA that honors its mission.
Meanwhile, Sierra Club’s Environmental Law Program is doing its part. “In 2025 alone, we filed and intervened in more than 100 lawsuits, participated in more than 110 administrative proceedings, and submitted more than 80 Freedom of Information Act requests.” You can read about the details on the Sierra Club website.
This blog was included as part of the February 2026 Sylvanian newsletter. Please click here to check out more articles from this edition!