The Unjust and Precarious Future of Gas Power Plants

Gas Power Plants Are an Environmental Justice Concern: AI and Lack of Regulation Could Make it Much Worse.

Clean Air & Environmental Justice

Learn more about the intersection of clean air, public health, and environmental justice!

Environmental Justice Advocates Share Public Comments Decrying Trump’s EPA Latest Rollback of Mercury and Air Toxics Protections

We urge the EPA to change course. The Agency must maintain and even strengthen the mercury and air toxics standards to reduce hazardous air pollutants from fossil-fuel power plants. This proposed rollback of this rule—alongside other critical regulations like the greenhouse gas standards for fossil-fuel power plants, vehicle emissions standards, and even threats to the Endangerment Finding—poses serious harm to environmental justice communities, who already face cumulative pollution burdens from multiple major sources. We will continue to hold the EPA accountable to its mission of protecting human health and the environment to keep our communities safe and preserve our future.

100 Orgs & Individuals with Environmental Justice Networks Say to EPA: Revoking Endangerment Finding Puts All Our Communities in Danger

The response to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) seeking to remove the Endangerment Finding and revoke vehicle emissions regulations, a coalition of environmental justice networks submitted written comments – signed by 100 organizations and individuals – alongside a powerful collection of testimonies that capture the real-world impacts of climate and transportation pollution and frontline and fenceline communities’ need for robust protections. 

“Friend of the Court” Amicus Brief Filed Supporting Stronger Soot Pollution Standards

Members of the national environmental justice cohort, ‘Clean Air for the Long Haul’ alongside groups—Community Health Aligning Revitalization, Resistance & Sustainability (CHARRS), Greater-Birmingham Alliance to Stop Pollution (GASP), and the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC)— filed a “friend of the court” brief (called an “amicus” brief) in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in support of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s national ambient air quality standard for fine particulate matter, or soot. 

140 Orgs Support Public Comment Opposing EPA’s Proposed Repeal and weakening of the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP).

This public comment opposes the EPA’s proposal which represents a severe rollback on environmental transparency and the public’s right to know. It would obscure emissions and pollution data that every community depends on to protect their health, undermine accountability of the fossil fuel industry, and erode decades of climate progress.

American Lung Association State of the Air 2026

The “State of the Air” 2026 report finds that even after decades of successful efforts to reduce sources of air pollution, 44% of Americans—152.3 million people—are living in places that get failing grades for unhealthy levels of ozone or particle pollution. A person of color is almost three times as likely as a white individual to live in a community with a failing grade for all graded pollution measures. Hispanic individuals are more than three times as likely.

Environmental Protection Network Breathing Easy Report

Environmental Protection Network (EPN), an association of 650 former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) staff who volunteer their time to support EPA’s mission, analyzed sixteen major EPA air pollution rule updates issued from 2021 to 2024. Based on data published by EPA for these rules, EPN concludes how the air pollution reductions from smokestacks, tailpipes, and pipelines will impact health.

Eliminating air pollution disparities requires more than emission reduction

In the United States, people of color are disproportionately and unjustly exposed to air pollution. Historically, environmental policy has emphasized aggregate emission reductions, yet major emission reduction scenarios do not sufficiently mitigate relative exposure disparities. Here, we show that without focusing on relative disparity (percent difference) in exposure, the only way to improve air quality and eliminate absolute exposure disparity is to eliminate all emissions (an unlikely outcome). 

State of the Air 2025 Report in Michigan and Wisconsin

In this year’s report, both Wisconsin and Michigan saw declines in air quality, with many counties in each state receiving failing grades. Detroit and Milwaukee stood out at two of the most impacted metro areas in the Midwest, both facing significant challenges with ozone and particle pollution.

Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool 

EJSCREEN is an environmental justice screening and mapping tool that utilizes standard and nationally consistent data to highlight places that may have higher environmental burdens and vulnerable populations. The tool provides both summary Proximity to traffic is one of the 11 environmental indicators. and detailed information at a high geographic resolution for both demographic and environmental indicators. This is a unofficial copy of EJScreen hosted by the Public Environmental Data Partners. Some links and text may incorrectly suggest that this site is affiliated with the US Government.