Last year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gave this country’s nearly 200 remaining coal-fired power plants until 2027 to install or improve air quality monitoring devices on smokestacks to meet federal guidelines to cut hazardous pollutants including mercury, arsenic, lead, and particulate matter.
But through executive action, President Donald Trump last month granted a two-year reprieve to some of those plants from the strengthened Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), which required continuous monitoring of air pollutants.
It is part of Trump’s continuing efforts to boost fossil fuel use and undermine President Joe Biden’s push to reduce threats from climate change and improve the health of people living in communities plagued by industrial pollution. The exemption applies to roughly one-third of all U.S. coal plants.
These toxic and hazardous emissions have been tied to cancer, neurological damage, and developmental disorders, “even at extremely low levels of exposure,” said Margie Kelly, a spokesper... Read more
