What do Lee Zeldin’s EPA rollbacks mean for Americans?
Lee Zeldin announced the Environmental Protection agency would roll back regulations aimed fighting climate change and pollution.
- The effects of air pollution on kids “should have parents up in arms” to force changes in air pollution regulations, a reader said.
- Experts say children exposed to high air pollution levels can lose IQ points and are at greater risk for bronchitis, depression, hypertension and anxiety.
- The director of the Arizona Public Health Association says the weakening of federal emissions rules worsened air quality in Arizona. He also pointed to smoke from legalized fireworks and road dust.
This is part of a monthly series answering readers’ climate-related questions and highlighting Arizona’s unsung climate leaders. The stories aim to help to connect and inspire Arizonans who care about protecting a livable climate and may be struggling to find hope in that effort lately. You can ask a question or nominate an unsung Arizona climate leader by filling out this form at https://forms.gle/QCCxBPSHGy1bUJQ99 or by emailing climate reporter Joan Meiners at [email protected].
On New Year’s Day, several people messaged me to ask if I had noticed how bad the air quality was in Phoenix after the previous night’s firework celebrations. It was plain to see that day. Particulate matter, which can mean dust or soot or tailpipe emissions, hung heavy in the air.
And that was just the pollution we could see. Ozone is an invisible contributor to poor air quality, and a particular problem for the Phoenix area. Maricopa County exceeded the ozone threshold deemed safe by the Clean Air Act on at least 46 days in 2024, and on 136 days over the last three years.
These air pollutants are directly harmful to human health — by exacerbating respiratory problems like asthma in the short term and by increasing risk of lung cancer, heart disease, stroke, pneumonia and more over the long term. On a larger and more abstract scale, greenhouse gas air pollutants like carbon dioxide from car exhaust and methane from natural gas production (which contributes to ozone formation), also threaten human well-being by trapping heat energy from the sun, warming the atmosphere and causing more dangerous, expensive and chaotic weather systems.
So I was not surprised to see air quality show up as the focus of one of the first reader questions submitted to The Arizona Republic’s new climate Q & A form.
“There is a direct relationship of climate change (pollution) and the quality of life,” the reader, who wished to remain anonymous, wrote. “There are numbers out there air pollution alone is causing millions if not billions of premature deaths. Since Phoenix is one of the worst for air pollution, how is this impacting kids’ lung development, obesity rates and even IQ levels? This impact on kids should have parents up in arms to take legal action against the state and companies polluting. Has there been any effort here?”
I followed up on a phone call with this reader to learn more. She clearly knew enough to voice these specific concerns. But, she explained, she’d had a hard time finding clear information on research linking air quality to children’s health, on what she can do to advocate for cleaner air, or on how to protect her children from the health impacts of climate-related air pollution in the meantime.
“Are we being real with ourselves about the influence of pollution on child obesity rates, asthma, etc.?” she asked.
It’s true that air pollution has been documented to negatively influence children’s lung, heart and brain development. And the planetary warming that results from greenhouse gas pollution puts kids, who are more susceptible to extreme heat, at greater risk. Asthma and oppressive outdoor temperatures can then lead to less active lifestyles and greater risk of obesity.
In 2022, I spoke with researcher Frederica Perera, founder of the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health, about her newly published review paper outlining known links between climate changing fossil fuel pollution and children’s health.
“We showed that children exposed to high air pollution in the city lose IQ points,” Perera told me. “This really gave me a great deal of concern about this type of exposure.”
The paper also reported evidence of a connection between air pollution and increased risk for children developing bronchitis, autistic traits, depression, anxiety, hypertension, immune system dysregulation and more.
Perera’s study was not focused on Arizona. But her findings definitely apply.
Arizona ranked dead last for air quality in a measure calculated by U.S. News and World Report based on population-weighted data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Census Bureau. And in 2024, the American Lung Association gave Maricopa County an “F” on its “State of the Air” scorecard, estimating that 82,166 pediatric asthma sufferers and 50,443 pregnant people in the county were at risk of air pollution-related health complications.
Why does Arizona have such terrible air quality, and what can we do? I connected with Will Humble, executive director for the Arizona Public Health Association, to learn more. He grew up in Phoenix at a time when he said school buses didn’t need to idle to keep the AC on, because they didn’t have air conditioning.
Now, he said, besides an over-enthusiasm for fireworks, sprawl and limited public transit has resulted in more vehicle traffic and air conditioning use that burns fossil fuels, including diesel, which creates the tiniest category of particulates most harmful to little lungs.
Humble said a weakening of the EPA’s emissions rule, which “caved to industry on diesel and didn’t do a great job of tightening the standard” makes matters worse. And he pointed to an Arizona bill that legalized the purchase and use of huge fireworks, introduced by Sen. David Gowan, R-Sierra Vista, “who sells fireworks for a living.”
He also blamed tire debris and road dust that builds up as the climate dries and warms.
“We have fewer rainy days now and that makes the valley dustier,” Humble said. “It used to be summer thunderstorms would clean the streets off, but that doesn’t happen anymore and so the trucks just keep kicking it up into the air.”
Groups like Science Moms and Moms Clean Air Force have local chapters that help parents take civic action to reduce climate-warming emissions and oppose private interests chipping away at air quality protections.
There is much to do on this front: Just two months into his second term, President Donald Trump’s administration took steps to roll back air quality regulations and exempt certain industries from requirements established as part of the Clean Air Act — one of the biggest environmental success stories in U.S. history. His team has also been deleting environmental data and information about related health impacts from federal websites like the EPA and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But there are also reasons for hope: In the 25 years after those 1990 air quality amendments went into effect, emissions of air toxics declined by 68% while the U.S. economy, vehicle traffic, population and energy use continued to grow, according to the EPA. One study estimated the health care savings exceeded regulatory costs by a factor of 30 to one. And opposition groups are downloading and archiving federal environmental and health information.
As far as what parents can do in the short term, Humble advised that indoor air pollution is actually more likely to trigger asthma attacks for kids. Introducing air filters, humidifiers and changing out bedding, carpet and stuffed animals that can accumulate animal dander and dust mite feces will help children breathe better at night.
Telling kids to avoid standing near idling vehicles waiting to pick them up from school, and pushing schools to limit idling with the air conditioning on can make a difference too.
“If I was the principal, my policy might say if it’s less than 90 degrees, there’s no idling,” Humble said.
Since 2022, at least two dozen school districts in the state have leveraged funds from President Joe Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act to cut emissions by introducing electric school buses. Trump has now paused most of those programs, but courts and public interest groups are challenging those orders.
Finally, Humble recommends offsetting kids’ risk from air pollution with proper nutrition and maintaining healthy lifestyles in other ways.
“Those are areas where parents have direct control,” he said.
Joan Meiners is the climate news and storytelling reporter at The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. Her award-winning work has also appeared in Discover Magazine, National Geographic, ProPublica and the Washington Post Magazine. Before becoming a journalist, she completed a doctorate in ecology. Follow Joan on Twitter at @beecycles, on Bluesky @joanmeiners.bsky.social or email her at [email protected].
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