August 4, 2025U.S environmental health is under attack
STATEMENT
Living in a healthy environment means that you can trust that your basic living conditions – air, water, food, shelter, and the things in your built world – will not make you sick. Living in a healthy environment means that, no matter your identity, you trust the safety of public spaces, and do not fear bodily harm in your home, workplace, or street. The Trump Administration is systematically dismantling the conditions of a healthy and safe environment.
The Trump Administration has purged thousands of dedicated scientists and civil servants from the public sector – people who study the health impacts of toxic chemicals in air and water; who research ways to prevent firefighters, miners, and farmworkers from becoming sick or injured in their jobs; who test the safety of consumer goods like cribs, toys and electronics; who investigate and issue recommendations to prevent chemical disasters that poison communities; and who strive to eliminate sources of childhood lead exposure in food, schools and water. The Administration’s elimination of these essential services will cause more preventable deaths, illnesses and diseases, impacting middle and low-wage workers, children, and polluted communities hardest.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has all but renounced its mission statement to protect human health and the environment: it has denied that climate change is harming people, while hundreds of people in the U.S. die in floods each year and thousands die of heat; it has erased data on climate harms and environmental injustice; and it has announced plans to slash pollution rules that its own scientists have estimated would prevent thousands of premature deaths. In the meantime, the White House has given corporate polluters a free pass to ignore many federal pollution rules before they are officially rolled back. These rules are intended to prevent cancer in communities at the fenceline of chemical plants, and were fought for by environmental justice advocates, community members and workers who have lost loved ones to egregious health conditions linked to chemical pollution.
Adding insult to injury, President Trump lobbied for and signed a reconciliation bill that cuts health, food and energy benefits for working Americans in order to fund tax cuts for billionaires and subsidies for fossil fuel corporations. As increased environmental harms and hazards inevitably lead to more sickness and injury, many of the most impacted families will have less healthcare coverage and lower income to cover costs.
The federal government has broadly moved to criminalize immigration and expand state authority to suppress freedom of speech and assembly, making immigrants, people of color, and peaceful protesters fearful in their workplaces and homes. The White House has authorized the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to harass, violently detain, and deport farmworkers who are essential to our food system, detain lawful U.S. residents who have criticized the government, and arrest U.S. citizens for speaking out against attacks on their neighbors, including labor leaders and elected officials. Thousands of people have been arrested by masked unidentified agents and detained or deported without due process, the majority of whom have no criminal convictions or pending criminal charges. An environment where this is accepted threatens the safety of every single American.
These actions are designed to test the limits of the law and Americans’ willingness to accept a status of powerlessness against corporate interests and an increasingly authoritarian government. They send the message that families are on their own to protect themselves from toxic chemicals, corporate assault on health and the environment, and political violence.
Our network is committed to environmental health and justice. We will stand up for everyone’s right to safety in their homes, workplaces, and communities, regardless of their migration history, citizenship status, race, gender expression or identity. Everyone should be safe to participate fully in public life, gather in their communities, and engage in political protest.
We will resist the dismantling of federal agencies and federal rules that protect our air, water, food and built environment. At the same time, we will not pretend that these agencies and rules ever adequately protected everyone’s right to a safe and healthy environment. Our network stands in solidarity and partnership with the environmental justice movement, led by communities whose air, water and bodies have already been contaminated by the chemical industry. Together we will continue to fight for a world where no community’s health, safety, or well-being is considered an 'acceptable' sacrifice, and where a nontoxic economy can flourish.
This is a time not only to defend the limited environmental health protections that exist in law now, but to reimagine fundamental changes to our economy and regulatory systems that leave no community or worker in harm’s way. This is a time to build the trust, community, and alignment among our membership needed to rebuild our chemical management systems from the ground up.
Coming Clean is a nonprofit environmental health collaborative working to transform the chemical industry so it is no longer a source of harm, and to secure systemic changes that allow a safe chemical and clean energy economy to flourish. Our members are organizations and technical experts — including grassroots activists, community leaders, scientists, health professionals, business leaders, lawyers, and farmworker advocates — committed to principled collaboration to advance a nontoxic, sustainable, and just world for all.