Recommendations for Action

Contrary to its mission, EPA has recently acted to weaken, delay or revoke key health protections that will leave children in the U.S. more exposed and more vulnerable to the consequences of many different pollutants, including ozone and particle pollution. These actions reflect not only a departure from decades of clean air progress in the U.S. but are accompanied by the unprecedented elimination of health calculations from agency cost-benefit analyses. Stated again bluntly: EPA announced they will no longer calculate the monetary value of lives saved and health harms avoided when they change pollution standards.

EPA’s decision to eliminate calculating the costs of air pollution-related emergencies, ranging from pediatric asthma attacks to hospitalizations to premature deaths, devalues the health of children. The agency claims that there is uncertainty in health cost estimations, but the long-established science says otherwise. What’s more, the agency has continued including calculations of savings to polluting industries in rulemakings. The combined effect of these choices is that any effort to eliminate or weaken clean air protections will hide the costs of the significant increases in ozone pollution, fine particles and other pollutants that will lead to emergency department visits, hospitalizations or premature death. 

EPA must not devalue the benefits of removing deadly pollution from the air children breathe. This should always be the case, but is especially important now considering recent federal actions to weaken and roll back air pollution standards. The federal government under the current Administration has proposed or finalized weakened controls on ozone-forming emissions, particles and other pollutants related to cars, trucks, power plants and other sources that harm childhood lung development and function, in addition to lifelong health concerns. 

The overarching call to action of the “State of the Air” 2026 report is for EPA to return to its mission and to value the health of children in the U.S., by restoring clean air safeguards and counting the costs of pollution on public health. 

“State of the Air” 2025 noted that EPA launched a broad effort to roll back a wide range of air pollution protections and investments in clean technologies, as well as cutting staff at key public health agencies. Since then, federal actions have weakened, delayed and repealed many life-saving protections, statutory deadlines have been missed, foundational climate science findings have been ignored, and additional attacks on clean air safeguards have been launched with increased frequency. 

While many of these actions remain in a proposal phase, others have already been issued as final rules or repeals. Notable examples of final or proposed federal actions related to air pollution that threaten the health of all people in the U.S., particularly children, include:

• Ignoring implementation deadlines for particle pollution standards: In February 2026, EPA missed its statutory deadline to designate attainment status under the 2024 National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Fine Particle Pollution. The annual particle pollution levels had been strengthened from 12 µg/m³ to 9 µg/m³. The failure to designate areas in need of additional pollution controls represents an unnecessary and deadly delay in reducing exposures to harmful levels of fine particle pollution across the United States. As noted in this report, approximately 75.9 million people in the U.S. live in counties that have particulate matter levels above the current PM NAAQS levels.
• Repealing health-protective limits on mercury and other air toxics from coal-fired power plants: In February 2026, EPA announced it was repealing standards set in 2024 that tightened requirements to limit mercury and other air toxic pollution from power plants. Part of the 2024 rule also required power plants to continuously monitor their emissions, ensuring that any exposures over the limit would be discovered and rectified in a timely manner. Mercury pollution is particularly dangerous for babies and developing fetuses. The updated 2024 standards would have further protected communities against toxic pollutants, but the EPA repealed the stronger limits.
• Repealing EPA’s responsibility to protect health from climate change: In February 2026, EPA announced the final repeal of the 2009 Endangerment Finding, EPA’s longstanding, science-based finding that greenhouse gases threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations. The 2009 finding serves as a key tool in the nation’s response to climate change. Climate change is a clear driver of increases in particle pollution related to wildfire smoke events and the formation of ozone pollution, as documented regularly in this report.
• Failing to clean up ozone-forming emissions from new gas-fired power plants: In 2024, EPA proposed to strengthen ozone-forming emission requirements for turbines used in gas-fired power plants. In January 2026, EPA reversed course with its final version of the rule. It weakened the standards so that new power plants will not be required to install existing, available control devices that are used widely across the sector.
• Increasing emissions from the oil and gas industry: In 2023, EPA finalized historic rules to limit methane emissions from both new and existing oil and gas wells. Methane is a highly potent greenhouse gas that is over 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in accelerating climate change, and is also released alongside dangerous air pollutants like carcinogenic VOCs that directly harm health. In 2025, EPA finalized a rule delaying the compliance deadlines for the oil and gas sector, allowing for unnecessary delay in delivering health benefits.
• Eliminating clean vehicle standards and gutting efficiency rules for new vehicles: Within the 2009 Endangerment Finding, EPA specifically affirmed that greenhouse gases from motor vehicles threaten public health and welfare. These standards were repealed along with the Endangerment Finding in February 2026, while the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration proposed to roll back fuel economy rules for passenger cars. The impacts of these rollbacks will be felt in the form of increased air pollution, illness and death. 
• Granting broad exemptions to toxic air pollution controls: In 2025, EPA granted exemptions to a wide swath of power plants and other industrial facilities that simply sent an email requesting them. Many of the facilities that requested exemptions were already in compliance with the latest air standards, demonstrating that the health-protective standards were feasible to achieve, and exemptions from life-saving programs are unwarranted. Now, these facilities have license to pollute more.
• Stripping state authority to protect residents’ health: The Administration and Congress have undercut state authority to protect their residents’ health. Through an unprecedented action and misuse of the Congressional Review Act, three clean vehicle rules developed by California to address the state’s worst-in-the-nation ozone and particle pollution challenges were thrown into uncertainty. These federal actions are projected to contribute to over 14,000 deaths in California alone, but the harms will reverberate through other states that opted into these standards to protect residents from the effects of traffic pollution.

While the federal government’s actions threaten to increase ozone and particle pollution for hundreds of millions of people, states and cities still have many tools in their toolbox to reduce emissions that harm kids’ health. 

States can invest in infrastructure to support increased use of electric vehicles, walking, biking and transit rather than expanding highway capacity, and require more electricity (including electricity used by data centers) to come from truly clean, non-combustion energy sources like wind, solar, geothermal and tidal. They can also adopt policies to reduce emissions from buildings, industrial manufacturing facilities and freight activities such as rules to ensure cleaner operations at warehouses, railyards or ports. 

At the local level, investments in healthier, more sustainable transportation options (transit, pedestrian, electric school and transit buses), community-level clean energy programs and encouragement of “smart surfaces” can help protect health from air pollution. “Smart surfaces” include cool roofs, porous pavement, more green space and solar panels that help reduce heat in neighborhoods and protect health from the combined health harms of pollution and dangerously high temperatures. Local agencies can also adopt limits on emissions from residential appliances or commercial and industrial heating systems. Air quality and public health agencies can communicate health risks, provide incentives and share other, locally-informed opportunities to curb pollution.

Individuals can keep themselves safe on days with poor air quality and help their friends and families do the same – by doing things like checking daily air pollution forecasts at Airnow.gov, preparing for wildfires and other disasters (learn more at Lung.org/disaster) and reducing emissions from their vehicle or home energy use. 

Above all: you can also use the power of your personal voice. Even in a time when clean air protections are under threat, the fact remains: people nationwide want and deserve clean air. The need for clean air is universal and nonpartisan. And sharing a story is powerful–whether it’s a time when you had asthma symptoms on a smoggy day, your child having to spend days indoors because of wildfire smoke, or your concerns about the actions of the current EPA to gut clean air protections. That’s true when you take your story to leaders, but it’s also true with family, friends and other members of your community.

EPA must return to its mission, must value the health of the nation’s children and must follow science and the law to protect public health.