Climate Action
How the Environmental Protection Agency Cleaned Up America
August 29, 2025
The Foundation of Environmental Policy
As the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, comes under increasing attack from a U.S government that does not value clean air, clean water, caring for the environment or even acknowledging the indisputable reality of climate change – it’s a good moment to look back and explore why a functioning EPA touches all of our lives, both here in the U.S and abroad.
The EPA has been the biggest player guiding environmental policy in the U.S, since it was formed in 1970, under the leadership of Republican President Richard Nixon, just a few months after the very first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. Seeing 20 million Americans marching in the streets demanding action on the terrible smog choking cities across the country and filthy water ways, proved people cared about these issues. Nixon was decisive and the EPA was born with bi-partisan support. Suddenly ‘the concept of quality of life’ took hold.
The EPA at its core has always been ultimately about human health – our right to live in a world that is not dying from industrial contamination and which puts people above corporate greed and profit. Undermining the work of the EPA is essentially anti-life.
Aidan Charron, Associate Director, Global Earth Day, EARTHDAY.ORG
But the EPA’s reach is global. It advises not just the United States, but also plays a pivotal role in world environmental policy and its leadership was until recently a guiding light on all United Nations Environmental Programme negotiations.
Rachel Carson
Prior to the 1960s, environmental protection wasn’t a widely talked about issue among the American public or any public for that matter.
This changed when the 1962 bombshell book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson was published. The book critiqued the widespread use of the pesticide DDT, which had been relatively new at the time. Invented in 1939, DDT is an incredibly powerful pesticide that was created to kill malaria carrying insects to protect troops during World War II. It hit the shelves for consumers in 1945.
The problem with DDT is that it accumulates in the tissues of wildlife and humans alike, disrupting hormones and causing reproductive problems, developmental issues, and increased risk of cancer. It is particularly harmful to birds, leading to thinning eggshells and population declines. Carson’s book foresaw a future with no songbirds due to the impact of DDT and it shocked people into starting to care.
Up until then, very few people had sounded the alarm about its negative effects of DDT, and those who did, were not taken seriously. In effect their warnings were regarded as ‘fake news’. It was only after being denied an article in Reader’s Digest to discuss the results of testing and the harmful effects of DDT, that Carson decided to write her seminal book detailing her findings.
The book discussed how DDT had entered the food and water supply chain by way of runoff and bio-magnification, wherein chemicals increase in concentration in each organism as the food chain rises. As well as this she explained bioaccumulation – a process that means as each animal eats food contaminated with DDT – it builds up inside them over time. Carson brought these concepts up to the public and compelled them to care for the very first time.
This, combined with disasters such as the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill that killed countless marine animals and seabirds forced the average American to be much more aware of environmental issues than ever before. This reached a fever pitch on Earth Day in 1970, which saw President Nixon finally unveil a comprehensive environmental plan to tackle oil spills, invest in environmental research, set limits for emissions to guarantee good air quality and new rules around clean water. These were soon consolidated into one agency and the Environmental Protection Agency was created.
This wasn’t about being ‘woke’, it was much simpler – people did not want their children breathing dirty air, drinking contaminated water or killing wildlife recklessly. It was both altruistic and personal. It showed true leadership on the part of Nixon.
Tom Cosgrove, Chief Creative and Content OFficer, EARTHDAY.ORG
Landmark Policy & Global Influence
In 1972, ten years after Silent Spring was first published, the EPA banned the use of DDT. Thanks to those efforts, the presence of DDT in wildlife, domestic animals and our water ways has decreased, but the effects of DDT still linger and it is important to continue to advocate for banning it globally.
While the EPA helped negotiate and signed the Stockholm Treaty on POPs (Persistent Organic Pollutants, like DDT), it is still used in some countries in Africa to combat malaria. Harm reduction is the goal, both from pollutants and the disease carrying insects DDT kills, so having many advisory voices, which includes experts from the EPA, is key. As the EPA comes under domestic attack, its global influence will wane.
The Hudson River Poisoning
In 1976, public concern was sparked again by the discovery of chemical pollution in New York’s Hudson River. PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) are industrial chemicals once widely used in electrical equipment, paints, and pesticides, known for their toxicity and environmental persistence.
It was revealed that from 1947 to 1977, General Electric’s manufacturing plants at Hudson Falls and Fort Edward discharged over a million pounds of PCBs into the Hudson River. To this day, PCB-contaminated sediments in the riverbed continue to leach PCBs into the water through processes like desorption, resuspension, and groundwater seepage.
The EPA was able to take direct action through the Toxic Substances Control Act, which gave them the authority to require testing, reporting, and set guidelines for toxic substances. This policy still stands today and keeps people, wildlife, farm animals, and the environment safer from reckless use of harmful chemicals and discharges from industrial complexes. Without the EPA and this sort of power we would all be at risk of more exposure to toxic chemicals.
Similarly, policies such as the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act allow for the EPA to regulate our biggest polluters and ensure that we have clean air and water.
How Growing EPA Responsibilities Strengthened Our Protection
Following the Toxic Substances Control Act’s passing, it became clear that a fund was needed to pay for cleanups following toxic chemical spills.
In 1980, Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), also known as ‘Superfund’. This gives the EPA the resources and authority to lead cleanup efforts in the event of oil spills, and industrial chemical discharges. As well dealing with disasters that do not typically come to mind when we think of environmental events, such as efforts to clean up the aftermath of 9/11, where the EPA coordinated hazardous material removal at Ground Zero, and responses to anthrax poisoning attempts.
The Superfund is a flexible piece of legislation that allows for the EPA to respond to disasters and at the same forces polluters to also take accountability for cleanups. It’s about protecting human health and life above all else.
Aidan Charron, EARTHDAY.ORG
The Power and Importance of the Endangerment Finding
Building on its critically important role in addressing industrial pollutants and environmental disasters through programs like Superfund, the EPA also began tackling emerging challenges related to air quality and climate change.
In 2009, the EPA published the seminal Endangerment Finding, which asserted that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, threaten our present and future wellbeing. That is because carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide are scientifically proven greenhouse gases that unequivocally drive climate change, this is an established fact, not a matter of belief.
To say you don’t believe in man-made climate change is like saying you don’t believe in cancer. It doesn’t change anything, cancer still exists.
Tom Cosgrove, EARTHDAY.ORG
The Endangerment Finding followed the 2007 Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, which ruled that greenhouse gases are air pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act, thereby granting the EPA the authority to regulate them.
The 2007 court directed the EPA to determine whether scientific research supported the claim that greenhouse gas emissions from cars and other vehicles harm public health.
The EPA gathered evidence that included peer-reviewed assessments from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the U.S. Global Change Research Program, and the National Research Council, compiling thousands of studies demonstrating the multiple harmful impacts of GHGs such as causing rising sea levels, increased frequency and severity of extreme weather, degraded air quality, and negative effects on agriculture and ecosystems.
The EPA concluded that emissions from new motor vehicles contributed to this pollution, justifying regulation under the Clean Air Act. With this evidence, the EPA issued the Endangerment Finding in 2009, empowering the agency to regulate greenhouse gases as a watchdog. This Finding has been upheld in court and serves as the foundation for numerous greenhouse gas regulations
Protecting the Public Health From Administrator Lee Zeldin
The policies the EPA has passed have made all of our lives better,every single day. But the work and the authority of the EPA are under attack from the present U.S Administration.
Just last month, July 28, 2025, the EPA’s own Administer Lee Zeldin, a lawyer not a scientist, proposed repealing the Endangerment Finding. This would deliberately undermine the EPA’s own power to regulate for clean air and clean water for us all. Two critically important issues in keeping the American public safe and healthy.
We need your help in letting him know that this is not acceptable.Your children deserve to breathe air unpolluted by greenhouse gasses, have a government actively fighting climate change and trying to diminish extreme weather events, and ensure you are drinking clean, chemical free water. These are basic human rights and they are not negotiable.
You can write directly to Administer Zeldin here to demand he walk back this harmful plan. The EPA has protected us for decades, we must act now to ensure that it continues to do such for decades to come.
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