On the morning of Jan. 10, when the federal government said it would stop prioritizing how many lives are saved by cutting air pollution, Sonya Sanders flashed back seven years to when a fossil fuel facility near her South Philadelphia home exploded.
The 2019 blast rattled windows across the city and could have killed thousands if the wind had blown another way. A cloud of toxic pollution spread for more than 7 miles and impacted more than a million people.
Then she thought about the quieter emergencies that never make the news: the asthma attacks on the rise in her community. Increasingly, youngsters in her neighborhood tug on inhalers at night or are left wheezing after walking past truck-choked roads to the bus stop.
Philadelphia children are more than three times as likely to have asthma as the average American child, a pattern tied to spikes in particulate pollution from the factories and highways that ring the city.
Making matters worse, Black children in the area are hospitalized over four times more often than white children for asthma-related illnesses.
Now, the Trump administration is saying it will no longer value these health impacts in the same way that it values businesses profits. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will still mention health effects from pollution, but will no longer assign them a value in the cost-benefit calculations that determine how much pollution a facility can emit.
“To be honest, it’s nothing new to me. We’re expendable, as far as they’re concerned,” said Sanders, who is an advocate with Philly Thrive, a community group focused on environmental and health issues.
“They always care more about the big corporations — anything to do with money — more than with human life,” she added.
Over just the first few weeks of 2026, the Trump administration has quietly dealt several blows to the movement to stop these global health issues related to energy production and the environment.
The same week that the EPA said it will now only calculate the costs to businesses of complying with pollution standards, not the health benefits, the Trump administration withdrew from the bedrock United Nations climate treaty signed by 195 other countries. Just a few days later, the administration introduced rules to fast-track new federal permits for pipelines and data centers that advocates say are landing disproportionately in Black neighborhoods.
Taken together, the administration’s recent actions constitute a systematic attack on federal climate and health protections, placing communities like Sanders’ in direct jeopardy.
“It’s really sick, because they’re messing with people’s lives, health, and mental, emotional, and physical stability. It’s just not OK,” Sanders said. “It will never be OK.”
A coordinated rollback of climate and health protections
The withdrawal from the U.N. climate treaty removes the U.S. from international commitments to lower pollution. The point of the global climate treaty is to get all countries to lower their greenhouse gas emissions and cooperate to protect vulnerable communities from storms, floods, and fires.
“Let’s be clear: This withdrawal will also harm the American people themselves,” said Mohamed Adow, a climate advocate and director of the think tank Power Shift Africa. Adow said the United States faces escalating climate impacts. He added, “By abandoning international climate frameworks, America isolates itself from global solutions and risks being left behind.”
Abandoning the treaty also matters for Black American communities because it signals a shift away from long-term climate planning and accountability. In practice, it means the government is greenlighting industrial expansion without fully weighing major climate impacts on already overburdened neighborhoods.
The fast-tracked permitting for pipelines and data centers accelerates that expansion: new gas power plants will lock in fossil fuel dependence for decades, while data centers will strain the power grid and increase electricity demand. In both cases, these types of infrastructure are more likely to be built in Black and low-income areas.
And the EPA’s elimination of health benefit calculations removes one of the main metrics that advocates have historically used in efforts to slow this expansion.
Not too long ago, between 2017 and 2020, Sanders’ organization was able to use a health survey to help convince local leaders to push for the closure of a neighboring oil refinery and a pause on new fossil fuel infrastructure. The leaders cited that survey in their justification.
The federal government had previously calculated that every dollar spent reducing air pollution saved up to $77 in health benefits by reducing hospitalizations and lost workdays. This calculus helped slowly reduce the smog and particles that trigger asthma attacks and hospitalize thousands of Philadelphians each year.
Under the new rules, those benefits will be valued at zero, while pipelines and data centers will be built faster and easier. In recent years, utilities and developers have proposed or built new gas-fired power plants specifically to serve data center clusters in states like Virginia, Texas, and Louisiana, a trend analysts warn could spark a new wave of local pollution hotspots.
The recent moves to stop calculating the health benefits of lowering pollution by the administration “does not mean we are disregarding or undervaluing the health impacts,” an EPA spokesperson said in a recent statement defending the shift.
But to Heather Toney, executive director of Beyond Petrochemicals, “what we’re seeing now is … ignoring the very lives pollution rules are meant to protect.”
“The EPA was created to protect human health and the environment. That means saving lives first, not boosting corporate profits and pollution,” added Toney, whose organization focuses on climate progress and public health nationwide.
This matters because Black Americans are three times more likely to die from exposure to particle pollution from power plants than white Americans.
Globally, America is statistically the most responsible nation for historical greenhouse gas emissions and the climate and environmental impacts they cause. Since the 1800s, the U.S. has been responsible for roughly 25% of all human-caused pollution, the single largest share of any country, despite making up just 4% of the world’s population.
For advocates and residents in countries that depend on American cooperation to protect themselves from rising temperatures and sea levels, Adow said, “we will move forward with or without American leadership.” Still, he said, “we know that ordinary Americans — like people everywhere — deserve better than a government that turns its back on both science and their future security.”
Back in Philadelphia, Sanders said the Trump administration’s latest policy decisions only harden her resolve — and that of her neighbors — to keep pushing back against the companies she said are causing her community harm.
“We’re still fighting just to get a seat at the table with these big businesses, and we haven’t gotten one yet,” Sanders said. “Until people stop dying and our health is better, we will not stop talking and we will not stop fighting.”
Read More:
- Severe Weather Is Increasing the Cost of Living for Black Americans
- This Climate Program Saved the U.S. $6 for Every $1 Spent. Trump Just Killed It.
- America’s Digital Demand Threatens Black Communities with More Pollution
- Living in Industry’s Shadow: How Black Communities Are Left Behind by EPA Cuts