Docket Number:  Reconsideration of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Particulate Matter — EPA-HQ-OAR-2015-0072

Hello. My name is XX, TITLE AND ORGANIZATION, and I’m from CITY, STATE. I’m writing today to express my disappointment with EPA’s inadequate soot pollution standard that fails to protect public health or prevent premature deaths–especially in communities of color and historically overburdened communities. 

Soot pollution is extremely dangerous and harmful to our health and environment, which is why I am calling on the Biden administration to heed the recommendations of their own scientific advisory panel and to enact the strongest possible standards to limit soot pollution.

Limiting soot pollution is a key environmental justice issue. Many of us live in communities where this pollution is most concentrated, causing higher rates of asthma, heart disease, COPD, and even dementia.

Although the harms of soot pollution are widespread, they are not evenly distributed. Soot poses a heightened danger to the most vulnerable people in any community: children, the elderly, and people with chronic diseases. Additionally, because of biased policies and other systemic injustices, communities of color suffer higher exposure to soot pollution than others.

[Insert personal story on how soot pollution impacts you and your community here]

Racist practices like redlining often meant that people of color had no choice but to live near polluting industries, like power plants and warehouses with lots of traffic. Likewise, the deliberate routing of interstate highways through communities of color left the people within these communities with higher exposure to air pollution and soot. These historic injustices continue to drive racial disparities in health today with higher instances of asthma, heart attacks, and other respiratory illness than in other communities.  

Communities of color are paying a high price for inaction. Our communities need solutions for pollution, and the Biden administration and the EPA are in a position to deliver. Because people of color face disproportionately higher exposure to soot than other Americans, the impact of stronger standards would be felt most positively in these vulnerable communities. With stronger, updated limits on soot pollution (i.e. no higher than 8 mcg/m3 annual and 25 mcg/m3 daily), the EPA can save nearly 20,000 lives each year. 

In order to keep his environmental justice commitments, President Biden and his EPA must finalize the strongest possible standards to limit dangerous and deadly soot pollution.