Letter
United Faiths Letter on Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (2012)
United Faiths Letter on Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, May 17, 2012, signed by Bishop Stephen E. Blaire, Chairman, Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development
As communities of faith, we are called to protect the most vulnerable among us and to serve as stewards of God’s Creation. In keeping with these teachings, we urge you to oppose any attempt to overturn or delay the Environmental Protection Agency’s final Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS). Such a national standard would reduce harmful exposure to mercury pollution and other air toxics, including arsenic, chromium, nickel, and acid gases, from power plants in the United States. This hazardous air pollution has harmful impacts on the health and welfare of all people, particularly on children, poor and vulnerable communities, and on all Creation.
For more than twenty years, communities of faith around the country have sought stronger standards to reduce harmful air pollution that threatens both the youngest and poorest members of our society. One in six babies born in the U.S. now contains harmful levels of mercury in their blood. These precious children will face potential brain damage, lower intelligence, or other severe neurological disorders.
President George H.W. Bush signed the 1990 Clean Air Act (CAA) demonstrating that protecting human life from pollution was not a partisan issue. The CAA mandated and empowered the removal of air toxins to protect public health. We have been waiting for over twenty years for necessary standards to reduce hazardous air pollution and protect children’s health. We ask the Senate to act in a bipartisan fashion to protect the most vulnerable in our society, and to uphold the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards as finalized by the EPA. Our children and Creation cannot wait any longer.
As one signatory to this letter, Catholic Bishop Stephen Blaire stated, “In the end it just makes good sense to want to have clean air for our children and families to breathe and for future generations.”
We urge you to protect America’s children and most vulnerable people by supporting the MATS rule and opposing any legislative attempt to weaken this rule.