Sign up

Help protect the places we love,
the values we share

In our emails, sent once or twice a week, you'll receive:
• alerts on new threats to Maryland's environment
• opportunities to join other Marylanders on urgent actions
• updates on the decisions that impact our environment
• resources to help you create a cleaner, greener future

Donate

Clean Air, Healthy Families

New EPA clean air standards will cut mercury pollution by 90% and save 46,000 lives each year. The coal industry and their friends in Congress are trying to roll back these standards, but we’re urging Congress to let EPA do its job and move forward with its commonsense plan to protect public health.

Toxic air pollution threatens our health

More than half of all Americans live in places with unsafe levels of air pollution, which causes of heart attacks, asthma attacks, emergency room visits, hospital admissions and even deaths year.

Studies show that one in six women of childbearing age has enough mercury in her bloodstream to put her child at risk of health effects should she become pregnant. This means that more than 689,000 out of the 4.1 million babies born every year could be exposed to dangerous levels of mercury.

The consequences are serious: Children who are exposed to even low-dosage levels of mercury in the womb can have impaired brain functions, including verbal, attention, motor control, and language deficits, and lower IQs. When these children are monitored at ages 7 and 14, these impairments still exist — suggesting that the damage caused by mercury may be irreversible.

3,781 bodies of water contaminated nationwide

Coal-fired power plants spew hundreds of thousands of pounds of toxic mercury into our air every year, which falls to earth in the form of rain and contaminates rivers, lakes and streams.

Wildlife that is exposed to mercury may have develop more slowly, have reduced fertility or even die, depending on the level of exposure. And it doesn’t take much: Scientists found that a gram of mercury — about a drop — deposited in a mid-sized lake in Wisconsin over the course of a year was enough to account for all of the mercury subsequently found in that lake’s fish population.

According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, mercury impairs 3,781 bodies of water across the country, and 6,363,707 acres of lakes, reservoirs, and ponds in the United States are contaminated by mercury pollution.

With your help, we can save 46,000 lives

Recently, the EPA moved ahead with efforts to significantly reduce mercury, soot and smog pollution, announcing historic new emissions standards that combined could save 46,000 lives a year. Unfortunately, polluters and their allies in Congress launched a coordinated attack to block these critical safeguards.

We’re working closely with our allies in the public health community, lobbying key Senators, and rallying thousands of activists stand up for public health.

It won’t be easy, but if enough of us speak out, we can drown out the coal industry lobbyists and make sure that the EPA is allowed to do its job and protect public health.

Join our campaign by sending a message to the EPA right now.

Clean air updates

Report | Environment Maryland Research and Policy Center

Dirty Energy's Assault on our Health: Mercury

Our dependence on oil and coal-fired power plants has broad detrimental impacts on our health and our environment. Power plants represent America’s single biggest source of air pollution, affecting our waterways, destroying ecosystems, and polluting the air we breathe. Pollution from coal-fired power plants in particular contributes to four of the five leading causes of mortality in the United States: heart disease, cancer, stroke, and chronic respiratory diseases.

Report | Environment Maryland Research and Policy Center

Summer Gas Prices

Rapidly rising gas prices across the country are shining a spotlight on the dire consequences of American dependence on oil. Our continued use of oil puts our environment, our health, and our national security at risk, and with prices across the country exceeding $4 per gallon, it is putting an incredible burden on our economy and on American families.

Report | Environment Maryland Research and Policy Center

Building Maryland's Future

Sprawling development threatens Maryland’s last remaining open spaces, while global warming threatens to inundate parts of Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay waterfront over the next century and create major disruptions to agriculture, natural systems and human health across the state.

Report | Environment Maryland Research and Policy Center

The Clean Cars Program

Rising global temperatures, unpredictable weather and alarming scientific predictions
have led to increasing public concern about the impacts of global warming on the environment, health and society. But while the Bush administration continues to resist efforts to reduce global warming pollution, many states are taking effective actions to address the threat—including the adoption of the “Clean Cars Program,” which sets limits on global warming pollution from cars, light trucks and SUVs.

Report | Environment Maryland Research and Policy Center

Getting on Track

Transportation is responsible for more than two-thirds of our nation's oil consumption and nearly a third of our carbon dioxide emissions. To make us more energy independent and reduce pollution, we need to build a transportation system that uses less oil, takes advantage of alternative fuels, and shifts as much of our travel as possible from transportation modes that consume a lot of energy to those that consume less.

Pages

View All RSS Feed

Thank the EPA for reducing toxic mercury emissions.

Send them a message

Key Facts

New air pollution standards could save 46,000 lives
Right now, mercury pollution puts 1 in 10 women of childbearing age at risk.
Together with our allies, we delivered more than 800,000 comments to the EPA in support of a strong mercury standard. EPA received roughly 907,000 comments on the standard—more than any other EPA standard in history—and the vast majority of the comments were in support of a strong standard.
On December 21, 2011, the Obama administration responded to this show of support by announcing the first-ever nationwide standards for mercury pollution from power plants. This followed the July 2011 announcement of new standards for smog and soot pollution for power plants in the central and eastern regions of the U.S.

Get our RSS feed

Latest Reports