WASHINGTON (February 20, 2026)—The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today it has finalized a rule weakening the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, or MATS, which regulate mercury and other hazardous air pollutants from coal- and oil-fired power plants. Mercury and other toxic pollutants pose a severe threat to human health and the environment, including harmful implications for fetal and early childhood development, cancer risk, cardiovascular health and more. The action follows an announcement last week by the Trump administration pushing the Department of Defense to procure contracts for coal-fired electricity generation and spending hundreds of millions of public dollars propping up faltering coal-fired power plants.
Below is a statement by Julie McNamara, associate policy director of the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).
“Once again, the Trump administration is abandoning science and abandoning statute to give polluters a free pass. And once again, the Trump administration is doing so at the expense of people’s health.
“This repeal blows wide open a toxic mercury emissions loophole for the dirtiest coal plants, weakens basic pollution protections, and discards requirements for coal- and oil-fired power plants to provide rudimentary operational transparency. Such standards are all readily attainable and all widely beneficial—and now they’re all being kicked to the curb.
“In attempting to justify this indefensible broadside against public health, EPA Administrator Zeldin is now actively hiding from the public massive health harms associated with this repeal. But hiding the data won’t hide the facts. People deserve better than this, and the law requires more than this. EPA must stop catering to a select polluting few and do its job.”
For additional resources related to this rulemaking, see comments submitted by UCS on the proposed MATS repeal, as well as a statement, op-ed in the British Medical Journal, and blog post related to EPA’s recent cost-benefit analysis changes.
