How Trump’s EPA Threatens Efforts to Clean Up Areas Affected Most by Dangerous Air Pollution

President Trump threatens to dismantle the steps his predecessor took to curb pollution.

The first Trump administration told EPA staff to defer more to state agencies on environmental enforcement.

But ProPublica has documented a long history of state failures to hold polluters accountable.

In Pascagoula , Mississippi , complaints from residents rolled in to the state’s environmental agency for years .

Texas is the nation’s top ethylene oxide polluter and home to 26 facilities that emit the chemical.

The state concluded that people could safely inhale the chemical at concentrations thousands of times higher than the EPA ’s safe limit.

A spokesperson for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality said the agency conducted an in-depth analysis that “led to the conclusion that there was inadequate evidence to support” a link between the chemical and cancer.

The EPA 's updated rule will require more than 100 facilities, including Westlake and the refinery in Pascagoula , to install air monitors along the fence line.

The monitors will measure up to six toxic gases, and the data will be posted online.

The new rule doesn't fully take effect until next year .