Lara, where have you been?

If you've felt overwhelmed by the state of the world lately, join the club. If you've specifically felt like you're in a sadistic/psychotic version of the chocolate factory with Lucy and Ethel, where the conveyor belt keeps speeding up, but the chocolate is actually shit studded with razor blades…well, that's where I've been. Which is why you haven't heard from me.

Some of these shit-razor blade bonbons have been news about things unrelated to environmental health directly: ICE murdering citizens and detaining small children, laws that criminalize miscarriages, the passage of what is essentially a voter suppression law, the continued bombing and killing of Palestinians by Israel, or the depravity of wealthy, influential men (and some women) identified in the Epstein files… It’s too much.

So this has been me. I’m Fred Mertz.

Or at least I wish I were. As a chronically online person (I know, I know, I need to put down my phone), I can’t turn away from the mille-feuille of shitty bad news. (I’m not proud of doing desserts dirty in this post.)

Obviously, I’m also paying attention to what’s happening within public health and environmental health. More terrible news. Every day, I wake up and look at my IG feed

Followed usually by some of this

The unrelenting wave of bad news has been paralyzing. Every time I’ve sat down to write about one deregulatory move that will lead to more pollution, more disease, and more death, three more pile up on top. And the next day, something else.

It’s TOO MANY SLICES!

To break me out of my catatonic state, here is a list of bummer news on the environmental health front that I will be writing about one at a time.

• Air quality regulations save lives. The EPA says, “Lives saved? Never heard of it.”
  EPA’s decision to no longer consider the value of money saved from health care costs or deaths from things like air pollution, and instead only how much air pollution limits would impact polluting industries. Without the counterbalance of “lives saved,” the stringent pollution regulations (that very literally save lives) would seem “too expensive.”
  

• Polluters over people
  Just in the last week, the EPA decided to repeal the endangerment finding, which underpins climate change policy, and neuters the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases (CO2, methane, etc.) from vehicles and power plants, which in turn will lead to more air pollution. This is a huge win for industry.
  

• Less PFAS regulations in drinking water
  The EPA is delaying the deadline for water utilities to meet the drinking water standards for 4 of the 6 PFAS chemicals that were put in place at the end of 2024.
  

• More PFAS on our crops
  The Trump EPA just approved new pesticides that are literally PFAS by any international scientific definition, but insists with a straight face they’re not “forever chemicals” because in 2023 they conveniently redefined PFAS to exclude single fluorinated carbons—never mind that they’ve already greenlit nearly 70 PFAS pesticides over the years (as both active and inert ingredients) that everyone else in the world recognizes as forever chemicals.
  

• Formaldehyde is now safe!
  Just kidding. It’s definitely not, but the EPA is tossing its own data showing that it’s clearly carcinogenic

In addition to all this really fun stuff, I also have on my list some posts about how misguided the MAHA/wellness folks are, how the desire to return food to the way it was 100 years ago (natural! no pesticides!) is literally so stupid I could cry, and why things have become so polarized (and usually incorrect) when it comes to environmental health, especially online.

In the meantime, how have you all been coping with the horrors of late?