Gadgetory

these photos were commissioned by the Environmental Protection Agency in the early 70s to document pollution in the u.s. they show how dire the situation was before environmental protections were put in place now they remind us of why we need those protections today the future of the EPA is uncertain president Trump is expected to slash the EPA's budget the head of the EPA scott pruett once wrote back many of the regulations that empower the agency in a very short billing Congress calls for terminating the EPA by the end of 2018 literally this is all it is but most Americans aren't really on board a recent poll showed that more than 60% of Americans including Republicans won the EPA's powers to be preserved or strengthened under Trump there is tremendous public support for clean air and clean water and the basic mission of the agency is tremendously popular and people are counting on the government to provide protection the EPA was created in 1970 by Republican President Richard Nixon and there was broad bipartisan support for it restoring nature to its natural state is a cause beyond party and beyond factions it has become a common cause of all the people of this country that's because back then many Americans could see pollution firsthand most US cities were engulfed in smog Los Angeles was named a smog capital of the world in 1948 in the small town of Donora Pennsylvania toxic smog produced by the local zinc plant and steel mill kill 20 people many others got sick in 1969 a layer of oil and debris floating on the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland was accidentally set on fire the Cuyahoga is the most famous burning rivers across the US were not an unusual sight back then the EPA and the laws the Agency enforces helped change all that now we breathe cleaner air from 1970 to 2015 national emissions of pollutants like LED carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide have declined by an average of 70% cleaner air means that 160 thousand people in the US didn't die prematurely due to pollution in 2010 alone but that sorry all of it 86,000 emergency room visits and 30 new million lost days from work were also prevented that's good for human health and for the economy since the 1980s the EPA has also worked with local authorities to clean up some of the most polluted sites in the u.s. from radioactive waste to illegal waste dumps you know I think overall it's been an incredibly important agency and I think every way the way the environments improved since 1970 it's hardly storing you know to do counterfactual if it were where we would be without the EPA but I think UK is played a central role in affecting those improvements in his first speech the EPA prutte said that he wishes to give responsibility for environmental protection back to the states but here's the rub pollution doesn't respect state boundaries just think about acid rain acid rain was creating a lot of damage in the forests in the northeastern US even though the pollution was coming from Midwestern states like Ohio Illinois and Michigan so by setting national standards the EPA can make sure the one state's loser regulations don't hurt another state nearby today environmental challenges aren't as obvious as those of the 60s and 70s but they're still present climate change will post new threats like rising sea levels heat waves and more destructive natural disasters we're in the middle of a mass extinction and lead in drinking water is a problem that still affects millions of Americans across the u.s. the environmental degradation recorded by the EPA's photos in the 1970s wasn't so long ago we often take clean air and water for granted but we have clean air and water because of agencies like the EPA you