In 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued stronger air quality standards for particulate matter that the agency concluded would save thousands of lives every year and yield billions of dollars in net benefits. Yet after the start of the Trump Administration, the new EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced his intention to weaken these standards and return them to their pre-2024 levels. On February 6, 2026, Administrator Zeldin went a step further, ignoring a legal deadline for the 2024 standards and flouting his obligation to identify parts of the country with unhealthy air quality. In this issue brief, we explain why the 2024 standards are lifesaving, necessary, and flexible and rebut several misleading myths.
