Walk with me, up and down the hills of the San Ramon Valley, morning fog enhancing the beautiful shapes of the leafless oak trees at this time of year. The contrast of dark limbs against gray air is striking. Stark, though, as is much that is going through my mind which switched from fog to smog all too easily. I had just read news about changes in laws about pollution, and then came across a list of all the administrative decisions that affect our health in more or less direct ways. I’ll summarize below – the full set from which I borrowed can be found here.
Let’s start with pollution, given my associations to smog. The Trump administration has declared the EPA will no longer consider any monetary benefit from saving lives and protecting health when regulating toxic, fine-particle pollution. A life – yours, mine, that of your kids or grandkids – is now valued a $0 instead of the previous $10 million, when balanced against the cost of regulating the industry. As of January 2026, only the cost to industry will be considered, not tempered by concern for our health.
And should you develop lung problems, cancer or other diseases, good luck with your health insurance. The “Big Beautiful Bill” is predicted to deprive over 15 million people of health insurance, by slashing support for Affordable Care Act policies and by tightly restricting eligibility for Medicaid and CHIP, the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Medical experts predict more than 50.000 preventable deaths as a consequence, of course affecting the most vulnerable among us.
It is not just small particle pollution that potentially makes us sick. Mercury and other poisonous heavy metals were under strict emission control before. No longer. ” Nearly 70 of the nation’s largest fossil-fuel power plants have won exemptions from limits on the metals they spew into the air.”
Measles are running rampant, not just causing potential death in some cases, but more frequently life-long disability. They also wipe the slate clean in the sense that whatever immunity you built to other diseases through prior exposure, is lost. Your body now has to start from scratch.
Vaccines could prevent scores of horrible diseases. Many are no longer recommended; among them hepatitis A and B, rotavirus, RSV, meningococcal disease, influenza, and Covid. Don’t get me going on the absence of scientific reasoning in this area. Or the presence of absolute cult-like thinking around conspiracy theories tied to vaccines.
Another impact on our health rests on the changed recommendations about what we should and should not eat. The food pyramid has been turned upside down, with beef tallow, butter and red meat now on the top. (Never mind the environmental consequences related to climate change from such changes.) Whole grains have been placed at the bottom. The fat content of whole milk is also recommended again. Our leading cause of death in this country – heart attacks and strokes – will be shooting further upwards.
These are all changes that will directly affect the nation’s health. Indirectly contributing will be the fact that the National Institute of Health is under assault by the administration. Medical research has been undermined by the termination of grants, (including hundreds targeting infectious diseases), and Trump has proposed a 40 percent budget cut for 2026, after already more than 15% of the staff have been fired.
Trump has also withdrawn us from the World Health Organization, decimating the budget of the global health agency. That impacts us nationally, since the spread of HIV, tuberculosis, or pandemics knows no borders. These diseases are now less monitored and certainly less effectively fought given the withholding of funds.
The daily news grabs so much attention regarding the war-like actions we see in Minnesota, or the threats of war directed at other nations, the impunity of whole government agencies when they defy the law or judicial verdicts. The less spectacular actions around environmental or health protection easily fall through the cracks of the attention economy. But they will have a huge, long-lasting impact that affects us as well as future generations.
All receding into the fog created by the onslaught of too many bad news at once….
I’ll try and lift the mood after such a downpour of bad news. At least this bit of gallows humor around “acquiring” Greenland made me smile. Tells you about the state of my brain … Seriously, though, if you want to learn about the true rationale(s) underlying the Greenland fixation, read this.
