EPA Finalizes Repeal of 2024 Updates to Mercury and Air Toxics Standards
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 2/23/2026
MEDIA CONTACT: Edder Díaz Martínez, Communications Director, 602-832-6039, [email protected]
WASHINGTON — On February 19, 2026, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin signed a final rule repealing specific 2024 amendments to the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, known as MATS. The rule repeals the revised filterable particulate matter standard for existing coal-fired power plants, removes the requirement that facilities use continuous particulate matter monitoring systems for compliance, and reinstates the prior mercury emission standard for lignite-fired power plants.
The action reinstates the 2012 MATS standards that limit emissions of mercury and other hazardous air pollutants from coal- and oil-fired power plants. The EPA argues that repealing the 2024 updates will result in cost savings to industry over the coming decade.
Mercury and Air Toxics Standards were first established in 2012 under Section 112 of the Clean Air Act to reduce emissions of hazardous air pollutants, including mercury, arsenic, chromium, and other heavy metals, from power plants.
GreenLatinos strongly opposes this rollback. The Latino Climate Justice Framework 2025–2028 calls for reducing fossil fuel pollution, directing resources to overburdened neighborhoods, and accelerating a just transition to clean, affordable energy. Latino communities are more likely to live near polluting fossil fuel infrastructure and face disproportionate exposure to toxic air pollutants. Weakening mercury and air toxics protections moves the country further away from those goals.
Following the announcement, GreenLatinos' Meisei Gonzalez, Climate Justice & Clean Air Advocate, issued the following statements:
“Mercury is a potent neurotoxin that can cause permanent developmental damage in babies and children, including learning disabilities and neurological harm. Weakening these standards puts pregnant people, infants, and vulnerable communities at greater risk of exposure to toxic pollution that we know harms public health.
At a time when families are already facing an affordability crisis, rolling back protections does not lower costs for communities. It shifts the burden onto our health care system, our schools, and working families, who end up paying the price for pollution-related illness. We should be focused on cutting pollution and preventing har,m so families are not forced to absorb the long term health and economic costs, while industry profits.”
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About GreenLatinos
GreenLatinos (NOTE: GreenLatinos is ONE WORD) is an active comunidad of Latino/a/e leaders, emboldened by the power and wisdom of our culture, united to demand equity and dismantle racism, resourced to win our environmental, conservation, and climate justice battles, and driven to secure our political, economic, cultural, and environmental liberation.
GreenLatinos (NOTA: GreenLatinos es UNA PALABRA) es una comunidad activa de líderes latinos/a/e, envalentonados por el poder y la sabiduría de nuestra cultura, unidos para exigir equidad y desmantelar el racismo, con recursos para ganar nuestra justicia ambiental, batallas de conservación, climáticas e impulsados a asegurar nuestra liberación política, económica, cultural y ambiental.
