Twenty years ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had a bold vision. With the increasing use of electronics in American households and business -- including the introduction of personal computers that would soon be in every home and office across the country -- the agency saw a need to conserve...

So when I say that clean air and children's...

It's a certainty in Washington that lobbyist talking points and inside-the-beltway speeches are going to be overblown and exaggerated. But lately, misleading claims about the EPA's work have been making their way into the mainstream debate.

The most notable is an industry report that the EPA is responsible for an...

At the ROUND2 electronics recycling facility in Austin, Texas, American workers dismantle, sort, test and repair a steady stream of discarded printers, computers and other electronics. The millions of pounds of electronic waste that ROUND2 processes each year are kept out of landfills here and abroad, and the valuable materials...

With the economy on the minds of millions of Americans, President Obama continues to make job creation this administration's top priority. Today the U.S Environmental Protection Agency is following through on that priority by supporting the creation of good, green jobs for Americans across the country.

The EPA is awarding...

From tainted factories and deserted gas stations to closed smelters and old textile mills, the more than 450,000 abandoned or contaminated sites throughout America threaten our health and environment -- but also our economy. No one wants to live or work near land that's unsafe, water they can't drink, or...

Two months ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed one of the most important clean air actions of the last 20 years, a change that will help make Americans across this nation healthier for years to come. I stood with doctors and President Charles Connor of the American Lung...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is taking another important step in our mission to safeguard the health of millions of Americans.

This week we proposed Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, a Clean Air Act protection that sets the first-ever national safeguards to limit power plant releases of mercury, arsenic, chromium,...

Earlier this week the Environmental Working Group issued a report showing the presence of hexavalent chromium, or chromium-6, in water supplies of 31 cities in the United States. As a mother of two and the head of the EPA, this report is troubling. While each of the cities in the...

Forty years after the passage of the Clean Air Act, it is extraordinary to look at the numbers.

Numbers like 200,000 -- which is the count of premature deaths the Clean Air Act prevented in its first 20 years. Over the same period, the Act prevented 672,000 cases of chronic...

I grew up in New Orleans. As a chemical engineering student at Tulane University, I worked and studied in the local environment, particularly the wetlands, marshes and swamps. I saw then that the wetlands were the beating heart of the region. The coastal waters support a multibillion-dollar fishing industry that...

In the last 18 months, the United States has taken major steps forward in the transition to a clean energy economy. With historic investments in solar, wind and other innovative renewable energy sources, we are positioned to compete for the clean energy jobs of today and tomorrow, to reduce our...

Today we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, and later this year we will mark the 40th birthday of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and 40 years of the remarkably successful Clean Air Act. The suite of environmental protections that took shape in 1970, along with a sweeping Clean...

One of my colleagues at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently met with a leader from a national African-American advocacy organization, and spoke about raising the profile of environmental challenges in minority communities. The response he got was that, though the group shared his concerns, they didn't think they could...