The Inflation Reduction Act invested billions into green energy and environmental justice projects, including grants for phytoremediation projects, which use plants to extract, degrade, or stabilize pollutants in soil, air, and water. When the Trump administration canceled $2.8 billion in EPA grants for research and environmental justice projects, Ira Vandever’s hemp phytoremediation project in the Navajo Nation lost its funding. Another $1.6 million EPA-funded phytoremediation project spearheaded by the Mi’kmaq Nation was building upon their research demonstrating that hemp can extract PFAS (Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), also known as ‘forever chemicals,’ from soil, when their grant was also frozen. Projects like these are among many caught in the crossfire of culture war disputes about diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
Pollutants in our soil, air, and water are modifiable risk factors for poor health outcomes. Interventions to improve our health, like phytoremediation, are urgently needed as the US lags further and further behind peer nations in life expectancy. A 2021 study found a staggering 20.4 year disparity in life expectancy between the longest and shortest living demographic clusters in the US—nearly double the gap in 2000. Geographic differences in exposure to environmental threats to health are responsible for a meaningful share of health inequality in the US. For example, one study of Medicare beneficiaries found that elevated exposure to dangerous airborne pollutants like PM2.5 particles is correlated with an increase in all-cause mortality. Another study found that for each standard deviation increase in long-term exposure to ambient PM2.5 there was a 10.8% increase in hospitalizations for non-respiratory infections. A tsunami of stories describing links between smart phones, anxiety, and our diminished attention spans spurred a spate of legislative and policy interventions to remove smartphones from the classroom. But how many Americans know about the relationship between air pollution and anxiety? Or the correlation between daily variance in air pollution and ADHD symptom burden? Or between daily variance in pollution and hospitalizations for schizophrenia? The EPA-funded phytoremediation projects now stuck in legal limbo were designed to address these very problems.
The fight to restore EPA funding is well worth it, but the protracted legal battles over the EPA’s environmental justice grants and the general erosion of the EPA’s capacity under the Trump administration should motivate state and local entities to pursue more of their own environmental justice projects. States, local governments, universities, religious institutions, hospitals, and nonprofits can act to reduce environmental health risks in their community. Small-scale phytoremediation projects are tractable, long-term investments that harness the psychological benefits of greenspace and phytoextraction capacity of particular plant species. Effective implementation requires knowledge about the local ecology, including soil types, rainfall, surrounding flora and fauna, the target pollutant(s), and potential impacts on nearby infrastructure. Well-researched plant choices include willows, cypress, and poplar trees. The right approach will be context dependent. Poplar trees are a great choice for a long-term TCE (trichloroethylene) cleanup project near a landfill or along a creek in the Southeastern US, but in Connecticut, a smaller community garden project focused on phytoextraction and phytostabilization of lead could use sunflowers. Municipalities, universities, schools, and hospital districts could invest in green barriers to reduce the PM2.5 concentration of air behind the barrier by 7-8%.
Phytoremediation is a financially competitive approach too. A study conducted by the Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division found that, by using hybrid poplar trees instead of traditional TCE cleanup and containment methods, they saved between $8.5 and $10.5 million. A 2023 study found that for agricultural land in a mining community, phytoremediation was the best soil remediation method in their cost-benefit analysis model, that best balanced cost, project duration, improved agricultural output, and health benefits measured in disability-adjusted life years.
The EPA’s environmental justice grants were unfairly targeted because culture war narratives rendered them as divisive and wasteful. But nearly all Americans agree that we must protect our air and water from harmful contaminants. The beauty of phytoremediation projects is they speak to intuitively understood universal needs, with a low cost of entry for local actors looking to build coalitions and make a difference. Whether federal agencies thrive or wither away, we can still bloom where we are planted.