Each month, we highlight a Supermom of the Month, a member who has gone above and beyond to advocate for clean air and children’s health. Our members in states across the country are more important than ever as we work to preserve clean air and climate protections. Will you join us?

This month, we’re celebrating Celestina Garcia, mom to a 13-year-old and manager and professional development trainer for the State of New Mexico. Celestina was nominated by Moms Organizer Giovanna Rossi for “generously sharing her time and story to help elevate the voices of families impacted by climate change and air pollution.”

Celestina is far from your average volunteer. Yes, she attends community events to help spread the word about how clean air impacts public health. But this year, she has also shown incredible courage and generosity by allowing Moms and our partners to feature her land and story in a wildfire-focused social media video. The compounding extreme weather Celestina and her family have endured in the four years since climate-change-fueled wildfires ravaged her community is heart-wrenching. Here is her story.

Tell Congress: Support Mental Wellness Resources for Communities Facing Weather Disasters

How did you first become interested in environmental and air quality issues? 

My family has been in New Mexico for 14 generations. I come from a long line of people connected to the land—we’re ranchers. We have always planted crops and had animals. We are land grant owners from northern New Mexico, and our environment is a huge part of how we live. Air quality became especially important for my family during the Calf Canyon fires in 2022.

Tell us more about the Calf Canyon fires and how they impacted your family.

At the time, I was living with my son and parents at their ranch, about 30 minutes outside Las Vegas, New Mexico. The fires began on a weekend with extreme wind. No one from our community would ever have started a fire with that wind, but the Forest Service did it anyway [as part of their prescribed burn plans]. The fire became one of our biggest nightmares.

On the day we were evacuated, I was at work, and my colleagues came rushing to my door: “You need to get home right now. They’re evacuating your area.” By the time I made it, the state cops had already blocked the roads. My parents and son were at our ranch. Because the utility had cut the power as a precaution, they didn’t have internet or a phone so didn’t know to evacuate. The cops told me I was not allowed to go evacuate them; they would do a wellness check. So I drove to the other side of the mountain and walked up and over it to my parents’ home. I had adrenaline going. We packed as much as we could and drove out. We were evacuated for 30 days.

What was it like coming back to the ranch after a month away?

Many in our community lost everything; acres of beautiful forestry were burned down to toothpicks, homes melted to the ground. To this day, it’s traumatic to drive through the area and see what my son and nephew call “the tree graveyard.”

Even after we returned, our sky was orange pink for days and days. The air quality was horrible. Our animals couldn’t drink from the river because of the ash and debris. We had to truck in clean water.

Without the trees, anytime it rains in the mountains now, our community experiences dangerous flooding. What used to happen once every five to eight years now happens every time it rains. There are no trees to hold the soil or water; no trees to take care of the wind patterns. We live a completely different life because the trees are gone. Because our property is at the lower end of the valley, it gets completely flooded for acres. There are no warning signs; the flooding happens immediately.

We’ve lost our family bridge, which is how we get across the river to the rest of the world, three times. It’s costly, in terms of the expense and the personal labor. We don’t have heavy equipment on our ranch, so my dad, who’s in his 70s, has done all the repairs of the bridge and the road by hand.

Have there been fires since Calf Canyon?

Yes, there was one the following year closer to our home. We were evacuated for a week. Thankfully, they contained it quickly. But that was extra PTSD.

After that second fire, a tornado came over the mountains through the burn scar. No warning, no sirens. It hit my parents’ land. We spent three weeks cleaning up the destruction.

Has your family experienced any health impacts from these weather disasters?

My dad has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and we believe it’s because he went back to the ranch earlier than the rest of us. In the last year, he has also undergone two surgeries because of brain bleeds. This man was one of the toughest people you could ever meet. We believe that the bleeds may be caused by strenuous work after the fires, like a power lifter will get if they lift too heavy. Since the surgeries, my father’s been relearning to walk, talk, and rebuild his health. He and my mom have not been able to live at the ranch.

For me, it’s been stress and constant fear. Growing up my cousins, my brother, and I would play down by the ranch’s river in the summertime. But that’s not something my son or nephew can do. Now the area by the river is a flood zone; it becomes a mini ocean in the rain. We are vigilant: Where are our kids? How is the weather? Has it changed?

There’s also an immense amount of anger, sadness, and depression about how our community has been treated by FEMA and others. This wasn’t our fault, and there’s no apology that can change what happened to us.

How do you stay motivated to keep sharing your story and taking action? 

I was a part of social and environmental justice projects when I was younger; I’ve learned from elders how to use my voice. A lot of my community is not ready to speak out. It’s hard to talk about and challenging to be kind and peaceful about it. But for me, it’s important that people don’t forget how important their choices are. The Calf Canyon fire absolutely could have been avoided.

Tell Congress: Support Mental Wellness Resources for Communities Facing Weather Disasters

Moms staff and members testified to the EPA last week, asking them not go forth with a proposed rule that would allow polluters to get permits for “minor” pollution sources without notifying local communities. These “minor” sources include heavily polluting AI data centers, chemical “recycling” plants ,and chemical manufacturing campuses. In all, 13 Moms raised concerns about the potential for companies to significantly increase pollution in already overburdened communities, without even providing a chance for public comment. 

Pennsylvania Field Organizer Vanessa Lynch’s testimony rang true and was later quoted in WIRED: “As someone actively working in communities with data centers, I know this to be fundamentally true: People want to have a say,” she said. Ohio Field Organizer Amanda Rowoldt shared similar sentiments with EPA, reminding the agency that “public participation is essential in a free and democratic society.”

Tell EPA: No New Toxic Pollution Without Public Input   

West Virginia Field Organizer Lani Wean told the EPA that her state has already faced decades of corruption, with greedy industry and power-hungry regulators forcing pollution on communities for profit. “I have no doubt in my mind that this proposal will exacerbate those very issues and is intended to do that,” she said. An excerpt from Lani’s testimony also ran in West Virginia Gazette Mail. 

Interested advocates can also tell the EPA not to go forth with the rule or submit a comment directly to the EPA before August 21. 

In other news … 

• Lani also testified to the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, asking them not to approve a permit request for a plastic pyrolysis site that would be located fewer than 500 feet from a school. Her compelling testimony made another West Virginia Gazette Mail article, which quoted her stating that the facility would set a “dangerous precedent” for new petrochemical development.  

• “I feel love is a powerful motivator for change, and the love we have for our children is kind of the ‘ultimate renewable fuel,’ and the energy that will keep us going,” Moms Co-Founder and Director Dominique Browning shares how she stays positive in the face of setbacks, on Not A Climate Scientist podcast.  

• Dominique also co-authored an op-ed with Moms’ Senior Petrochemical Analyst Cynthia Palmer in The 74, explaining that the EPA’s proposal to gut the Risk Management Program, which is designed to protect Americans from chemical disasters, will directly endanger one-in-three children that attend school in chemical disaster vulnerability zones. 

• Nevada Field Organizer Mary Wagner writes that increasingly common extreme heat is threatening her children’s ability to play sports — one of the “greatest joys of childhood” in an op-ed for Impacto Media and El Pregonero. Read what she has to say about the inequitable and dangerous impacts of extreme heat on and off the field. 

• Mary also speaks to Nevada Public Radio about a recent change to Nevada Energy’s rates that will charge customers based on their highest electricity usage, calling this decision unfair because it will specifically increase costs for rooftop solar owners.  

• As temperatures in cities across the US consistently hit triple digits before noon most days, Moms’ Public Health Manager Elizabeth Bechard warns that children in summer school may fall further behind. “Asking them to catch up with their learning in very suboptimal learning conditions, when it’s too hot to learn, is not going to help so much,” Elizabeth shares with The Hechinger Report. 

• Elizabeth was also quoted in West Virginia Gazette Mail, calling a recent proposal by the Office of Management and Budget to overhaul the current framework for federal financial assistance and replace it with a discretionary, partisan system to be an “outrage.” She also explains to Pioneer Press that the poor air quality covering the Midwest this summer is particularly dangerous for children because their lungs are still developing. 

• In The Denver Post, Colorado Field Organizer Laurie Anderson addresses an inconclusive result on a study evaluating if current oil well distance is enough to protect children from leukemia. She warns that the result means industry will “frack anything in the area before they get the study that says, ‘Whoops, we weren’t as protective as we should have been.’” 

Honorable Mentions 

Over the last few weeks, Moms also earned mentions in Black Enterprise, Spectrum News 9, Sierra Sun Times, The Lens, Rolling Out, and PA Environment Digest. 

It’s hard to believe that Moms Clean Air Force, launched in 2011, is celebrating 15 years.

“When I started Moms, global warming felt like a far-away problem,” says Dominique Browning, director and co-founder of Moms. “It was a danger to polar bears in the Arctic, not to our kids. Over the last 15 years, Moms has worked tirelessly to change that narrative—and to advocate for protections and laws that fight against climate and air pollution. The impacts of climate change aren’t a distant threat—they are happening now, and they are deeply personal. Unprecedented flooding is devastating communities; the cost of cooling during a heatwave is forcing families to make hard financial choices; wildfires can change life as we know it in an instant. Our children, who will inherit this planet and are growing up in this age of climate chaos, have the most at stake. But there is still so much hope for our future if we course correct now, and that’s what keeps me, and this organization, going. Hope, and love: the most sustainable, renewable energy that humans have. Love for our children, our grandchildren, our planet—and yes, the polar bears too.” 

The following is a nostalgic and proud look back at how far we have come. Here’s to the next 15!

2011

We have always been about safeguarding all children. The first challenge we took on was getting national EPA standards to protect babies from coal-fired power plant pollution that included air toxics such as mercury. Coal plant pollution settles into our soil, water, and bodies where it converts to a powerful neurotoxin that can disrupt the development of fetal and infant brains. Thanks in part to our efforts, mercury pollution has dropped by 86% since the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards were implemented in 2012. Trump’s EPA has now put these gains at risk, and Moms are poised to push back.

2014

Moms Clean Air Force held the first annual Play-In for Climate Action in 2014. Inspired by the concept of a sit-in, we coined the term “play-in” because kids don’t sit—they play! Over 200 parents and children traveled to Washington, DC, to tell Congress to tackle the challenge of our changing climate by crafting laws to cut carbon and mercury pollution. Members of Congress, including Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Barbara Boxer, joined the inaugural gathering.

Donate to Moms Clean Air Force

2016

The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama in 2016. This law was passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and is designed to help protect our children from exposure to toxic chemicals in our products. We were deeply involved at the grassroots level for support of this bill, and Moms Director and Co-Founder Dominique Browning was invited to the signing of the bill into law.

2017

Moms Clean Air Force hit its 1 million members milestone in 2017. Today, we are closing in on 2 million, with chapters across the country! Celebrity members of Moms Clean Air Force, Christina Applegate, Julianne Moore, and Maya Rudolph, also took to YouTube and other social media this year to speak about the importance of fighting for strong protections against climate and air pollution and toxic chemicals.

2018

We launched our Latino engagement program, EcoMadres, in 2018. Since then, it has grown into a vibrant community of parents and caregivers mobilizing to educate and activate around the disproportionate toll that air pollution and climate impacts take on Latino communities. The program recently won a Telly Award, and EcoMadres leadership has been recognized by Sachamama and People en Español! In 2022, EcoMadres even launched its EcoMusica group, SonTierra, to inspire hope and action with the power of music.

2019

Our popular Mom Detective Q&A column—inspired by members’ questions about all the shocking toxic chemicals in our everyday stuff—launched in 2019, with an exposé on dental floss. Seven years later, the Mom Detective franchise has helped people navigate everything from bathroom renovations, to heat safety, to wrapping paper, and the column has been featured in SheKnows and NBC’s Modern Parenting segment.

2021

This was a huge year: Moms helped secure passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the largest investment in rebuilding America’s infrastructure in more than 70 years. Through more than 200 meetings with lawmakers and federal officials, public events, op-eds, and grassroots advocacy, Moms helped secure historic investments to protect children’s health from air pollution and our changing climate—including $5 billion for clean school buses and $4.7 billion to plug orphaned oil and gas wells.

2022

Another huge year: The Inflation Reduction Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Biden in August. This once-in-a-generation legislation includes an unprecedented $369 billion investment in cutting climate pollution. Moms members spent 18 months advocating for several important climate provisions in this bill, holding more than 300 meetings with congressional offices and sending more than 80,000 emails to lawmakers. Moms continue to defend its investments as they are rolled back under Trump.

2024

Moms debuted their first annual summit on children’s health in 2024, which included Chelsea Clinton and EPA Administrator Michael Regan among the esteemed guests. Since then, Moms has convened multiple high-profile events centered on children’s health, including three annual Moms convenings, two EcoMadres summits, and a forum on maternal and child health.

Also in 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris acknowledged Moms’ electric school bus advocacy in a letter that was read at the annual Play-In for Climate Action. Moms worked tirelessly to ensure that school districts nationwide replace dirty diesel-powered transportation fleets with electric school buses. EPA’s Clean School Bus Program distributed nearly $3 billion and 12,000 school buses between 2022 and 2024 to clean up the nation’s school bus fleet and install the necessary charging infrastructure.

Moms and EcoMadres also worked behind-the-scenes with the offices Representative Jennifer McClellan (VA-4) and Representative Nanette Diaz Barragán (CA-44) on two important congressional resolutions to protect the health of moms, babies, and children in a changing climate: the Resolution on Children and Extreme Weather and the Protecting Latina Maternal and Infant Health From Extreme Heat and Air Pollution Resolution.

2025

For years, we fought hard for New Mexico’s oil and gas methane pollution protections, giving testimony, writing comments and op-eds, meeting with decision makers. In 2025, methane pollution data collected by satellite shows oil and gas operators on the New Mexico side of the Permian Basin are releasing methane at half the rate of operators next door in Texas, proving that these protections are working! Moms joined Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham in Albuquerque to celebrate.

Moms also celebrated with Governor Shapiro when the state of Pennsylvania plugged its 300th orphaned and abandoned oil and gas well, protecting communities from the dangerous pollution that leaks out of them. Moms, who have been urging leaders for years to address orphan well pollution, are teaming up with Environmental Defense Fund to identify them for plugging, and celebrated the 400th well milestone in June 2026!

Moms closed out 2025 by launching the Zeldin Must Go campaign, citing EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s corruption of the agency’s mission to protect human health and the environment. Moms convened a coalition of more than 190 organizations to demand congressional oversight to ensure that EPA fulfills its core mission. Members of this coalition included the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, Hip Hop Caucus, League of Conservation Voters, Natural Resources Defense Council, and other leading groups.

2026

Moms Clean Air Force’s advocacy helped suspend operations or cancel plans for several “advanced recycling” plastics incinerators, which do not actually recycle anything and instead spew harmful pollution into nearby communities. Freepoint Eco-Systems in Hebron, Ohio, suspended operations, and proposed facilities in Point Township, Pennsylvania, as well as Youngstown, Ohio, were cancelled. And the year isn’t over yet!

Find more of Moms’ notable achievements here.

Donate to Moms Clean Air Force

For Moms’ Call the Doctor series, we peek behind the medical privacy curtain and get to know the people we entrust our health with, including their motivation, research, career goals, and daily work.

If you’ve never been to San Diego, you might not know that its notoriously pleasant climate isn’t uniform; it varies by neighborhood. “Some get access to wonderful air. Others have to deal with big rigs commuting between the U.S. and Mexico, or the port that brings in ships and all their pollution, and because we’re in a coastal desert, we also get fires. They used to be a seasonal thing, but have become year-round now,” explains Dr. Sabrina Perrino, pediatrician and co-founder of San Diego Pediatricians for Clean Air, a volunteer coalition.

Tell Congress: The Climate Clock Is Ticking. Act Now for Our Kids’ Future.

Extreme heat disrupts a mild climate

Extreme heat also varies neighborhood by neighborhood. “Some have stereotypical weather, but we have communities where there are no trees,” says Dr. Perrino. These are the locations suffering the most now that San Diego, like many places across the country, is experiencing increasing stretches of above 90 degree days. Dr. Perrino grew up in San Diego and has witnessed the shift firsthand. “We used to have a much shorter duration of the hot part of the year. There are communities now in the 100s for months. The nicer neighborhoods have more tolerant climates,” she notes.

San Diego isn’t built for this extreme heat. Air conditioning was never a building staple. “Now there’s more talk about where people are supposed to go for cooler air when it’s hot. Families with babies used to use libraries and malls to try to find air conditioning, but because of budgetary reasons, some places are closed. There is literally nowhere to go.”

San Diego schools are similarly unprepared for extreme heat. “All our schools are designed with bungalows. We don’t have a building where all the classes are,” Dr. Perrino says, noting this configuration is also a problem when wildfire smoke makes it dangerous to walk or play outside. She says, diplomatically, that there’s “room to make progress” with the local schools on heat exposure plans.

Maybe a path to progress will come out of the fourth annual Heat and Human Health Summit at the University of San Diego, cohosted by San Diego Pediatricians for Clean Air later this month. Colleagues will gather and share recent research and more to an audience mostly full of professionals working in advocacy and health, though the event is open to the community.

Day-to-day work

Dr. Perrino works on the summit and other advocacy projects in the margins of her days spent seeing patients in the southern part of San Diego, about a 10-minute drive to Mexico. While she sees impacts of air pollution and environment daily—increased asthma rates in kids living close to local highways, for example—her families don’t often ask her climate-related questions. “Some do, but the ones at highest risk for dealing with these things, their lives are so busy. They’re living paycheck to paycheck and have their priorities.”

So Dr. Perrino makes a point to let families know about the connections between environment and health, to offer practical advice, but also always to tell them their kids’ illnesses are not their fault. “Sometimes I’ll reference other, wealthier neighborhoods near the beach to let them know they’re experiencing something that is a consequence of the neighborhood and larger decisions that are being made. And once they hear that, you can see things click. It helps to take that burden when they realize this is related to larger system things.”

She only gets to offer practical, thoughtful advice when kids have reason to be in her clinic. When she sees overheated youth athletes who don’t know how to recognize the signs of heat illness—or what to do and when—she can help educate them. And when kids with asthma flares related to Santa Ana winds combined with hot, dry weather show up, she can start a conversation about air quality. Her patients’ families don’t necessarily check the Air Quality Index before planning their days, even if they look outside or notice the air smells like a barbecue. “Everybody still needs to be out going to work, picking up kids, and doing stuff. I don’t think people have shifted how they approach their day based off air quality. Most people don’t live life like that,” she says. Once they’re in her examining room, she’s able to talk about checking air quality and taking a preventative approach. “Today it’s actually really poor so you may have to change your plans,” she’ll share.

Enlisting pediatricians for advocacy

But these are one-off appointments. San Diego Pediatricians for Clean Air was founded about 10 years ago to help more broadly. “As doctors we do one-to-one visits, and over the years, we see patterns. When you start to see patterns, then it’s like, what can we do to try to help solve these problems at a larger scale and be a little more efficient?” she says, adding, “There are still some people who trust the medical expertise of doctors, and we can use our voice to speak up for families that need this kind of advocacy.”

The volunteers, all doctors, work on everything from representing patients’ voices in spaces where they’re not being heard to family education to legislation. Gathering volunteer colleagues has been a “nice collective experience,” and Dr. Perrino says everyone in the coalition uses their distinct skill set to bring awareness to air pollution, extreme heat, and more. They’re learning about the issues in real time, not through training, she notes. A recent win for the group was having one of their pediatrician volunteers get on a local air pollution control board. “We try to insert ourselves where we can to remind everybody making decisions that people need to breathe clean air.”

As health professionals, they’re also working to recognize how fast the climate and its health impacts are changing. This is critical. “The advice we give one year may shift the next. We are starting to have flexibility and elasticity to understand that the people we are taking care of are going to deal with more, different from last year, and that the urgency to inform them is greater.”

Tell Congress: The Climate Clock Is Ticking. Act Now for Our Kids’ Future.

Trump’s EPA is at it again gutting crucial clean air protections that safeguard people’s health. Earlier this month, the agency released a proposal to weaken tailpipe pollution standards for new heavy-duty diesel vehicles, like school buses and many kinds of delivery trucks. The inevitable result? More toxic exhaust harming our children’s developing lungs, brains, and immune systems.

Moms do not want more exhaust. That’s why 14 of us from across the country showed up to testify at this week’s virtual EPA hearing about the proposed Clean Trucks rollback. Transportation pollution, especially from heavy-duty trucks, is one of the largest and most dangerous sources of emissions in the U.S. While heavy-duty trucks make up a small percentage of vehicles on the road, they produce a disproportionate share of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and diesel particulate matter—emissions that worsen asthma, heart disease, and respiratory illnesses, and increase cancer risk and neurological and developmental harms, especially among children and older adults. Why would anyone want to roll protection from this back?

Tell EPA: Protect Children From Toxic Truck Exhaust

This EPA’s insistence on clawing back clean air progress, and making it easier to get sick and harder to get well, is infuriating. Our collective outrage showed up in some of our most compelling and relatable testimonies:

Mary Wagner, Nevada

“For families like mine, tailpipe pollution isn’t an abstract issue—it’s our daily reality. Living so close to I-15 and US-95 means constant exposure to heavy traffic emissions. On high ozone days, we receive air quality warnings, outdoor activities are restricted, and my son’s asthma symptoms worsen. We’ve had days where we simply cannot let him play outside because the air is too dangerous to breathe. Cleaner vehicles would mean cleaner air for my family and for all Nevadans.”

Read Mary’s full testimony.

Jayne Black, Wisconsin

“Poor air quality is already a serious problem in Wisconsin. The American Lung Association has given the Milwaukee-Racine-Waukesha metro area an F grade for both ground-level ozone and short-term soot pollution, ranking it among the worst in the nation. Transportation is a significant contributor of harmful air pollutants like nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, and soot—all of which damage public health and well-being.

“I am a mother of four children, two of whom are directly impacted by NOx emissions from heavy-duty vehicles. My daughter, who has multiple sclerosis, experiences flare-ups and relapses triggered by pollution. My son suffers from asthma, which is exacerbated by tailpipe emissions. I worry that without strong protections, our children and future generations will face even greater health burdens from rising air pollution.”

Read Jayne’s full testimony.

Kindra Weid, Michigan

“As a nurse, I see the direct health impacts of tailpipe pollution exposure on members of my own community and even within my own household. My family lives along a busy roadway, and we breathe in daily harmful tailpipe pollution from heavy-duty vehicle traffic. This impacts my partner’s asthma, causing inflammation and irritation and flaring acute exacerbations. It causes headaches and nausea for me. I also witness these impacts on my community members in the local hospital where I work.

“Many older adults here have multiple chronic heart and lung conditions impacted by tailpipe pollution, such as coronary artery disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). We also know that long-term exposure to pollution from tailpipes contributes to these chronic conditions forming in the first place.”

Read Kindra’s full testimony.

Patrice Tomcik, Pennsylvania

“Our school district campus (K-12) is located approximately 175 feet from the heavy-trafficked State Route 228. Studies have shown that the highest daytime exposures of traffic pollution are within 500 feet of a busy road. On an average day, at least 10,000 vehicles and 500 trucks and buses travel this heavily congested roadway. Closing school windows and doors can help lessen the traffic pollution exposures, but the reality is that NOx, fine particles, and vapors are able to readily penetrate the indoors, where they can be breathed in by young lungs.

“Both my children were exposed to this air pollution from kindergarten until high school graduation. I am concerned about the years of cumulative pollution exposure on their developing lungs—especially my youngest son who is a cancer survivor and is immune compromised.”

Read Patrice’s full testimony.

Tell EPA: Protect Children From Toxic Truck Exhaust