EPA warns of microplastics and pharmaceuticals as drinking water contaminants

In response to public health concerns about microplastics and pharmaceuticals in the nation’s drinking water, the Trump administration added them for the first time to a draft list of contaminants managed by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The EPA announced the move Thursday, touting it as a “historic step” for the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, which often raises concerns about toxic chemicals and plastic pollution in food and the environment.

“This is a direct response to the concerns of millions of Americans who have long wanted answers about what they and their families are drinking every day,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said at a Thursday briefing.

Also Thursday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a $144 million initiative called STOMP to measure and monitor microplastics in drinking water and develop tools to remove them at a later stage.

“Today, we reach a turning point. EPA and HHS are acting together to combat microplastics as a threat to human health,” Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said at a briefing.

The Safe Drinking Water Act requires EPA to publish an updated list of contaminant candidates every five years. This is the sixth iteration of the list. Microplastics and pharmaceuticals will appear on the next draft list, along with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and dozens of other chemicals and microorganisms.

The EPA says their inclusion on the list will give local regulators a tool to assess water risks and set the stage for further research and regulatory action, but it does not guarantee that will actually happen.

“I think this is an important first step and we should recognize that,” he said. shelley masona Gannon University researcher who published a study on plastic pollution in freshwater.

But others calling for more federal action to protect drinking water see the move as a disingenuous effort to toy with MAHA bases without taking substantive action.

Say, “I think it’s correct to call this a theater.” catherine obriena lawyer for the advocacy group Earthjustice.

“This distracts from the real harm these agencies cause to public health by undermining actual legal protections against exposure to toxic chemicals in drinking water and food,” she added.

Concerns about lack of regulatory teeth

O’Brien and other environmental group representatives noted that the Trump administration has been actively working to roll back regulations on toxic chemicals in the environment, including PFAS in drinking water.

She points out that some “well-known and highly toxic drinking water contaminants” have not been on this list, in some cases for many years.

Just last month, the EPA announced No regulatory action will be taken It is associated with nine chemicals listed in the latest version of this contaminant list.

Environmental groups and a few governors recently petitioned The EPA recently requested that microplastics be added to the next version of the Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule (UCMR) submitted to the White House.

If that update includes microplastics, government agencies would need to start collecting data on the prevalence of microplastics in drinking water.

Mary Grant of Food & Water Watch, one of the groups petitioning the government, said microplastics could still be added to the UCMR in addition to what the Trump administration announced this week.

“We’re hoping for both outcomes,” Grant said. “Because this is not enough.”

The data collection and rule-making process for drinking water can drag on for years. Based on Thursday’s actions alone, it could be more than a decade before any new regulations become reality, Grant said.

“We need to understand the scope of the drinking water crisis,” she says.

The draft list of pollutant candidates will be available for public comment for 60 days.

A new approach to researching microplastics

During Thursday’s briefing, HHS leaders shared details about STOMP, which stands for Systematic Targeting Of Micro Plastics. This initiative will design experiments to understand the effects of microplastics within the human body.

these are, related to human health issues However, further research is needed to prove causality and more specifically understand the impact on humans.

“We focus on three questions: What is in our bodies, what is causing us harm, and how do we get rid of it,” Kennedy said.

STOMP will be led by an agency within HHS called the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H).

ARPA-H Director Alicia Jackson said the effort’s goal is to “build a definitive shared scientific foundation” to study and ultimately remove microplastics from drinking water.