Microplastics and pharmaceuticals designated as contaminants in drinking water
The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday proposed including microplastics and pharmaceuticals on a list of contaminants in drinking water for the first time, a step that could lead to new limits on these substances for water utilities.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said they are responding to Americans who are concerned about plastics and pharmaceuticals in their drinking water. The gesture also aims to deliver a victory to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s MAHA movement, which has been pressuring Zeldin for months to crack down more on environmental contaminants.
EPA’s Candidate Contaminant List identifies contaminants in drinking water that are not regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act. The agency releases the draft of the sixth version of the list, opening a 60-day public comment period. He hopes to finalize the list by mid-November.
“I can’t think of an issue that more directly affects American families than the safety of their drinking water,” Zeldin said at EPA headquarters.
Studies have examined the prevalence of microplastics in drinking water and in people’s hearts, brains and testes. Doctors and scientists are still assessing what this means in terms of threats to human health, but say there is cause for concern. There is also growing concern about pharmaceutical drugs entering the water supply because humans excrete them and conventional wastewater treatment plants fail to remove them.
The EPA uses the list to prioritize research, funding and regulatory decision-making, but rarely removes pollutants from the list to set limits on the amount allowed in public drinking water. The EPA said in March that it would not develop regulations for any of the nine pollutants on the list it recently reviewed.
“It’s the start of a very long process that usually gets nowhere,” said Erik Olson, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council who works on drinking water protection.
Still, some urging the government to do more to end plastic pollution say the announcement is a good start.
“Including it on the list would be the first step toward eventual regulation of microplastics in public water supplies and, hopefully, it will not be the last step,” said Judith Enck, a former EPA regional administrator who now runs Beyond Plastics.
Dr. Philip Landrigan, director of the Global Observatory on Planetary Health at Boston College, said that while the EPA is moving in the right direction, if the United States does not curb the accelerated growth of plastic production, which leads to plastic pollution, it will make little difference. The United States is participating in negotiations on a treaty to address the global plastic pollution crisis, but strongly opposes limits on plastic production.
Food & Water Watch says the listing is important but ultimately falls short of their call for oversight. The EPA uses the Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule to collect data on contaminants suspected of being present in drinking water.
The American Chemistry Council, an industry group, said it supports monitoring of microplastics in drinking water and research to better understand potential impacts, provided that monitoring is standardized and consistent nationally.
The joint decision by Kennedy and Zeldin comes as activists in Kennedy’s MAHA movement have forged shaky political ties with the EPA but expressed frustration with the lack of action on their priorities, including pesticide regulation.
The movement erupted earlier this year following an executive order from President Donald Trump aimed in part at boosting production of a controversial weedkiller ingredient known as glyphosate. Kennedy said he was disappointed by the executive order, but considered it necessary for agricultural stability and national security.
The EPA has announced an upcoming MAHA program that it says will address issues such as forever chemicals, plastic pollution, food quality, Superfund cleanups and lead pipes. In February, EPA press secretary Brigit Hirsch told the Associated Press that the agenda was in its “final stages.”
Kennedy, whose independent 2024 presidential campaign focused in part on combating plastic pollution, also announced a $144 million effort to better measure, understand and eliminate microplastics that have entered the human body.
Called STOMP, or Systematic Targeting of Microplastics, it will involve creating tools to detect and quantify microplastics, map their movement through the body and ultimately eliminate microplastics from the human body, he said.
“We can’t treat what we can’t measure, we can’t regulate what we don’t understand,” Kennedy told the EPA on Thursday. “Together we will define the risk, build the tools and act on the evidence about microplastics.”
The Safe Drinking Water Act, as amended in 1996, directed the EPA to publish the list of candidate contaminants every five years. Next, the agency must determine whether it should regulate five or more contaminants from the list. Through five cycles of the process, the EPA determined that no regulatory action was appropriate or necessary for most of the contaminants it examined.
Trump called for fewer environmental rules. In May, the EPA announced plans to roll back limits on some less common “permanent chemicals” in drinking water, about a year after the Biden administration finalized the first-ever national standards. The NRDC and other environmental advocates are fighting to keep the entire Biden-era rule in place.
The new draft list includes four groups of contaminants — microplastics, pharmaceuticals, PFAS and disinfection byproducts — as well as 75 chemicals and nine microbes that can be found in drinking water, the EPA said.
___
Associated Press writers Michael Phillis and Matthew Daly in Washington contributed to this report.
___
Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from several private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropic organizations, a list of supporters, and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
