EPA flags microplastics, pharmaceuticals as contaminants in drinking water : NPR
The EPA reports that microplastics and pharmaceuticals are of potential concern as contaminants in drinking water, along with other chemicals and microbes.
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In response to public health concerns about microplastics and pharmaceuticals in the nation’s drinking water, the Trump administration for the first time added them to a preliminary list of contaminants maintained by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The EPA announced the decision Thursday, calling it a “historic step” for the Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, movement, which often raises concerns about toxic chemicals and plastic pollution in our food and environment.
“This is a direct response to the concerns of millions of Americans, who have long demanded answers about what they and their families drink every day,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said during a press briefing Thursday.
Also Thursday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a $144 million initiative, called STOMP, to develop tools to measure and monitor microplastics in drinking water and, later, eliminate them.
“Today we mark a turning point: EPA and HHS are acting together to address microplastics as a threat to human health,” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said during the press conference.
The Safe Drinking Water Act requires EPA to publish an updated version of its list of candidate contaminants every five years. This is the sixth iteration of the list. Microplastics and pharmaceuticals are included in the upcoming draft list, alongside per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, and dozens of other chemicals and microbes.
Their inclusion on the list gives local regulators a tool to assess risks to their water supply, according to the EPA, and it may pave the way for more research and regulatory action — but doesn’t actually guarantee that it will happen.
“This is an important first step, and I think we should recognize that,” says Sherri Masonresearcher at Gannon University who has published studies on plastic pollution in fresh water.
However, others who have pushed for the federal government to take more action to protect drinking water see the move as a disingenuous effort to play to the MAHA base without taking substantive action.
“I think it’s fair to call this theater,” says Katherine O’Brienlawyer for the advocacy group Earthjustice.
“This distracts from the real harm these same agencies are doing to public health by undermining real legal protections against exposure to toxic chemicals in our drinking water and food,” she added.
Concerns about lack of regulatory rigor
O’Brien and other representatives of environmental groups noted that the Trump administration has worked aggressively to remove regulations on toxic chemicals in the environment, including PFAS in drinking water.
She points out that certain “well-known and highly toxic drinking water contaminants” have in some cases been on this list for years.
Last month, the EPA announced would not take any regulatory action related to nine chemicals listed in the most recent version of this list of contaminants.
Environmental groups and a handful of governors have recently filed a petition the EPA to add microplastics to the next version of the Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule, or UCMR, which the agency recently submitted to the White House.
If microplastics are included in this update, the agency would be required to begin collecting data on the prevalence of microplastics in drinking water.
Mary Grant of Food & Water Watch, one of the groups petitioning the government, says it’s still possible the Trump administration could add microplastics to UCMR, in addition to what it announced this week.
“We hope for both outcomes,” says Grant, “because that in itself is not enough.”
The process of collecting data – and developing rules – regarding drinking water can take many years. Based on Thursday’s action alone, it could be a decade or more before new regulations come to fruition, Grant says.
“We need to understand the scale of our drinking water crisis,” she says.
The draft list of candidate contaminants will be open for public comment for 60 days.
A new effort to study microplastics
During Thursday’s briefing, HHS leaders shared details about STOMP, which stands for Systematic Targeting Of Microplastics. The initiative will design experiments to understand the effects of microplastics in the human body.
These were linked to human health problems but more research is needed to prove causation and understand their impact on humans more specifically.
“We focus on three questions: What is in the body? What causes harm and how can we eliminate it?” Kennedy said.
STOMP will be led by an agency within HHS called the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H.
The goal of the initiative is to “create a definitive common scientific basis” for studying and ultimately eliminating microplastics from drinking water, said Alicia Jackson, director of ARPA-H.
