U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced new initiatives to tackle microplastics in the human body and drinking water on Thursday.
Kennedy said the government will create a $144-million program called STOMP, for the systematic targeting of microplastics.
“We are focusing on three questions, what is in the body, what’s causing harm, and how do we remove it?” Kennedy said.
Zeldin said the environmental agency will add microplastics and pharmaceuticals to its list of concerning chemicals in drinking water.
“For the first time in the program’s history, EPA is designating both microplastics and pharmaceuticals as priority contaminant groups,” he said.
The two Cabinet members sat a table before a crowded room at EPA headquarters in Washington, together with microplastic researchers including Marcus Ericsson, an environmental scientist and co-founder of the antiplastic Five Gyres Institute; Matthew Campin, a biomedical scientist at the University of New Mexico; and Leo Trasande, a pediatrician and public policy expert at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine and Wagner School of Public Service.
On either side of the table were two large posters that read “Confronting Microplastics” in capital letters.
Zeldin had been under fire by the movement known as MAHA, or Make America Healthy Again, in recent months over federal plans to loosen restrictions on harmful chemicals and approve new pesticides — including two that contain what are internationally recognized as “forever chemicals,” linked to serious health risks.
Kennedy, who is the political face of the MAHA movement, has also been criticized for capitulating on issues he once embraced. In February, President Trump signed an executive order to shore up production of the herbicide glyphosate, for “national security and defense reasons.”
Kennedy publicly supported that decision and in a social media post said that while herbicides and pesticides were “toxic by design” and “put Americans at risk,” the food supply depends on them.
Glyphosate, known commercially as Roundup, has long been a target of the MAHA movement. Produced by Bayer, which acquired the original manufacturer, Monsanto, in 2018, the herbicide has been the subject of tens of thousands of lawsuits, many from users who claim to have developed non-Hodgkins lymphoma as a result of exposure.
Antiplastic advocates applauded Thursday’s announcement.
“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has taken an important first step to regulate microplastics in drinking water,” said Judith Enck, a former regional director of the agency and founder of Beyond Plastics, an anti-waste environmental group based in Bennington, Vt.
She urged the regulators to “move rapidly,” not only to regulate plastic in drinking water but prevent it from getting into drinking water in the first place. So, too, did Kimberly Wise White, vice president of regulatory and scientific affairs at the American Chemistry Council, the trade group for the chemical industry.
“We support science-driven monitoring of microplastics in drinking water and research to better understand potential impacts,” White said in a statement.
Others, however, received the news with caution.
“We welcome any step that takes microplastics and emerging contaminants seriously,” said Kelly Shannon McNeill, managing director of the nonprofit environmental group Los Angeles Waterkeeper. “Americans deserve to know what’s in their tap water, but announcements aren’t regulations, and regulations aren’t enforcement, and this administration has a track record that gives us some serious pause.”
She said that along with other recent EPA actions, including steps to weaken protections against PFAS, or “forever” chemicals, and glyphosate, this latest step by the Trump administration “feels really disingenuous.”
In 2022, California became the first government in the world to require that drinking water be tested for microplastics. The state has not yet begun reporting its results.
“I think it’s a positive to see the federal government following what has been the lead of California in terms of initiating programs to investigate the extent to which these microplastics are occurring in our drinking water supplies nationwide,” said David Andrews, chief science officer for the Environmental Working Group. At the same time, he noted, the Trump administration has moved to cut funding for water infrastructure and appears to be “moving backwards” in many areas of environmental regulation.
A report from the State Water Resources Control Board was expected in 2025 but has not yet been issued.
Micro- and nanoplastics have been found everywhere scientists have looked. They’ve been found in human organs and tissue, such as brains, livers, placentas and testicles. They’ve also been detected in blood, breast milk and even meconium — an infant’s first stool. In addition, they are prevalent throughout the environment — in alpine snow, deep sea sediment and drinking water.
On Tuesday, a coalition of MAHA groups associated with Kennedy sent a letter to Zeldin requesting the Trump administration halt permitting for new plastics manufacturing plants and step up monitoring of microplastics in drinking water.
In December, Zeldin told MAHA groups he would include measures on plastics as part of the agency’s agenda, after several prominent MAHA groups called for him to be fired. They said he was too close to chemical companies.
Shannon McNeill, from Los Angeles Waterkeeper, also worries that if the source of these contaminants isn’t addressed, “all you’re doing is shifting that cost to local water utilities and wastewater treatment facilities. That ends up ultimately increasing our water bills.”
Meanwhile, plastic manufacturers will continue making money selling more plastic.
“It’s a great first step if they do follow through on it, but we’ve got to stop plastic pollution upstream,” she said.
