Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
Government

EPA Flags Microplastics, Pharmaceuticals As Contaminants In Drinking Water (npr.org) 58

Posted by BeauHD from the important-first-steps dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Responding to public health concerns about microplastics and pharmaceuticals in the nation's drinking water, the Trump administration for the first time has placed them on a draft list of contaminants maintained by the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA announced the move Thursday, touting it as 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. 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 in a later stage, to remove them.

The Safe Drinking Water Act requires the EPA to publish an updated version of its Contaminant Candidate List every five years. This is the sixth iteration of the list. Microplastics and pharmaceuticals appear in the draft of the upcoming 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 evaluate risks in their water supply, the EPA says, and it can set the stage for more research and regulatory action -- but doesn't actually guarantee that will happen.

EPA Flags Microplastics, Pharmaceuticals As Contaminants In Drinking Water More | Reply

EPA Flags Microplastics, Pharmaceuticals As Contaminants In Drinking Water

Comments Filter:

  • Nice. Filtering that stuff out is going to be quite a challenge, though.

    • Re:That's unexpected (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ClickOnThis ( 137803 ) on Friday April 03, 2026 @01:21AM (#66075080) Journal

      It's all well and good to identify contaminants in drinking water, and try to filter them out. It's another to address how they got there in the first place. Per TFA, it seems the current administration is focused on the former, but not the latter.

      • I mean, that's what people said about Michelle Obama when she proposed a lot of this stuff a decade or more ago...

        • Michelle Obama was not in a position to drive government policy. Nor did she want to be then. Nor does she want to be now. She has stated repeatedly that she has no interest in serving in a policy-steering public office, elected or appointed. First Lady was her contribution.

          • I believe "Y'all aren't ready for that" was her response when asked if she would run for president.

            • And she was proven right in 2024, unfortunately.

              There's a large cross-section of the US electorate that is far too concerned with identity politics at the expense of policy politics.

              • The net result of 1986 to today of politics on both sides being name calling, "we're not evil like the other party", "let's accommodate and celebrate even more behavior" and "it's not my money they are wasting" is

                - no progress on policy benefiting average US citizens
                - a steady increase in government spending and debt burden on each US citizen
                - elected officials who do nothing to help average people and practice aging in place or office holder for life
                - news reporters who parrot the same old tired worn out i

        • Well, he was a Democrat, before the party decided to ostracize him for running in the Democrat primaries against Biden. And all his issues were traditional Democrat issues that Republican candidates normally wouldn't touch. But finally he left, taking his supporters - people who vote Democrat on these issues of public health - w/ him

      • it seems the current administration is focused on the former, but not the latter.

        Obviously! One company creates pollution and makes money as a result. Another company makes money by charging you to deal with the pollution.

        This is the free market at work - markets know best.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by syn3rg ( 530741 )

        Those studies are being called into question by other scientists:
        ‘A bombshell’: doubt cast on discovery of microplastics throughout human body [theguardian.com]

        • Not to mention the more recent discovery that commonly used lab gloves likely are contaminating samples with a chemical that can cause false positives. Microplastic pollution clearly is a huge problem. It needs to be carefully studied to assess the true scope. But be careful casting blame here. The scientific method often has errors. And gradually corrects them.

          The plastics/petrochem industry has enormous financial incentive to continue maximizing their output and revenue because the burden of secondary co

        • Why does everything have to be a "bombshell" or "breaking now!" or "this just in" or "shocking new report!"

          I guess because we now live in an attention economy and a headline of "some scientists criticize work of other scientists" isn't really catchy enough. Much more honest, but doesn't drive clicks, I guess.

          Sigh.
          • Because it is a lot more interesting than "baseline background on an assay needed adjusted up because of gloves" and also makes it easier to dismiss that the total load of microplastics in everything is slightly lower than we thought. Which is the sort of thing that happens regularly in any basic research and assay development without breathless news about it, because Limit of Background studies are even boring for the technicians running them.
      • That's not just a problem for his administration. The plastic lobby is incredibly powerful and wealthy and it's just not politically practical to go after it directly.

        Also I'd be worried about the knockout effects of widespread banning single use plastics. It creates an enormous amount of inconvenience for a already overworked population. That kind of frustration can be exploited politically by bad actors to get elected and do even worse things.

        Basically in politics you have to pick your battles. Y

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nomadic ( 141991 )

        The current administration is focused on making it look like they're doing something.

        If they really wanted to regulate microplastics they'd regulate them, not put them on a list where they'll sit and do nothing.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jhoegl ( 638955 )
      doesnt matter when they removed EPAs enforcement ability with water.

      This is just a bluster move https://natlawreview.com/article/san-francisco-v-epa-supreme-court-strikes-down-epas-end-result-permit-requirements [natlawreview.com]
      • It is the crux of how MAGA and MAHA are interacting. They'll make pronouncements about health while ensuring that regulatory agencies are incapable of doing anything but requesting voluntary action.
    • They make household filters specifically designed for microplastics now. I don't know how well they actually work.

  • How is it historic when it's the government doing what it should be doing: protecting the population from toxic substances?

    Considering all the time and effort and money these people have thrown at lawsuits against the EPA, against regulating toxic chemicals, against regulating industry in general, the only thing historic about this is the how high their hypocrisy has climbed.

    • It's historic because it's the best and most sensible thing that's been allowed to happen under this administration. Sunsetting the penny gets an honorable mention, but that's trivial compared to this. Both things have been in the works for ages.

  • A stopped clock is right twice a day is the old cliche. Concerns about microplastics are legitimate and are particularly linked to inflammation https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969723075757 [sciencedirect.com] and cardiovascular issues https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11009876 [nih.gov] among other concerns. We don't know how serious this is, but it is at least a problem and should be looked at furhter. This is a good thing, and should be recognized as such. That the same government is refusing to deal

  • Yes, a contaminant. But how toxic? (Score:3)

    by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Friday April 03, 2026 @10:32AM (#66075482) Homepage

    In order to pass regulations, they'll need to establish a level of toxicity, as they do with other contaminants.

    There's not much research on that level that I could find, but there is some research into how lethal microplastics are.

    There are a few animal studies available that measured lethal doses of microplastics: https://oceanconservancy.org/n... [oceanconservancy.org]
    - Sea birds - 12 grams of plastic will kill a bird weighing 320 grams, about 1:26
    - Sea turtles - 280 grams of plastic will kill a turtle weighing 180 kg, about 1:642
    - Porpoises - 1200 grams of plastic will kill a porpoise weighing 77 kg, about 1:64

    Let's compare salt.
    - Humans - 50 grams of salt can kill a 100-kg person, about 1:2000

    So salt seems to be about 3x more lethal than the worst case (sea turtles) cited by the Ocean Conservancy above.

    This type of comparison will no doubt influence the level of regulation, whichever party ultimately controls Congress.

    • So what you're saying is I need to be careful how much salt I put on my morning bowl of crunchy, frosted microplastics?

      • Precisely!

        No, what I'm actually saying is that perspective is important. Contaminants range from good (like minerals in mineral water) to extremely dangerous (lead) and a whole spectrum of toxicity in between. If you drink enough ocean salt water, you will die. Yet we don't exclude salt from our diets, we just try not to overdo it. Unlike salt, microplastics have no known health benefit, but there is also little to indicate that it is highly toxic. Our efforts to minimize microplastics should be in keeping

    • Re:Yes, a contaminant. But how toxic? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Gilgaron ( 575091 ) on Friday April 03, 2026 @11:10AM (#66075562)
      The other confounding factor is that the microplastics build up over time, whereas something like a sublethal salt dose will make you feel bloated and thirsty for an afternoon until you have a good piss. The rate of bioaccumulation may vary.

      • A study by the University of New Mexico does not find higher microplastics accumulation in older people vs. younger people, suggesting that the body is able to clear the unwanted plastics.

        https://www.kunm.org/unm-study... [kunm.org]

        • Hard to say, if you read the linked full paper there's 50% increases over 8 years in the samples, and you'd see older people accumulate more if the exposure had been linear for each cohort over time, which may not have been the case, either. They remain speculative if there's uncharacterized clearance mechanisms or equilibrium to exposure in the same paragraph.

          • Interesting that you came to a different conclusion than the researchers themselves.

            • I'm talking about what they said in their summary and the body of their paper rather than the linked news article.

              • My quote was from the lead author of the study, Matthew Campen.

                Do you suppose he came to a different conclusion than his study? He said, quote:

                Our findings provide some reason for optimism. The observation that plastics are not higher in older individuals compared to younger individuals suggests that our bodies do clear or eliminate these micro, nano plastics.

                Maybe he didn't read his own study as carefully as you did?

                • Yes that's what I was referring to as speculation.

                  • Oh wow, maybe YOU should be doing your own research on this, since you know so much about it!

                    • The research I work with doesn't touch this sort of microplastics, but you seem to be confused regarding your preferred interpretation of what isn't a particularly hard to understand research paper, how couched in tentative language it is written, why a researcher would write it that way, and how they'd intend for it to be understood.

                    • I'm simply agreeing with the lead author's conclusion. You are disagreeing with it. It's also not a particularly hard-to-understand conclusion, stated by the lead author.

                      Further, given that the human body is very, very good at removing contaminants in general, the conclusion passes the sniff test. It stands to reason that the body can also remove microplastic contaminants.

                    • I wasn't disagreeing with what he said I was correcting the interpretation of how strongly worded what he said was. Like if a Briton makes a joke the direct reading and the correct reading may not be obvious to all audiences. What the body can clear is dependent on its solubility in water and peroxide, generally. Your body will build granulomas around other buildups it can recognize but not dispose of. It's why, say, asbestos or graphite tend to stay put once they get inside you, water soluble vitamins

                    • And yet, microplastics (or any plastics) are not soluble in water and peroxide. So the body's ability to remove microplastics, as observed in this study (or at least as observed in the lack of buildup), doesn't seem to be related to solubility.

  • Hm. Interesting. I thought it had been dismantled by now.

  • we have an on-faucet filter. I just don't feel like installing an under-sink one.

  • Is this from disposing of pharmecuticals down the toilette, or pissing after getting high?

  • Great. Now, acknowledge the RDA and toxicity of sugar.

Slashdot Top Deals

You had mail, but the super-user read it, and deleted it!

Close