The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday proposed adding microplastics and pharmaceuticals to its Contaminant Candidate List for drinking water, the agency said in a draft that would be published with a 60-day public comment period. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the proposal reflects public concerns about plastics and medicines showing up in drinking water and is also intended to align with the priorities of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s MAHA movement, which has pressured the agency to take additional steps on environmental contaminants.
Speaking at EPA headquarters, Zeldin said, “I can’t think of an issue that hits closer to home for American families than the safety of their drinking water.” He described the EPA’s action as a response to Americans who have worried about plastics and pharmaceuticals in their tap water, and as an effort to put a win behind the MAHA agenda.
The EPA said the Contaminant Candidate List identifies contaminants in drinking water that are not currently regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The agency publishes the list as part of an ongoing process to prioritize research, funding and regulatory decisions, but it often does not move pollutants from the list to set enforceable limits, according to the EPA and environmental advocates.
Under the draft sixth version of the list, the EPA said it expects to finalize the candidate list by mid-November after issuing the proposal. The agency also said it would use the candidate list to guide what it studies and when it decides whether to regulate specific contaminants.
Several groups and experts said the proposed listing matters even if it does not automatically bring new drinking-water limits. Judith Enck, a former EPA regional administrator who now leads Beyond Plastics, called the step “the first step toward eventually regulating microplastics in public water supplies and hopefully this is not the last step.” But Erik Olson, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council who works on drinking water protection, said the record of the process has been discouraging, saying, “It’s the beginning of a very long process that routinely ends in nothing.”
Doctors and scientists have been assessing what microplastics may mean for human health, the EPA said, while it also pointed to concerns about pharmaceutical drugs entering water systems because people excrete them and conventional wastewater treatment does not remove them reliably. The EPA described the issue as one where knowledge is still developing, but it said the candidate list is the mechanism it uses to move contaminants into the research and regulatory pipeline.
The proposal also ties to MAHA’s broader push for environmental policy changes. The EPA described a forthcoming MAHA agenda that it said would address issues including “forever chemicals,” plastic pollution, food quality, Superfund cleanups and lead pipes. In February, the EPA press secretary, Brigit Hirsch, told The Associated Press that the agenda was in its “final stages.”
Kennedy, whose 2024 independent presidential campaign included tackling plastic pollution, also announced a $144 million effort called STOMP, or Systematic Targeting of Microplastics, aimed at better measuring, understanding and removing microplastics in the human body. In remarks at the EPA on Thursday, Kennedy said, “We can’t treat what we cannot measure, we cannot regulate what we don’t understand,” adding, “Together, we’re going to define the risk, build the tools and act on the evidence regarding microplastics.”
MAHA leaders, farmers and organizations have also pressed the EPA in a letter to tackle health impacts from pesticides, plastics and PFAS chemicals, urging steps that include monitoring for microplastics, setting new exposure limits and imposing a moratorium on permitting new or expanding plastic production facilities. David Murphy, who said he works with the MAHA movement on its priorities after previously serving as a fundraiser for Kennedy’s presidential campaign, said the microplastics proposal was encouraging but criticized the agency for approving new pesticides, saying, “It’s one step forward, two steps back at the EPA.”
The Safe Drinking Water Act, as amended in 1996, directed the EPA to publish the Contaminant Candidate List every five years and then determine whether to regulate at least five contaminants from each list. In five cycles of the process, the EPA has said it found that regulatory action was appropriate or necessary for most of the contaminants it considered.
The EPA’s new draft list includes four contaminant groups—microplastics, pharmaceuticals, PFAS and disinfection byproducts—as well as 75 chemicals and nine microbes the agency said may be found in drinking water.