The Environmental Protection Agency will not require public water utilities to test drinking water for microplastics or pharmaceuticals for the next five years, according to a proposed rule published in the Federal Register.
On Friday, the EPA submitted a list of chemicals it plans to test under the Unregulated Contaminants Monitoring Rule, a mandatory testing program used to gather information about chemicals in drinking water that can pose a hazard to human health. Contains no microplastics or pharmaceuticals.
The omission came after EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced earlier this year that the agency was designating priority contaminants in microplastics and pharmaceuticals for testing.
“This is a direct response to the concerns of millions of Americans who have long wanted answers about what they and their families are drinking every day,” he said at a press conference with Health and Humanities Secretary Robert F. Kennedy at EPA headquarters in April.
Zeldin’s announcement was seen at the time as a move to placate the increasingly disgruntled Trump support group Make America Healthy Again.
The agency says there is currently no validated or standardized method to test for plastic particles in drinking water, and one will not be developed by December, when testing is required to begin.
Seven PFAS (permanent chemicals) and three pesticide residues are among the 33 chemicals that the EPA requires water utilities to test for.
It will be five years before EPA proposes a new list.
EPA did not respond to requests for comment.
The agency said in the proposed rule that it would work with other federal agencies to “assess the risks and exposure” of microplastics for future oversight.
Environmentalists reacted with frustration and resignation. They pointed out that the European Union has developed a method to test for tiny plastic particles found in people’s blood, brain and lung tissue. Currently under development in California.
“The California Water Board has spent a lot of time and money figuring out how to measure drinking water, and EPA should consult with them,” said Judith Enck, a former EPA regional administrator and president of the anti-plastics environmental group Beyond Plastics.
In California, a 2018 state law requires local water utilities to establish procedures for testing drinking water for particles. Protocols were established in 2021, although the state has not yet begun reporting results. Blair Robertson, a spokesperson for the State Water Resources Control Board, said it is not yet a “fully tested, end-to-end regulatory approach.”
At the April meeting, Zeldin announced that microplastics would be placed on the so-called contaminant candidate list, which serves as a preliminary “watch list” of unregulated priority contaminants in drinking water. Like any mandatory watch list, it is only updated every five years. The latest list was published on April 2, the same day he made the announcement.
“Americans are sounding the alarm about plastic in their drinking water, and they are being ignored,” Zeldin said in an April announcement. “Today, we end that story by adding microplastics to the list of pollutant candidates for the first time ever. EPA will follow the science, pursue answers, and uphold the highest standards to protect the health of Americans.”
Although the contaminant list is thought to inform the watch list, there appears to be no clear link between these two lists. Seventy-five chemicals and four chemical groups (microplastics, pharmaceuticals, PFAS chemicals, and disinfection byproducts) were placed on the 2026 Contaminant List. Only seven of these chemicals were included on the proposed watch list (also seven PFAS chemicals).
When Mr. Zeldin announced microplastics as a “regulatory priority pollutant” and called it “historic action against microplastics,” he made it seem like the administration was going to take microplastics seriously, said Mary Grant, director of water policy at the environmental group Food & Water Watch.
“By not including them, we’re making it clear that we don’t really have a plan to immediately address this crisis by getting the real-world surveillance data that we need now to really begin to correct ourselves,” she said.
Craig Davis, senior director of plastics chemistry at the American Chemistry Council, a trade group for the nation’s largest chemical companies, said the organization supports microplastics research but also agrees with the EPA’s decision not to include microplastics on its watch list.
“National drinking water monitoring should be based on validated, standardized methods that can produce reliable and comparable data,” Davis said in a statement. He said the focus should be on “limited” national surveillance resources that can generate “actionable public health information” from data.
The public has 60 days after the plan is published in the Federal Register to comment.
