Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced new federal initiatives targeting microplastics, calling the effort a major step toward addressing a growing public health concern.
The EPA added microplastics and pharmaceuticals to its draft Sixth Contaminant Candidate List for drinking water. The move will guide research, funding, and future regulatory decisions under the Safe Drinking Water Act. At the same time, HHS launched the Systematic Targeting of Microplastics program, known as STOMP, a nationwide effort through the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health to measure, study, and remove microplastics and nanoplastics from the human body.
“For too long, Americans have vocalized concerns about plastics and pharmaceuticals in their drinking water. That ends today,” Zeldin said in the EPA-HHS press release. “By placing microplastics and pharmaceuticals on the Contaminant Candidate List for the first time ever, EPA is sending a clear message: we will follow the science, we will pursue answers, and we will hold ourselves to the highest standards to protect the health of every American family.”
“Today, HHS and EPA are taking decisive action to confront microplastics as a growing threat to human health,” Kennedy said in the press release. “Americans deserve clear answers about how microplastics in their bodies affect their health. Through ARPA-H’s STOMP program, we will measure microplastic exposure, identify sources of risk, and develop targeted solutions to reduce it.”
Kennedy also told Fox News that officials still lack complete data on how different types of plastics affect human health.
“We do not have the science that distinguishes between the impacts of these different types of plastics, and maybe if we identify those impacts, the damaging ones can be immediately eliminated, because you can replace them with something else,” Kennedy said. “Our job — and we are really at the limit of our power right now — is to try to answer those questions before we take another action.”
He said emerging research points to uneven risks across different plastics.
“Some of them may be benign – others are very, very harmful,” Kennedy said. “The science shows if they cause inflammation, they cause oxidative stress. As a body, they are endocrine disruptors, so they interfere with fertility.”
Dr. Leonardo Trasande, a professor of pediatrics and population health at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, joined a panel discussion at EPA headquarters and urged immediate action. Fox 4 KDFW reported that Trasande said, “The time to act is now,” citing emerging research that links microplastics at the cellular level to higher risks of heart attack, stroke, and neurodegenerative disease.
Kennedy, who has long pushed to limit environmental chemicals, said industries that create the pollution should pay to address it.
“That’s a lesson we are all supposed to have learned at kindergarten – that you clean up after yourself, you don’t force the public to do it,” he said.
He applied that same principle to pharmaceuticals entering waterways and warned that children face particular risks.
“Particularly for our children, it’s very alarming. They are swimming around now in a toxic soup. It’s coming from everywhere,” Kennedy said. “It’s coming from their food. It’s coming from agriculture. It’s coming from the air and water, and it’s coming from pharmaceutical drugs.”
Kennedy said many of those chemicals can be filtered out through carbon technology and other methods.
The STOMP program will take a three-part approach, according to the press release: measure microplastics levels in water and human tissue, identify the most harmful contaminants and trace how they move through the body, and develop methods to remove them.
Zeldin said officials should rely on science and transparency rather than broad mandates. Fox 4 reported that he said, “You want to be able to get the answers, you want to see the gold-standard science. You demand radical transparency. You’re looking through the website, and it’s ignoring what you came to that web page to look for. I feel like there’s a communication gap – and when there’s a communication gap, there’s a trust gap.”
The two officials also praised their partnership under President Donald Trump’s Make America Healthy Again agenda.
“There’s no American in this country who can’t get heard somehow by Secretary Kennedy, and it’s just an honor to serve alongside him,” Zeldin said.
Kennedy replied, “I like everybody in that Cabinet, but Lee and I work with particular closeness, and I’ve really enjoyed the relationship,” he said.
