The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin and US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced last week (April 2, 20269 coordinated actions to address microplastics contamination and pharmaceuticals in drinking water.

For the first time in the program’s history, EPA is including microplastics as a priority contaminant group in its draft Sixth Contaminant Candidate List (CCL 6), now open for public comment. CCL 6 also includes pharmaceuticals as a group—another first—along with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), disinfection byproducts, 75 individual chemicals, and nine microbes that may be present in public drinking water systems.

The CCL is a critical tool under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) that drives research, funding, and future decisions on regulating emerging threats to drinking water. The CCL is published every five years under the SDWA and guides EPA’s research priorities, funding decisions, and regulatory agenda for substances not yet subject to national drinking water standards. Inclusion on the CCL does not constitute regulation, but signals that a substance warrants serious scientific attention and may be considered for future regulatory action.

“By elevating microplastics and pharmaceuticals to priority group status, EPA is directly responding to the concerns of millions of Americans who have long demanded greater transparency and accountability about what is in their water,” said EPA and HHS in a joint April 2, 2026, statement.

Additionally, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) announced the launch of STOMP—Systematic Targeting of Microplastics—a first-of-its-kind nationwide initiative to build a comprehensive toolbox for measuring, researching, and removing microplastics and nanoplastics from the human body. STOMP takes a three-pronged approach: (1) deploy gold-standard detection technology to accurately quantify microplastics levels in water and human tissue; (2) identify the most harmful plastic contaminants and determine how they enter and move through the body; and (3) develop and validate methods to eliminate microplastics from the human body.

Source: Joint statement by EPA and HHS