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.
"This is a direct response to the concern of millions of Americans, who have long demanded answers about what they and their families are drinking every day," EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a briefing Thursday.
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.
Environmental Glance
Towering flash floods and an imminent dam failure in the northern part of Oahu triggered evacuation warnings in Hawaii on Friday, as the state continued contending with a powerful storm this week.
In January, part of a decades-old sewer line in Maryland collapsed by the Potomac River. Over the following days, the broken pipe dumped more than 200 million gallons of raw sewage into the Potomac near Washington, D.C.
Republicans are attempting to exempt some major polluters from paying for Pfas “forever chemical” cleanup. If successful, it could mark a major setback in US effort to rein in Pfas pollution.





























