Lifestyle Sports: Latest from Food Politics: The new microplastics initiatives: steps in the right direction

By Marion Nestle

April 14 2026

The new microplastics initiatives: steps in the right direction

EPA, HHS Announce Historic Actions to Protect Americans from Microplastics and Safeguard Drinking Water

[EPA] 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.

[HHS] 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 (MNPs) from the human body. STOMP takes a three-pronged approach:

Measure: Deploy gold-standard detection technology to accurately quantify microplastics levels in water and human tissue.

Target: Identify the most harmful plastic contaminants and determine how they enter and move through the body.

Remove: Develop and validate methods to eliminate microplastics from the human body.

This is a win for MAHA (Make America Healthy Again):

RFK Jr has been pushing for this. He says “Animal studies show that microplastic exposure can drive inflammation, cardiovascular damage, impaired cognition, and tumor growth.”

Human studies show this too. Here’s the latest, which correlates pre-term births to chemicals in plastics.

RJK Jr also said the $144 million national program will be called STOMP, which stands for “Systemic Targeting of MicroPlastics.” The program will bring toxicologists, data scientists and other experts together to create standardized tools capable of detecting and quantifying microplastics in the human body, research the effect they have on humans, and develop targeted strategies to remove them from the body.

This could be a good step forward if they actually act on it. We shall see.

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