epa

For the next five years, the Environmental Protection Agency has indicated it will not require public water utilities to test for microplastics or pharmaceuticals in drinking water, according to a proposed rule published in the Federal Register.

On Friday, the EPA submitted a list of chemicals it plans to test for under the Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule, a mandatory testing program used to collect information about concerning chemicals in drinking water that could be harming human health. It did not include microplastics or pharmaceuticals.

The omissions come after announcements by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin earlier this year that his agency was designating microplastics and pharmaceuticals priority contaminants for testing.

“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,” he said at an April news conference with Health and Human Secretary Robert F. Kennedy at EPA headquarters.

Zeldin’s announcement was seen at the time as a move to placate the increasingly disgruntled Make America Healthy Again contingent of Trump supporters.

Now the agency says it has no validated or standardized method to test for the plastic particles in drinking water, and wouldn’t be able to develop one before December, when testing is required to begin.

Among the 33 chemicals the EPA will require water utilities to test for are seven PFAS, or forever chemicals, and three pesticide residues.

It will be five years before the EPA proposes another list.

The EPA did not respond to a request for comment.

The agency noted in its proposed rule that it will collaborate with other federal agencies to “evaluate risks and exposures” of microplastics for future monitoring.

Environmentalists reacted with frustration and resignation. They pointed out that the European Union has developed methods to test for the tiny plastic particles, which have been found in people’s blood, brains and lung tissue. California has one in the works.

“The California water board has spent a lot of time and money on how to measure in drinking water,” said Judith Enck, a former EPA regional administrator and president of the anti-plastic environmental group Beyond Plastics “EPA should give them a call.”

California was required by a 2018 state law to establish a protocol for local water utilities to test for the particles in drinking water. The state has not yet begun reporting its results, but protocols were established in 2021. Blair Robertson, a spokesman for the State Water Resources Control Board, said it’s not “a fully validated, end-to-end regulatory method” yet.

At the April meeting, Zeldin announced that he would place microplastics on what is known as the Contaminant Candidate List, which acts as a preliminary “watch list” of unregulated, priority contaminants in drinking water. Like the mandatory monitoring list, it is updated only every five years. The most recent list was published on April 2 — the day he made his announcement.

“Americans have been ignored as they sound the alarm about plastics in their drinking water,” Zeldin said at the April announcement. “That ends today by placing microplastics on the contaminant candidate list for the first time ever. EPA will follow the science, will pursue answers and will hold ourselves to the highest standards to protect the health of Americans.”

There appears to be no clear association between these two lists, although the contaminant list is supposed to inform the monitoring list. Seventy-five chemicals and four chemical groups (microplastics, pharmaceuticals, PFAS chemicals, and disinfection byproducts) were listed on the 2026 contaminant list. Only seven of those chemicals were also on the proposed monitoring list (as well as seven PFAS chemicals).

When Zeldin announced microplastics as “‘a priority contaminant for regulation,’ and called it ‘a historic action on microplastics,’ he made it seem like the administration was going to take microplastics seriously,” said Mary Grant, water policy director for the environmental group Food & Water Watch.

“By not including them, they made it clear they don’t actually have plans to immediately address this crisis by getting the real-world monitoring data that we need right now to really start correcting ourselves,” she said.

Craig Davis, senior director of plastics chemistry at the American Chemistry Council — the nation’s largest trade group for chemical companies — said that while his organization supports microplastic research, it also agrees with the EPA’s decision not to include them in the monitoring list.

“National drinking water monitoring should be based on validated, standardized methods that can produce reliable and comparable data,” said Davis in a statement. He said “limited” national monitoring resources should be focused where data can produce “actionable public health information.”

The public has 60 days to comment once the plan is published in the Federal Register.

Reporting from Washington — California is confronting the limits of its power to save federal environmental protections as Congress and the Trump administration take aim at a landmark law the state has relied on for decades to clean the air of noxious smog.

A push by Republicans to roll back parts of the Clean Air Act would affect California more than any other state, rattling its lawmakers and regulators. And their legal authority to pick up the fight against California’s smog on their own is constrained.

The House last month passed a bill fiercely opposed by doctors and public health groups, including the American Lung Assn. and the American Academy of Pediatrics, that would delay for years new anti-pollution standards aimed at ultimately preventing 160,000 childhood asthma attacks and as many as 220 premature deaths in California each year.

The Trump administration had already tried using regulatory authority to put the standards on hold for a year, but walked back that action Wednesday after California and 14 other states filed suit against the delay.

The bill advancing in Congress would go much further, permanently upending the way restrictions are imposed on the ozone and small particulate matter that make up smog. No longer would regulators base decisions solely on scientific findings about what level of smog is safe to breathe. The potential cost to business would for the first time loom large in setting limits, and ultimately guide such things as when people with breathing problems are warned to stay indoors.

“It would be disastrous to do this,” said Jared Blumenfeld, former regional director of the federal Environmental Protection Agency for California and other Western states.

“The Clean Air Act has been one of the most successful and revered public health measures taken anywhere on the planet. Everyone from China to India to European nations came to my office and said, ‘How do we achieve these kinds of gains?’ This all originated in Los Angeles at a time the air was so bad it led to the creation of the EPA.”

Many state lawmakers agree, and they are vowing to keep California in compliance with the Clean Air Act as it exists now — regardless of what happens in Washington. But that turns out to be a promise not easily kept.

“This is not an easy switch whereby Congress gets rid of the standard, and California just puts it back in place,” Blumenfeld said.

Some of the most damaging pollution released inside California’s borders can only be controlled by federal regulators. Among California’s biggest concerns is what is spewed from the exhaust pipes of trucks traveling through the state that are not subject to its strict emissions rules. Such fumes account for 60% of such heavy truck pollution.

The EPA has been under pressure to toughen federal rules for trucks to enable California to meet its obligations under the act. The state and EPA have also been working on research into new technologies to clean truck emissions.

Even if the industry-friendly Trump administration slows down those efforts, the act empowers states and activists to impose pressure on the EPA in court.

But that would change under the measure passed by the House, HR 806, which would weaken the air quality standards now motivating federal action.

“We need EPA to continue to move ahead aggressively,” said Kurt Karperos, deputy executive officer at the California Air Resources Board. “It has a responsibility under the Clean Air Act to take action.… We are concerned this would be used as a justification to slow down.”

The pushback against the Clean Air Act in Congress is rooted in complaints, often driven by industry, that the EPA under the Obama administration set standards for air quality that are impossible to reach without harming economies in places that are already struggling, like California’s Central Valley, home to some of the worst air in the nation.

Among the most effective allies for Republicans pushing to weaken standards is the head of the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, which regulates 25,000 square miles. It is home to 4 million Californians, who struggle with smoggy air and soaring asthma rates.

Seyed Sadredin, the district’s executive director, said there is only so much his agency is empowered to do, and now it faces severe federal sanctions for emissions from cars and trucks it has no authority to regulate.

Sadredin recently told Congress that local businesses will soon be prevented from expanding and big highway projects forfeited under Clean Air Act sanctions the valley faces — even after the region has done everything in its power to control pollution with some of the toughest restrictions in the nation.

“It all sounds nice and noble when you look down to the valley from the outside,” he said of the tough federal standards. “If you are with the elite crowd, you might say, ‘Let’s punish the valley for something they have no control over.’ We are talking real-life impact in a place suffering from double-digit unemployment, poverty, malnutrition. This has a real impact on our people. It is not just an academic argument.”

The San Joaquin board limited its support of the House measure to the part that would exempt air districts from sanctions in certain circumstances. A public outcry moved it to back away from its push to force the EPA to consider economic impacts in determining what air is safe to breathe.

But the economic impact language is still part of the House bill that the San Joaquin board helped get passed, creating no small measure of tension between Sadredin and other air quality experts who say his dire warnings served to benefit agriculture and drilling interests averse to stricter rules.

The valley is not going to lose big highway projects and businesses if it can’t control truck and car pollution it has no authority to regulate, according to state air regulators. But it will be pushed in the areas where it does have control, they say, including cutting pollution from oil and gas wells, and residential and agricultural burning.

“It is absolutely not in the cards,” Karperos said of the punishment Sadredin warns will befall the valley in coming years under current clean air rules. A good faith plan by the valley to further reduce emissions in the places it can would protect it from such sanctions, he said. But that plan will require more action by a region resistant to it.

“There are feasible strategies,” Karperos said. “The threat of sanctions is a red herring.”

Times staff writer Tony Barboza contributed to this report.

evan.halper@latimes.com

Follow me: @evanhalper

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