Environmental groups demand EPA to start monitoring microplastics in water [View all]

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: The Guardian

Sun 1 Dec 2024 08.00 EST


A new legal petition filed by more than 170 top environmental groups demands that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) begin monitoring for microplastics in drinking water, an essential first step to reining in pollution viewed as one of the nation’s most pressing public health threats.

The scale of microplastic water pollution, the extent to which the substance is lodged throughout human bodies, and the many health implications have come into sharp focus in recent years, but the EPA still has not taken meaningful action, public health advocates say.

The petition pushes the agency to begin monitoring microplastics as an emerging contaminant under the Safe Drinking Water Act in 2026. “The EPA has been thinking about it, but they have not been acting, and the goal here is to get them to act,” said Erin Doran, a senior attorney at Food & Water Watch, one of the petitioners.

Microplastics are microscopic bits of plastics that are either intentionally added to products or shed from larger products containing plastic, from clothing to tires to cookware. The substance has been found in the clouds, atop Mount Everest, in deep ocean trenches and in the Arctic. It can contain any number of 20,000 plastic chemicals, and often is attached to highly toxic human-made compounds – like PFAS, bisphenol and phthalates – linked to cancer, neurotoxicity, hormone disruption or developmental toxicity.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/01/microplastics-epa-monitoring

---

I hope they understand that an election just happened last month and all of what EPA is trying to do, is going to effectively be shut down. I.e., internal agency "deregulation". And if you protest it, they'll just send out their (privately contracted) jack-booted thugs to round you up, lock you up (in a private prison), and throw away the key (and the SCOTUS will uphold the deregulation).