‘We cannot treat what we cannot measure. We cannot regulate what we don’t understand,’ the health secretary said.
The federal government will spend $144 million to investigate microplastics and figure out how to remove them from human bodies, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other officials announced on April 2.
The program—Systematic Targeting Of MicroPlastics (STOMP)—is tasked with measuring, researching, and removing microplastics and nanoplastics from humans.
Tests reveal that microplastics, or small pieces of plastic, have been found in many people and have been associated with health problems. Ingestion can occur through consumption of food and water, and contact with the air.
“We are not dealing with a distant or theoretical risk,” Kennedy said during a news conference in Washington. “We are dealing with a measurable and growing presence inside the human body.”
However, officials said more data is needed, including ways to safely remove the microplastics.
“We cannot treat what we cannot measure,” Kennedy said. “We cannot regulate what we don’t understand.”
Leading STOMP is the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, a subagency within the Department of Health and Human Services.
Phase one will involve researchers running experiments to better understand microplastics already within human bodies, including a clinical test that will quantify those amounts, according to health officials. Phase two is slated to ascertain how microplastics accumulate in organs, how they cross cellular barriers, and how they disrupt bodily functions. Researchers in that phase will also look to design ways to remove those microplastics.
“STOMP will do in five years what the entire field has been unable to do for decades,” Alicia Jackson, director of Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, said at the event. “We will create a definitive shared scientific foundation, gold-standard measurement, mechanistic understanding, and ultimately, targeted removal.”
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials on Thursday also said they would be designating microplastics and pharmaceuticals as priority contaminate groups. That means investigators from that agency, after a public comment period on the proposed designations, will investigate plastic contamination in water, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said.
“For too long, Americans have been ignored as they sound the alarm of plastics in their drinking water,” Zeldin said. “This ends today.”
The move advances the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda, he said.
The Safe Drinking Water Act mandates that, every five years, the EPA publish a list of contaminants that may require regulation. The first step is releasing a draft contaminant candidate list.
The proposed list also marks pharmaceuticals, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, and disinfection byproducts as contaminant groups.
