A legal petition was submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today, calling on the agency to monitor for the presence of microplastics in drinking water under specific provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act. The petition was filed by the national advocacy organization Food & Water Watch and co-signed by 175 groups across the county, including Beyond Plastics, Center for Biological Diversity, Center for International Environmental Law, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace.

Under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), every five years the EPA is required to develop a monitoring program for up to 30 unregulated or emerging contaminants. This monitoring program is called the Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule (UCMR). The UCMR drives data collection about the occurrence of emerging contaminants in drinking water. The data inform future EPA decisions about which contaminants should be regulated under the SDWA. The next monitoring rule will be proposed in 2025.

Research indicates that microplastics are widespread and pervasive in our environment – in the air, in water, in much of our food and in our bodies – and they pose significant risks to human health. Drinking water is one of the primary sources of human ingestion of microplastics worldwide.

“The science is clear and alarming: Microplastics are everywhere in our world and in all of our bodies, posing a very serious threat to human health. The time is now for the EPA to finally address this emerging health threat, and that starts with formal, comprehensive monitoring for microplastics in drinking water throughout the country,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch. “We can’t wait another five years or more for the EPA to get serious about investigating the ways in which toxic microplastics pollute our water and invade our bodies.”