Zeldin and Kennedy Announce the Microplastics and STOMP Actions as a Major MAHA Win, Apr. 2, 2026
April 2, 2026 · U.S. Environmental Protection Agency · 0:50:56
Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube
What happened
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a set of actions on microplastics on April 2, 2026, presented by the two agencies as a major Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) win, according to the EPA’s upload. HHS Principal Deputy Chief of Staff Stephanie Spear opened by stating, as she put it, that for the first time EPA is elevating microplastics and pharmaceuticals as priority contaminants in the nation’s drinking-water framework, and that HHS through ARPA-H is launching STOMP, a national effort to measure, understand and ultimately remove microplastics from the human body.
The EPA side of the package is the draft sixth Contaminant Candidate List (CCL 6), released that day for public comment: four contaminant groups — microplastics, pharmaceuticals, PFAS and disinfection byproducts — covering 75 chemicals and nine microbes, with microplastics and pharmaceuticals designated priority contaminants for the first time in the program’s history, as the agency’s speakers stated it. The HHS side is STOMP (Systematic Targeting of Microplastics), described by Secretary Kennedy and ARPA-H Director Alicia Jackson as a $144 million nationwide program to build standardized measurement tools — including, as Jackson stated the goal, a clinical test under 15 minutes and under $50 — map how microplastics move through the body, and develop removal methods. A roundtable of scientists and federal leaders followed the announcement, as the upload shows.
Why it matters
CCL 6 is the Safe Drinking Water Act tool that drives EPA research, funding and future regulation of emerging contaminants; putting microplastics on it as a priority contaminant — paired with a funded HHS program on the human-body side — is the administration’s first structural move on an issue both secretaries have made a MAHA centerpiece.
Scoreboard watch
Scoreboard watch: the draft CCL 6 priority-contaminant designations for microplastics and pharmaceuticals and the $144 million STOMP program announced on April 2, 2026, as the officials stated them. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.
Sources: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Administrator Zeldin and Secretary Kennedy to Announce Major MAHA Win” (Apr. 2, 2026, embedded above; remarks as delivered by Administrator Zeldin, Secretary Kennedy, ARPA-H Director Alicia Jackson, HHS’s Stephanie Spear, and the roundtable participants).
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