Congress looks at microplastics as 'emerging contaminants'

A recent congressional hearing included calls for Washington to take a deeper look at microplastics in the environment and in drinking water, as well as potentially including it on lists of emerging contaminants for the monitor.

The October 6 U.S. House of Representatives Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee hearing focused more intently on other chemicals in drinking water, such as fluorinated compounds like per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances like PFOS, than it did on plastics.

But lawmakers including Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., quizzed witnesses on how the government should think about microplastics, water quality and human health.

Elise Granek, a plastics health researcher and environmental science professor at Portland State University, told Cohen and other members of the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment that she favored federal standards governing the amount of microplastics in water and food.

"I think that we need regulations on the release of microplastics into waterways and benchmarks for what is safe in drinking water and perhaps in food," Granek said. "We have regulations of levels of mercury that are safe in fish, but we have no benchmarks on levels of plastics that are safe for consumption."

The committee wasn't looking at any plastics-specific legislation but was hearing calls for more attention in general to what are called contaminants of emerging concern (CECs).

The 2020 defense budget legislation directed the federal government to set up a national research initiative on CECs, and some witnesses urged Congress to build on that.

A former Environmental Protection Agency official, Elizabeth Southerland, told the committee that Washington doesn't have any coordinated program to identify CECs but said lawmakers should tell the EPA and other agencies to develop a priority list and be more proactive.

"We are suffering with a reactive system that waits for a public health or environmental crisis to occur before we begin monitoring and considering controls," said Elizabeth Southerland, formerly director of EPA's Office of Science and Technology in its water division.

She said CECs can include pharmaceuticals, industrial chemicals, pesticides and microplastics, as well as natural substances like algal toxins.

Microplastics are a new regulatory area for environmental and public health agencies, but California last year became the first state in the U.S. and possibly the first government in the world to formally launch a rule-making that may set standards for microplastics in drinking water.

Many of the questions from lawmakers in both parties concerned how to address fluorinated "forever" chemicals in drinking water supplies and the health risks from those.

A local government official from Pittsboro, North Carolina, for example, talked about costly water system upgrades his small town had to make and how residents are "afraid of our drinking water," and a representative of an association of drinking water utilities urged more federal action.

But other witnesses and a few lawmakers brought up plastics concerns.

Charles Moore, research director at the Moore Institute for Plastic Pollution Research in Long Beach, Calif., told the hearing that plastic in the environment meets the definition of a "planetary boundary threat" and that his research has identified "large areas of the ocean where surface plastics outweigh and in some cases outnumber the associated zooplankton."

He said the Clean Water Act regulates all plastics over 5 millimeters in size, leaving smaller particles like plastic fibers shed from clothing and microplastics essentially unregulated.

Granek, who said microplastics is one focus of her research, said studies have found small polymer particles widely in marine animals.

She said studies of razor clams and oysters in the Pacific Northwest have found that 99 out of 100 have microplastics in their tissues. Similarly, more than 90 percent of fishery shrimp are found with microplastics, and all rockfish they sampled had microplastics in consumable tissue, she said.

Loose microplastics are also a concern because other chemicals can stick to the surface of plastic in waterways and be consumed by animals, she said.

Commenting on all the potential CECs the hearing was examining, including microplastic, Granek said evidence pointed to the need for more government action.

"Although there is more research needed, there is ample evidence that action is needed now," she said. "We have ample data on all of these groups of contaminants indicating environmental impacts on aquatic and marine organisms and on human health."

She also urged the committee to have federal agencies study how simultaneous exposure to multiple chemicals impacts people, rather than studying them in isolation.

The chair of the water resources subcommittee, Rep. Grace Napolitano, D-Calif., closed the hearing saying she wanted to schedule a follow-up hearing with industry representatives to "come and tell us what they're doing about preventing these chemicals from being put out to the general public."

"[There are] too many unknowns about the impact right now because a lot of these are not regulated," Napolitano said. "My concern is too many cancers have been prevalent in, I would say, the last two generations."