NAM Urges EPA to Avoid Overly Broad Drinking Water Listings

  The Environmental Protection Agency should continue research and information gathering to refine potential future contaminant categories, but should not include overly broad group listings of pharmaceuticals and microplastics in the contaminant candidate list 6, the NAM said recently.

What’s going on: While the EPA previously included chemical groups on CCLs, the approach proposed in CCL 6 is fundamentally different, the NAM told the agency last week.

• “[T]hose prior listings generally had more concrete organizing principles than do the CCL 6 proposed listings for microplastics and pharmaceuticals,” the NAM told Office of Water Assistant Administrator Jessica Kramer. “‘[M]icroplastics’ is a heterogenous material category, not a conventional chemical class, and ‘pharmaceuticals’ encompasses a broad range of substances meeting the general definition of a ‘drug’ under the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.”

The background: In April, the EPA’s Office of Water released its proposed Drinking Water Contaminant Candidate List (CCL 6) and announced the completion of the 2026 Human Health Benchmarks for Pharmaceuticals.

• The CCL, the current draft of which includes 75 chemicals, four chemical groups and nine microbes, is a list of contaminants not subject to national drinking water rules but believed to be in public water supply.
• The Human Health Benchmarks are non-enforceable screening levels meant to help public officials and water systems assess potential health risks from the presence of pharmaceuticals in drinking water.

What should be done: The EPA should take several steps regarding the proposed CCL 6, the NAM said. These include:

• Treating the microplastics and pharmaceutical listings as a research prioritization step (if the listings are retained);
• Developing a drinking water-relevant definition of microplastics before proceeding to monitoring or regulatory determination;
• Validating analytical methods prior to creating a national monitoring requirement for microplastics; and
• Clearly distinguishing between environmental presence, human exposure and risk of microplastics or pharmaceuticals in water.

The last word: “A scientifically disciplined approach will allow the EPA to prioritize legitimate drinking water research needs while avoiding regulatory uncertainty for public water systems, manufacturers, consumers and other stakeholders,” said NAM Vice President of Domestic Policy Chris Phalen and NAM Director of Chemicals, Materials and Sustainability Policy Reagan Giesenschlag.