Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launched a new program last month meant to stimulate research and find ways to rid people of the microscopic plastic particles that have infiltrated human bodies.
The $144 million program on measuring, understanding and removing micro- and nanoplastics has been welcomed by researchers, industry, environmental and Make America Healthy Again advocates as well as online wellness gurus promoting nascent “detoxification” methods. It’s the largest federal investment to date into a field of study roughly 5 years old.
But experts worry Kennedy is focused on the wrong questions.
“Getting it out of our bodies? That seems extremely tough to me,” said Marcus Eriksen, a marine plastics scientist who leads the nonprofit 5 Gyres Institute and has advised Kennedy for years. “I get that’s kind of the narrative that’s going to fly with this administration — focus on the downstream stuff, less on the prevention side.”
Kennedy’s new research initiative offers the Trump administration an elegant political solution as it courts prominent MAHA activists who are concerned about pesticides and other chemical exposures ahead of the midterm elections.
But independent researchers say that misses a more productive solution: stemming the amount of plastic pollution that people are exposed to in the first place — a goal that would almost certainly require regulating the petrochemical industry that heavily backed the Trump administration.
Flushing out the plastics
The “plastic detox” movement taps into a hyperengaged community of biohackers, right-wing wellness influencers and others aligned with Kennedy’s MAHA movement who have launched personal experiments and a cottage industry of products claiming to cleanse the corpus of the tiny plastic particles.
Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law and former co-chair of the Republican National Committee, told listeners of her podcast last month that kimchi capsules from Brightcore Nutrition could “degrade BPA” — bisphenol A, a chemical used in plastics manufacturing — and offered a 25 percent discount with the code “LARA.”
Ads for supplements claiming to reduce microplastics or plastics-related chemicals in the body have appeared on conservative podcasts, such as “The Charlie Kirk Show” and far-right commentator Candace Owens’ show, “Candace.” Kennedy-tied wellness influencers Gary Brecka, Dave Asprey and Courtney Swan have each promoted dietary supplements from BodyBio PC, which its website says “shields the body from the invisible threats of microplastics and toxins” for just $60.99.
Right now, none of these products have been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration, and independent researchers say there’s no peer-reviewed evidence that they work.
“As far as I’m concerned, there’s no real scientific basis for any solution talking about clearing these from our body,” said Matthew Campen, a toxicology professor at the University of New Mexico whose lab in 2024 became the first to document microplastics in human brain tissue. “I urge people to be skeptical, but maybe not cynical. We do need to sort this out.”
A new field, a new rush
The field of microplastics-in-humans research is barely 5 years old, and there are a slew of questions waiting to be answered — including whether they’re even harmful.
Microplastics were first detected in human placentas in 2020, and researchers have since found the tiny plastic particles in human blood, testes, brain tissue — the list goes on.
But researchers know little about actual damage to humans.
There are only a handful of studies linking microplastics to adverse health effects; the first to do so in 2024 found an association between higher microplastics concentrations and higher risk of heart attacks or strokes.
Even once the tiny plastic particles are detected, there are dozens of types of plastics and thousands of chemicals used to make plastics. The type of plastic used to make disposable water bottles (polyethylene terephthalate, or PET) is different from the type in styrofoam packing peanuts (polystyrene), which is different from industrial water pipes (polyvinyl chloride, or PVC).
“Every microplastic particle has, within it, various chemicals that go into plastics — the phthalates, the bisphenols, the brominated flame retardants, all the other chemicals that go into plastics are in microplastics,” said Phil Landrigan, a pediatrician and epidemiologist who directs Boston College’s global public health program. “And we know already a lot of those chemicals have adverse effects on health. So one way to think about microplastic particles is … they are Trojan horses that will carry these chemicals into people.”
Meanwhile, there is growing scientific debate over which methods can reliably be used to detect microplastics in the human body.
Kennedy in early April announced he would direct $144 million into a new research program dubbed STOMP, the Systematic Targeting Of MicroPlastics.
STOMP’s mission is to answer three foundational questions about microplastics: What are the cheapest, most reliable ways to detect them in the human body? Which organ systems are most vulnerable to which types of plastics? And how can the particles be removed?
It is one of approximately three dozen research projects under the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), an agency within the Health and Human Services Department modeled after the Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to help accelerate biomedical breakthroughs.
Launched in 2022, ARPA-H centered on cancer research and treatments. Now, it’s set on trying to reverse the aging process through programs on genetic drug manufacturing or expanding which health metrics wearable biosensors can measure.
About 700 people attended ARPA-H’s Proposers’ Day for STOMP on April 22, agency officials said. “That’s five or 600 more microplastic scientists than I was aware of in this country,” Campen said. “That’s good, right?”
“There’s going to be a rush of people getting into the field, and that’s good, but now they’re on a learning curve that could take years,” Campen said.
The turnout was unprecedented, said Shannon Greene, a microbiologist with ARPA-H who is co-leading STOMP alongside clinical imaging scientist Ileana Hancu. “I’ve never hosted a Proposers’ Day that has gotten this much attention,” Greene said.
Greene and Hancu hope for “a future where expertise in delivering drugs to specific parts of the body” can be used for “removing harmful” micro- and nanoplastics, they said in an email response to questions from POLITICO’s E&E News.
While they said they do “not endorse or show preference for any specific potential removal strategy or technology,” they anticipate “solutions may fall into one of three categories: degradation of MNPs (micro- and nanoplastics) into non-toxic byproducts, expulsion of MNPs from cells, or prevention of cellular uptake by bolstering key barriers (i.e. the gut).”
The plan has caught the attention of researchers exploring everything from blood and plasma transfers to engineered microorganisms designed to break down plastic particles.
Roughly 300 companies, universities and individuals have posted profiles on STOMP’s teaming page, where would-be applicants advertise their capabilities to potential collaborators. The list ranges from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University and Stanford University to chemical giants like BASF. Other profiles on the page include supplement manufacturer Certified Nutra Labs and Arrow Lab Solutions, the Michigan-based lab that developed the first at-home microplastic detection test kit for humans in 2023.
“I don’t think they’re going to have this magic pill that gets rid of all the plastics in your body,” said Nathan Crook, a microbiologist at North Carolina State University’s chemical engineering department.
Crook has designed bacteria strains that can degrade plastics at high temperatures in controlled industrial processes — research he hopes may contribute to future discovery on enzymes that may be able to work at body temperature.
“I think it’s a worthy area of research,” Crook said. “It’s science fiction enough to be exciting. It’s not too science fiction-y.”
Crook said removing compounds from the body “is very difficult” and requires years of research and clinical trials.
“People want solutions now, and so that’s why, I think, there’s a market for these types of products that have lots of claims,” Crook said. “They’re probably not going to be terrible for you, but I don’t think they’re that effective.”
The ‘detox’ marketplace
Bryan Johnson, the multimillionaire biohacker on a quest to stop aging, posted on X earlier this month that he has “no microplastics in my balls.” The prominent MAHA-aligned influencer credited the sauna, a reverse-osmosis water filter and a lifestyle stripped of everyday plastics.
Johnson also sells microplastics tests — a mail-in blood sample promising results in four to six weeks — for $135 online under his retailer brand, Blueprint. Blueprint is one of numerous brands that has licensed the fluorescent microscopy technology “PlasticTox” developed by Arrow Lab Solutions.
“We are evaluating potentially applying to ARPA-H and I’m happy to help them however I can,” Johnson said in an email.
Johnson’s home text kits are part of a growing online marketplace for microplastic detox products. Business consulting firm Grand View Research estimated the market for removal technologies would near $3.8 billion by 2033.
Dozens of companies on TikTok Shop are promoting probiotics, zeolite gummies, fiber capsules, nutritional powders and dietary supplement drops claiming to serve as a “microplastic detox,” among other cleansing benefits.
A Netflix documentary released in March titled “The Plastic Detox” also drew more attention to microplastics. It features Million Marker, an independent mail-in testing company that sells a $999 fertility kit that measures urine samples for 13 chemicals associated with plastics, including bisphenols, phthalates and parabens.
Some startup companies are offering to “cleanse” your plasma of microplastics through a process called apheresis — a blood-filtering procedure akin to dialysis — for $13,000.
“I’ve seen some reasonably confident data that plasma apheresis works, I don’t know for how long,” Campen said. “Pulling it out of the blood, does that pull it out of the brain? We don’t know. Does that remove it from the kidneys, liver, placenta, whatever? Don’t know.”
The aggressive marketing has unnerved researchers who question verifiable testing methods, including some MAHA advocates.
“I’m highly skeptical of any supplement being able to do that, or of anyone even being able to effectively measure if they’ve done that,” said Alexandra Muñoz, an independent toxicologist and MAHA activist. “The challenges of measuring microplastics are so large right now that even measuring if you’ve done that would require a lot of expertise that I don’t think most of the people claiming to have made these [detox] products actually have.”
The rush to commercialize “scares me for a number of reasons,” Campen said.
“I haven’t seen scientific peer-reviewed literature that speaks to any products out there that really does a great job of removing these from the body,” he said, adding that none of these products have been reviewed by the FDA.
He pointed to Olestra, the fat substitute introduced in the 1990s that was eventually pulled from foods after triggering gastrointestinal problems.
“I worry that we’ll introduce things like that to avoid plastics exposure, and it’ll cause worse things than it really helps with,” Campen said.
What comes next
STOMP is structured in phases. The first solicitation focuses on measurement and on understanding which polymers cause the most harm and where they concentrate. Removal strategies — the second phase — won’t be funded until roughly 24 months into the program, when the agency expects to issue a separate solicitation.
“Is it going to answer all the questions? No,” said Campen, who is aiding with numerous researchers’ applications. “But I also know that we’re already poised to answer a few of the questions before we start.”
Kennedy, echoing Campen, Eriksen and other public health researchers during the press event, recommended those worried about microplastics affecting their health try to minimize exposure pathways where possible, like drinking from plastic water bottles, for example.
“The shape of this emphasizes individual responsibility for avoiding or getting rid of these exposure, and that’s how we do public health,” Campen said. The question now is “what’s going to come from the EPA?”
Next to Kennedy when he announced the STOMP program last month was EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, who said the agency has initiated the process to list microplastics on its inventory of unregulated drinking water contaminants — a first step toward regulations.
Critics say it’s a flashy headline with little substance.
“My guess is they’re just trying to generate wins, and since microplastics are a growing health concern, it seemed like it would have the traction on social media, which it did,” Muñoz said. “But it wasn’t really a win.”
This is where Kennedy runs into the limitations of his role at HHS; he can study the chemicals all he wants, but, other than plastic food packaging, he doesn’t have the authority to regulate plastic chemicals or production — that’s up to EPA.
“Plastic production is continuing to increase, which means inevitably that plastic pollution, including microplastic pollution, is going to increase,” Landrigan said. “And until this administration does something about curbing plastic production — actually setting limits on the global production of plastic — things are only going to get worse.”
Regulating plastic production is something Kennedy campaigned on before he dropped his presidential bid to back President Donald Trump. It’s something Eriksen has advised Kennedy and Stefanie Spear, HHS principal deputy chief of staff, for decades.
“They’ve both been interested in the plastics issue from when it first began in the early 2000s, and I’ve gotten to know them both,” Eriksen said. Kennedy called Eriksen “the world’s No. 1 expert on plastic pollution” on the “RFK Jr. Podcast” in March 2023.
But stricter regulations are “counter to the EPA’s work to deregulate,” Eriksen said. “I don’t think you’ll really see any regulation come out of this.”
Reach the reporter on encrypted messaging app Signal at eborst.64.
