The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it is launching a drinking water quality study to look for traces of abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol for the first time.

Anti-abortion activists, attorneys general, and lawmakers have been lobbying for the agency to carry the study for years.

Researchers at the agency will collect water samples “from several locations in different metropolitan areas” and test them for thousands of drugs, pesticides and synthetic chemicals, including mifepristone, misoprostol, and multiple types of “forever chemicals,” according to a description of the study.

  • conquer4@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago
    1. A waste water treatment facility has extreme limitations on what it can clean, and literally just gets it to the won’t-kill-the-environment level. Hormones, viruses, etc are too small to effectively process on a massive scale. New York for example, still sometimes releases raw sewage because they can’t keep up.
    2. Trump and the Supreme Court have basically gutted the clean water act. If it’s not navigable, the law doesn’t apply to it.