With everything going on in the world, it comes as a surprise that one of President Trump’s recent concerns is the water pressure of U.S. shower heads. The Trump administration is currently working to alter the current law regarding the how much water is allowed to flow through the show head at once.
As of 1992, shower heads in the United States are not permitted to produce more than 2.5 gallons of water per minute. However, the Trump administration would like to change this law so that it applies to each nozzle, rather than the fixture as a whole.
Trump’s first complaint came during a speech on the White House South Lawn.
“So shower heads – you take a shower, the water doesn’t come out. You want to wash your hands, the water doesn’t come out. So what do you do? You just stand there longer or you take a shower longer? Because my hair – I don’t know about you but it has to be perfect. Perfect.”
Trump’s White House South Lawn speech
The executive director of the energy conservation group Appliance Standards Awareness Project, Andrew deLaski, expressed his concerns regarding this change in water pressure. deLaski explained to AP News how applying the current shower head regulations to individual nozzles rather than the fixture as whole would produce between 10-15 gallons of water, “probably washing you out of the bathroom”.
deLaski went on to add:
“The country is facing serious problems. We’ve got a pandemic, serious long-term drought throughout much of the West. We’ve got global climate-change. Shower heads aren’t one of our problems.”
Andrew deLaski, AP News
Whether or not the Trump administration will follow through with the change remains to be seen, but the harmful effects of this albeit subtle alteration to shower heads could go directly against the United States’ current efforts to fight climate change.
