Good news! Perchlorate rocket fuel finally going to be regulated
Posted February 2, 2011 in Health and the Environment
Today is a good day for public health! EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced her intention to regulate perchlorate, a toxic chemical that contaminates water and food across the country. EPA has only been trying since 2002 – the whole Bush Administration! Up to now the Bush White House had been interfering with EPA's attempts to regulate it, as a favor to the Defense Department and its contractors so they wouldn’t have to face strict clean up requirements or potential liabilities. This has been a long time coming.
EPA's decision to regulate perchlorate in drinking water will not only protect our health but reverses bad public policy that has put us at risk for years. It is a hazardous chemical component of explosives that was used in rocket fuel, and is still used in fireworks and air bags.
According to a 2010 report by an independent investigative arm of Congress, GAO, “Perchlorate has been found in water and other media at varying levels in 45 states, as well as in the food supply, and comes from a variety of sources.” EPA found it in the public drinking water supplies that serve over 17 million people. And FDA found it in well over half of food samples they analyzed, including baby foods and infant formula. It’s also in human breast milk! It probably gets into the foods from drinking and irrigation water. And, it gets into ground water by leaching out of old military and other dump sites that were not properly lined back in the day.
Perchlorate is such a big health concern because it blocks normal thyroid hormone production. This leads to low thyroid hormone, which if it is too low, and occurs during early life development will lead to developmental delays and low IQ. We don’t have enough data right now to know whether or not there may be a “safe” level of perchlorate that wouldn’t be associated with harm, but a lot of science experts suspect that there isn’t one. For example, UMass Amherst Professors Carol Bigelow and Tom Zoeller, highly-respected independent scientists, wrote in comments to EPA that, “… small differences in available thyroid hormone (and the iodine associated with it) during the first few weeks of life can have significant lifetime consequences”.
A new analysis by California state researchers reported that babies born in areas with perchlorate-contaminated tap water above 5 parts per billion (ppb), about 5 teaspoons of perchlorate in an Olympic-sized pool, had a 50% chance of having a measurable decline in thyroid function. Ouch! We don’t know if this level of decline would necessarily lead to IQ deficits, but who would willingly take such a risk with their babies?!
After more than 17 years of accumulated science on perchlorate harms, two EPA toxicological reviews (1998, 2002), and a lengthy review by the National Academies (2004), it is past time for EPA to take effective regulatory action to protect people’s health by preventing exposure to perchlorate.
For more on the policy and legal side, see the blog of my legal-beagle work-buddy Mae Wu.
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Comments
toeli carp — Feb 2 2011 04:59 PM
why regulate perchlorate???? why not prohibit it all together???
thanks
Tom Burton — Feb 11 2011 11:35 AM
Probably hasn't been doing the Oysters or Honey Bees much good either.
Everyone wants to find the magic reason for autism. There are so so many chemicals out there that it's unlikely it's this one. However, the IQ comment I took as alluding to this possibility-- and the need for further studies.
Lin Sol — Feb 11 2011 11:53 AM
Hi,
Am living with MS which has impacted my brain, however, when I first heard about this toxin in drinking water, I wondered; why is it in the water to begin with? Rocket fuel, I mean really folks, what the heck is that doing in drinking water. It seems there is too much irresponsibility with all kinds of chemical usage in this country, in water, food; and what is in baby products? They've just come into this world, the most vulnerable of beings; and who knows what is being put into anything being given to or used on them! It causes me much anger, that there isn't more oversight, or more people who care about what goes into products grown in the earth; or manufactured in our country. It seems just produce it and make a buck from whatever it is. In my opinion, we cannot trust the organizations who are supposed to be our overseers, the EPA, FDA; or any of them. The FDA has just allowed Monsanto to grow GE alfalfa, which not only affects conventionally grown produce; but organics as well. The EPA has fallen down for decades regarding them protecting the environment??? really; they do not. I am hugely disappointed in the lack of protection that is supposed to be happening in this country. No wonder why children come into this world with health problems. If not strong enough, what their mother consumed, breathed, drank; went right into the placenta to the fetus/baby. With all the people who need jobs, there have to be some people out there; who care about protecting our environment etc.
noman — Feb 11 2011 02:51 PM
Carp, I don't know if perchlorate is banned or not, or if it ever will be. Regardless, a ban wouldn't necessarily affect levels found in drinking water...remember, a lot of this stuff was dumped into the ground in the 50's and 60's. What the EPA regs will do is force someone to take responsibility for cleanup of contaminated groundwater, and meeting safe drinking water standards. Without these kind of regs, what's already in the ground could sit there forever.
If the EPA determines that spending billions of dollars on cleanup of a substance that may lead to decline in thyroid production, a condition which may lead to IQ deficits (again how much is unknown...if it's directly tied to the amount in the drinking water is it 0.0000005% reduction in IQ?, I think I'd give up that much for a $billion) is a good idea, then more power to them. From what I'm reading here, the science doesn't sound very solid. They could accomplish more by banning Big Macs, beer, and fracking.
Marvin S. Robinson,II — Feb 11 2011 03:34 PM
thank GOD, this is a concern and a problem, media overseas have been complaining for years about environmental secondary impacts in there communities everytime another or the next launched space venture. However, the mainstream news media in our country, hasn't done as good of a job of sharing that / those concerns from other countries, about secondary impacts on their ecological systems.
And lots of regular poor low-income Blacks in the mid-west, discuss the fact that our own weather seems to change everytime they go up, in space, too.
so this is great, just hope the science doesn't get wrapped up in the ROUND-ROBIN cycles theories 7 reports & studies, that ultimatle end-up, studying and rebuttals with no definitve concrete conclusion(S). thanks-
Marvin S. Robinson,II
Quindaro Ruins / Underground Railraod-Exercise 2011