PERCHLORATE’S PREGNANT PAUSE
Polluters are attempting to abort the state’s new standards
By Michael Collins
Ventura County Reporter – January 5, 2004
Ammonium perchlorate was first used at the NASA-owned Jet Propulsion Laboratory, literally as rocket fuel. A rocket booster for the Space Shuttle contains over 1.3 million pounds of propellant, of which 70 percent is ammonium perchlorate. Potassium perchlorate is also a primary ingredient of safety flares, matches, munitions, explosives, fireworks and airbag detonators. But while perchlorate has propelled America towards the heavens and is a must for 4th of July festivities, it has also polluted groundwater and now threatens human health throughout the state and nation. “Perchlorate disrupts how the thyroid functions,” according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). “Impairment of the thyroid function in expectant mothers may impact the fetus and newborn and result in effects including changes in behavior, delayed development and decreased learning capability.”
Over 330 drinking water sources in California have registered concentrations of perchlorate at or above the state’s provisional action-reporting level of 4 parts per billion (ppb). No drinking water wells have tested positive in Ventura County, yet there have been 17 detections of the chemical in Simi Valley groundwater, with the highest hitting 19.6 ppb. Elsewhere in East County, groundwater from Well #1 adjacent to Ahmanson Ranch tested at 28 ppb, the Brandeis-Bardin Bathtub Well #1 tested at 140 and 150 ppb, and the heavily polluted Rocketdyne field laboratory has registered a whopping 48,000 ppb in near-surface water. There is currently no state or federal drinking water standard for perchlorate.
State legislation passed in 2002 required the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) to set a public health goal for perchlorate by January 1, 2003—a date that has come and gone without action, due to litigation on the part of chemical companies. In 1997, the California Department of Health Services (DHS) established a provisional level of 18 parts-per-billion for reporting the presence of the chemical in drinking water to consumers, later to be lowered, and was scheduled to make a final determination by the end of last year, but that deadline was also pushed back due to litigation. Now OEHHA has until Mar. 14 to publish the final public health goal, but again the polluters have other plans.
Soon after Gov. Schwarzenegger took office, a chorus of chemical industry lobbyists begain raining criticism down upon Cal-EPA. “There appears to be a rush to judgment to adopt an extremely conservative drinking water standard for perchlorate based on highly questionable science,” said the California Manufacturers and Technology Association in an Oct. 23 posting on its website.
“Establishing a permanent drinking water standard of 4 ppb for perchlorate could precipitate a water supply crisis and would have significant adverse economic impacts for California’s agricultural industry, water consumers, the building industry and others, with correspondent job losses.”
The California Chamber of Commerce agreed, and offered its own stall tactic: “The Chamber believes that state policymakers should allow time to consider the findings of the independent scientific peer review already under way at the National Academy of Science, to ensure that the best available science is used to adopt a final drinking water standard.”
The National Acadamy of Science has put together a review panel that includes at least two members who have ties to the major perchlorate polluters. Reviewer Charles Capen was a “paid consultant to Lockheed Martin regarding perchlorate,” according to a Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) document. “There is evidence that this consulting relationship was in existence in 1998 and 1999.”
The NRDC also discovered that another NAS reviewer, Richard Bull, “was a paid consultant to Lockheed Martin in toxic tort litigation regarding perchlorate and other chemical pollution in Redlands, California. This litigation is currently ongoing, although Dr. Bull’s current status as a consultant to Lockheed Martin is unknown to us.”
Another group advocating a delay in OEHHA’s deadline is the Council on Water Quality (CWG). Despite its friendly-sounding name, this new-born industry lobby group is funded by major perchlorate polluters Lockheed Martin, Aerojet (GenCorp Inc.), Kerr-McGee Chemical and American Pacific Corporation. Lockheed Martin’s perchlorate pollution has fouled the groundwater of Rialto in San Bernardino County. Both Aerojet’s Azusa plant and its Rancho Cordoba site near Sacramento are Superfund sites heavily polluted with perchlorate. American Pacific Corp. and Kerr-McGee are perchlorate producers in Henderson, Nevada. Around 900 pounds of the toxin leaches from Kerr-McGee into the Colorado River daily, resulting in an average reading of 9 ppb of perchlorate in drinking water for millions of Southern California consumers.
The industry-sponsored CWG website claims that “perchlorate does no damage to the thyroid gland. High levels of perchlorate (above 200 parts per billion) can temporarily affect the thyroid’s ability to absorb iodide from the bloodstream, but this in itself is harmless (it happens naturally in every human as a result of diet and other factors).” The group goes on to assert, with little scientific evidence, that there is “reason to believe that low levels of perchlorate (below 200 ppb) also have no measurable effect on pregnant women or fetuses. Research is now being conducted to confirm this, with results expected in 2004.”
