WATERED DOWN
The Freedom of Information Act request yielded 30 boxes of heavily redacted e-mails that described such matters as who should be on the NAS panel and how the study should be conducted. These made it clear that industry and the administration were heavily involved in the panel’s inner workings.
Industry observers, however, loved the NAS recommendation. “What’s required now is careful review of the report to fully understand it and determine how the information can benefit the standard-setting process … . That’s the only way to ensure public health is protected and to ensure public resources aren’t unnecessarily diverted from pressing environmental and health needs,” the Council on Water Quality said in a statement lauding the report. Companies including Lockheed Martin and Kerr-McGee Chemical support the group.
But some environmentalists point out the NAS’s suggested standard would still be a big improvement – industry polluters have argued that perchlorate levels of 200 ppb to 350 ppb aren’t harmful. “I think that they’re pretty worried,” said Renee Sharp, a senior analyst for the Environmental Working Group, which praised the report. “Even if you take the study at face value, you still come up with a number that is in the lower parts per billion.”
In the case of a contaminant like perchlorate, where infants are at greatest risk and health consequences can occur from short-term exposure, the EPA has typically used infant weight and ingestion figures when setting a drinking water standard. The federal standard is also affected by how much contamination comes from other sources like food, thus lowering the acceptable amount in water. The California EPA, for example, has determined that perchlorate exposure comes 60 percent from water and 40 percent from food. Figuring that into the weight-based equation, Sharp postulates that the final EPA nationwide standard could be as low as 2.5 ppb. That would be considerably stricter than the current California public health goal of 6 ppb.
A very low perchlorate drinking water standard may be prudent. CityBeat has learned that an upcoming Texas Tech University study will show that perchlorate has been found in breast milk in 11 states, unrelated to drinking water, with some readings as high as 90 ppb. These findings may cause the EPA to look at all sources of perchlorate contamination and to reconsider water standards as they contribute to the production of food and other products nationwide. Senator Dianne Feinstein announced plans in December that she, like Boxer, was introducing legislation that would require a national drinking water standard, and would make polluters responsible for cleanup, saying in a statement, “perchlorate contamination … has entered the food chain. I urge the EPA to take action as soon as possible.”
