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Perchlorate
Tuesday, February 04, 2003
Officials: Perchlorate may be harmful even at low levels
LOS ANGELES - Perchlorate polluting the Colorado River - the main water source for millions of Californians and most of the nation's winter lettuce - may be dangerous to public health even at extremely low levels, state and federal environmental officials now believe, according to the Los Angeles Times.
According to the newspaper, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the California Office of Environmental Health Assessment (EHA), which are independently working to set the nation's first enforceable regulations on perchlorate, are concluding from a number of new studies that the substance could lead to health problems, even in trace amounts.
Those findings present a serious environmental problem for the southwestern United States, because the entire lower Colorado River is polluted with small amounts of perchlorate from a now-closed Nevada rocket fuel factory, the newspaper said.
The EPA has issued a preliminary public health goal of 1 part per billion for perchlorate - a number one-seventh the average contamination now in the lower Colorado River, the newspaper said. The number is also one 200th of what the defense industry says is scientifically sound.
California health officials have issued a draft public health goal of 2 to 6 parts per billion for perchlorate. The state expects to establish new regulations next year; the EPA estimates it will take several more years to put federal standards in place, the Times reported.
California officials first discovered the contamination five years ago, and an effort has been underway since then to stem the pollutant's flow from a desert wash near the factory into Lake Mead, the newspaper said.
But according to the Times, more than 500 pounds of perchlorate still enters the river system every day, and it will be years before it is fully flushed out.
No one is saying a few glasses of tap water pose an immediate danger, said the newspaper.
The article said environmental health scientists say there is an outside risk of developing health problems from perchlorate, basing their estimates on the assumption that a person would drink about two liters of the slightly tainted water each day of a lifetime.
Perchlorate is known to affect the production of thyroid hormones, which are considered critical to brain development, so fetuses and newborn children may face a greater risk, the article said.
The newspaper said more than 15 million people, including those in the urban expanses of Las Vegas and much of Southern California, depend on drinking water from the lower Colorado River; roughly 15 percent of California's water supply comes from the river.
And there are perchlorate problems in other areas of California and the nation.
Perchlorate pollution is an unexpected byproduct of the race to put a man in space and build bigger and better rockets during the Cold War, said the Times. Defense contractors and the Pentagon do not dispute that it can be harmful, but their interpretation of the data differs from that of environmental officials.
The contractors and military authorities conclude that the contaminant is dangerous only in higher concentrations.
Strict new state and federal perchlorate rules could cost defense contractors and water agencies tens of millions of dollars, spent to cleanse waters of pollution, said the article.
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