EPA REFUSES TO CLEAN UP PERCHLORATE

Protecting kids from rocket fuel plumes really is rocket science for DOD

October 2008 - While you were trying to earn a living in the Bushwacked world economy, the EPA has been busy abdicating its responsibilities again. Consistent with its recent illegal refusal to regulate carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, the stripping of Clean Water Act safeguards and the instructions to staff not to talk to GAO investigators – just to name a few - the EPA has decided that regulating toxic rocket fuel in public water supplies is unnecessary.

A by product of rocket fuel manufacturing, ammonium perchlorate is the explosive component of solid rocket fuel, fireworks, road flares, and other products. Perchlorate is also an endocrine disrupter (who knew?), a chemical that can alter hormonal balance, resulting in thyroid tumors. It can disrupt thyroid hormone levels during pregnancy, leading to mental retardation, loss of hearing and speech, birth defects, and other developmental problems in infants and children.

Perchlorate moves rapidly through soil and groundwater, where it remains for decades. A recent FDA study found it in 93% of the nation’s milk and lettuce supply. Perchlorate has also been found in the drinking water of at least 22 states and in the breast milk of 97% of the mothers who were tested. There’s perchlorate in the Colorado River, source of drinking water for 20 million people. In all, you’ll find perchlorate in at least 395 sites in 35 states at levels high enough to interfere with thyroid function and pose developmental health risks, particularly for babies and fetuses. See site listings for a convenient location near you.

Perchlorate moves rapidly through soil and groundwater, where it remains for decades. A recent FDA study found it in 93% of the nation’s milk and lettuce supply. Perchlorate has also been found in the drinking water of at least 22 states and in the breast milk of 97% of the mothers who were tested. There’s perchlorate in the Colorado River, source of drinking water for 20 million people. In all, you’ll find perchlorate in at least 395 sites in 35 states at levels high enough to interfere with thyroid function and pose developmental health risks, particularly for babies and fetuses. See site listings for a convenient location near you.

Kind of alarming, unless you are the Bush EPA, which has been diverted from its mission of “Protecting the Environment”, as have most Bush federal agencies theoretically tasked with protecting the public**. That’s because the Bush administration has appointed lobbyists and corporate executives to make sure no protecting gets done.

According it’s latest “draft regulatory documents”, the EPA has concluded that mandating a clean-up level for perchlorate would not result in a "meaningful opportunity for health risk reduction for persons served by public-water systems.”

As is the case with most toxic substances, the full scope of perchlorate’s health threat has not yet been proven conclusively. This is a familiar tactic used by government agencies and the polluters that own them. No matter how many kids in Love Canal and Times Beach are born with extra arms, the perpetrators will always claim that more testing is necessary. Stonewall, delay and create doubt. Since the polluter in this case is the Department of Defense and its pet contractors, expect more of the same. The U.S. Department of Defense has a disastrous record of polluting sites and refusing to clean them up. But the military is exempt from most environmental laws, and consistently hides behind the “security” fairy tale (see Aberdeen, MD story here). There also is the “too costly” gambit, which can be translated as follows: “every dollar we have to spend cleaning up our toxic waste is a dollar we can’t spend on war toys and corrupt contractors.”

Perchlorate has only been recognized as a health threat for about a decade, ever since it began showing up in water samples. Just as is the case with climate change, we can’t cite irrefutable science that proves just exactly how much rocket fuel in the water supply is harmful. However, it is an interesting fact that the same socio-pathological viewpoint that insists we cannot take the chance that a fetus is a living entity, seems to contradict itself when it comes to poisoning the kids once they grow up.

But a reasonable person might ask this question: Do I want any goddam rocket fuel at all in the public water supply?

*The Cold War was when only the Soviet Union was our sworn global enemy. Ever since our victory celebration over the Russians, we have also developed problems with roughly a billion Islamists through no fault of our own. Now the Russians are back again, so life is tough. But as long as we talk even tougher and keep promoting democracy anywhere and everywhere - whether they want it or not - things should be just fine.

**Here’s a start