News Coverage
Food risk test spurned
Published May 10, 2003
Four years ago, the Air Force agreed to examine whether a rocket-fuel chemical called perchlorate is ending up on America's dinner plate.
The study was considered essential for federal officials to determine how much perchlorate the public might be ingesting and to help calculate potential health risks, especially to newborns. Scientists planned to examine lettuce and other crops from the Imperial and Coachella valleys, irrigated with perchlorate-tainted Colorado River water.
But the study never was done.
Instead, the Air Force spent its money determining whether perchlorate can be found in cactus mice, mosquito fish, Bermuda grass and other wildlife. Most study areas were next to defense facilities contaminated with perchlorate, according to federal records obtained by The Press-Enterprise.
The military potentially could have to pay billions of dollars to clean up the pollution nationwide.
Previous government research showed that greenhouse lettuce absorbed perchlorate from irrigation water. Most of the nation's winter lettuce crop is grown in areas such as the Imperial Valley that is contaminated Colorado River water, but the government had never confirmed whether perchlorate was in commercial produce. Earlier this year, tests commissioned by private groups, including The Press-Enterprise, detected perchlorate in winter lettuce purchased from grocery stores.
In the wake of such tests, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration now say they plan to move forward with a crop study.
The story of how the Air Force pursued habitat research at the expense of a food study unfolds in hundreds of e-mails exchanged among the Air Force, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and others over nearly four years. The Press-Enterprise obtained the e-mails through a Freedom of Information Act request. They show:
* In November 1999 the Air Force received $500,000 in Pentagon funds for two studies: perchlorate in crops, and in wild plants and animals. But all the money went to the wildlife study.
* When unexpected expenses increased the projected cost of the crop study, the Air Force in the spring of 2000 pressed the Department of Agriculture for financial assistance. When none came, the Air Force blamed the department for stalling the study.
* In October 2000 the Air Force discovered it had extra research money. Air Force officials favored spending that money on other environmental studies instead of the stalled food study.
Testing urged
Air Force officials said lack of money, technical challenges and competing priorities derailed the crop study. Col. Dan Rogers, who oversaw the Air Force's efforts, said that examining fruits and vegetables remains an important goal.
"We believed that it was important from the beginning," Rogers said in an interview.
But a high-ranking EPA official said he believes the crop study is dead.
"I don't know that the Department of Defense has any intention of doing that study now," said William Farland, an acting deputy administrator at EPA.
Environmental groups and some state lawmakers, including Sen. Barbara Boxer, are now calling for broader testing for perchlorate in food. Boxer recently asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to investigate. Sen. Dianne Feinstein has urged the Defense Department to take responsibility for its perchlorate contamination and the resulting contamination of food and water.
The concern stems from perchlorate's ability to disrupt the delicate balance of thyroid hormones in humans. Those hormones govern metabolism, mental alertness and brain and bone development in fetuses, a group some scientists consider to be the most susceptible to the chemical's effect. But scientists continue to debate just how much perchlorate the body can tolerate. That debate has complicated efforts by state and federal regulators to develop drinking water standards.
"Farm gate"
Four federal agencies -- food and drug, environment, agriculture and the Pentagon -- discussed testing food crops for perchlorate. The EPA repeatedly prodded the Air Force to proceed with the food crop study, the e-mails show. The study was called "farm gate" because crop samples in theory would be collected close to the fields where they were grown.
In a May 3, 2000, e-mail headlined "FARM GATE STATUS CRITICAL," an EPA official implored the Air Force to respond to questions about the study.
"What is the status of the farm gate protocol?? Please finalize it with the technical points made on the review and let me know what has happened with the sticker shock issue," wrote Annie Jarabek, a special assistant to the EPA's National Center for Environmental Assessment in North Carolina.
An Air Force researcher reassured Jarabek the same day that the study had not stalled. "We intend to move on the study, but it may have to be limited somehow . . . " wrote Air Force toxicologist Elizabeth Maull. But other Air Force e-mail that day suggests the military believed the study was imperiled by lack of money.
"We're dangerously close to not being able to go forward with the testing as scheduled," Rogers wrote to Jarabek and other federal officials.
Conflict of interest?
The EPA and the Air Force were key players on an inter-agency committee formed in 1998 to evaluate potential health risks from perchlorate contamination.
Federal environmental officials were in the preliminary stages of trying to devise a drinking water standard for perchlorate. The Pentagon contends that humans can tolerate up to 200 parts per billion of perchlorate in drinking water. The EPA's current draft drinking-water guideline, a level at which regulators believe the chemical would not harm humans, ranges between 4 and 18 parts per billion.
The EPA's standards could have a huge impact on the military. Perchlorate, a type of salt, provides the oxygen that stokes solid-fuel rockets, fireworks and road flares.
Most of it was used by the military and its defense contractors. They face billions of dollars in cleanup costs. Lockheed Martin Corp., for example, estimates it will spend $185 million over 30 years to clean up groundwater fouled with perchlorate and other contaminants believed to be coming from Lockheed's former rocket-fuel test site in Mentone.
Allowing the military to oversee perchlorate pollution research creates a conflict of interest, said Renee Sharp, an analyst with the Environmental Working Group. The group has been tracking perchlorate contamination issues.
"They have a very vested interest in the outcome of this research," Sharp said. "Millions, if not billions, of dollars are riding on the outcome."
Rogers, the Air Force colonel who led the federal research effort, defended the Pentagon. He said the military has been willing to fund perchlorate research and has worked cooperatively with other government researchers.
"Who are they going to have do it? Who would be in a better position to offer up that information than the Department of Defense?" Rogers asked.
Controlling information
During Earth Week in April 1999, the inter-agency committee gathered in Little Rock, Ark., to set environmental research priorities. The crop study, followed by habitat research, topped the list. The two studies would divide $500,000 in research funds from the Army.
The Air Force, the EPA and others were to collaborate. But the Air Force -- a major perchlorate user and now the lead agency on the inter-agency pollution research -- tried to restrict EPA scientists.
The Air Force demanded that the EPA's National Exposure Laboratory in Athens, Ga., stop perchlorate tests on plant and mineral samples that growers and others had offered the laboratory, said Steven McCutcheon, a federal researcher in Athens.
Meanwhile, the laboratory was conducting research that found greenhouse lettuce absorbed and concentrated perchlorate from irrigation water. The Western Growers Association, representing farmers in California and Arizona, offered onions for testing. The Athens laboratory was hoping the Pentagon would fund more research.
In an e-mail to McCutcheon dated June 23, 1999, Rogers said he would be seeking Pentagon money to support perchlorate research. But Rogers also advised McCutcheon to halt some of the lab's ongoing efforts: "PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE do not arrange for taking or accepting samples from any of the Western states."
McCutcheon said he regarded Rogers' remark as a warning.
"He was saying 'Don't do this' and implying the funding would be affected," McCutcheon said.
In September 1999, Rogers again pressed for restrictions. He wrote to Jarabek and other EPA officials that no one had permission to publish articles without "complete agreement from all the executive members," including the Air Force.
"Any attempt to publish would not be looked upon favorably by the DoD (Department of Defense)," Rogers wrote.
McCutcheon said the EPA's judgment on when to publish research is based on its charge to protect public health. Key findings need to be published so others can advance the work to protect people, he said.
"We were upset the Air Force would try to dictate how and when scientific information would be released," McCutcheon said.
In an interview, Rogers said the Department of Defense retains the right to look at work from a hired laboratory before the work is submitted for peer review or publication. He said the Air Force had qualms about the quality of some of the EPA lab's work. Those differences were later resolved, he said.
Oranges and lettuce
Among the crop samples submitted to the Athens EPA lab for testing were oranges reportedly grown over a perchlorate plume in California. The e-mails do not identify the source of the oranges. Federal officials said they could not immediately locate the information.
One of the Athens researchers found perchlorate in preliminary tests on the oranges, according to an e-mail from McCutcheon.
Because of questions about how the oranges were gathered and the accuracy of the tests, the laboratory did not consider the results definitive, McCutcheon's e-mail stated. Still, the lab shared the results with the EPA's San Francisco office and an Air Force scientist.
The Athens lab began turning away other samples so it could develop more accurate perchlorate tests for the anticipated farm gate study, McCutcheon said. Farm gate, he said, would answer many of the questions about perchlorate in food.
In October 1999, with the Army's money in hand, the inter-agency research effort got under way.
The Air Force Institute for Environmental, Safety, and Occupational Health Risk Analysis solicited help from the Department of Agriculture to devise a strategy for testing crops irrigated with contaminated Colorado River water. That included crops from the Coachella and Imperial valleys.
The plan was to collect cucumbers, carrots, oranges, lettuce, green peppers, cantaloupe and peaches from produce distribution centers in Los Angeles and Miami. The Department of Agriculture would gather 800 samples. But collection alone would cost $250,000. The department wanted to know who would pay the bill.
Rogers said the department's response was unexpected. The Air Force had expected the crop samples would be collected without charge.
"You have to rely on money that's been programmed, and we hadn't programmed that," Rogers said. He added that if the Department of Agriculture was going to be a partner in the study, "there was an obligation for them to provide some degree of funding."
Allen Jennings, director of the USDA's Office of Pest Management Policy, whom Rogers solicited for financial help, said earlier this month that he doesn't recall any serious discussions with the Air Force about the USDA paying for the crop study.
Crops take a back seat
By mid-May 2000, Cornell Long, chief of health risk assessment branch at Brooks Air Force Base in Texas, advised Rogers to drop the farm gate study for the fiscal year. The habitat study, already under way, would consume all of the available money.
"I realize this might not make everyone happy, but we strongly believe completion of the site-specific (habitat) studies should be our first priority," Long wrote. " . . . partial funding of the market basket (farm gate study) accomplishes nothing."
A month later, farm gate's fate was largely sealed.
Without the agriculture department's financial help, Rogers said in a June 2000 e-mail to the EPA, "I do not expect that project will go forward."
By then, Rogers said, Air Force priorities had shifted.
The shift was apparent in an e-mail Long sent to Rogers in October 2000 that outlined options for future studies. Farm gate, with an estimated price of $365,000, was on the list.
But Long suggested spending money on other studies, including $175,000 toward developing water quality criteria for Texas.
As for farm gate, "I'm sure this issue is still relevant from . . . EPA's perspective," Long said. "I'm not sure we will have money to put against this project . . . "
The EPA continued to press for the crop study well into 2001.
Farland, the EPA administrator, said he can't address why the Air Force dropped the crop study in favor of other research.
"We continued to think this was important information," Farland said.