6 Parts Per Billion: The governor pressed for a review after EPA set the federal level of 24.5 parts.
Riverside Press-Enterprise, David Danelski
Published April 1, 2005
California officials announced Friday that they are sticking with a "health goal" of 6 parts per billion for the rocket-fuel chemical perchlorate for drinking water -- about one-fourth the amount deemed safe by the Bush administration in February.
The health goal is not a binding limit but is generally used by water agencies to determine whether water is safe to provide to consumers. The state Department of Health Services is expected to set a legal limit -- known as a maximum contamination level, or MCL -- for perchlorate in drinking water within the next few months, department spokesman Robert Miller said.
California follows Canada and Massachusetts in choosing a more restrictive guideline for perchlorate than the 24.5 parts per billion found to be safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
A spokeswoman for Lockheed Martin Corp., believed to be responsible for perchlorate found in some Inland drinking water, said that 6 parts per billion is too restrictive.
California officials misinterpreted a health-risk analysis by the National Academy of Sciences panel that had been asked by the Bush administration to review perchlorate research, spokeswoman Gail Rymer said.
"Hopefully, the remaining MCL-setting will reflect the science more accurately," Rymer said by phone.
But Sujatha Jahagirdar, a clean-water advocate for the Los Angeles-based Environment California, said the state's health goal should be lower, to reflect the discoveries of perchlorate in produce, cows' milk and human breast milk.
Jahagirdar said she is particularly concerned about a Texas Tech study released in February that found perchlorate in every sample of breast milk taken from 36 women throughout the nation.
"To say that a rocket-fuel chemical was found in the milk of every nursing mother that was tested is not enough to reconsider this public-health decision is appalling," Jahagirdar said.
She added that setting the level at 6 parts per billion will curtail efforts to clean perchlorate out of the Colorado River and hundreds of drinking-water wells.
However, Pat Corbett, environmental affairs director for Kerr-McGee Corp, said the perchlorate cleanup will continue at the company's former perchlorate factory in Henderson, Nev. Spills and leaks there have allowed hundreds of pounds of perchlorate a day to leach into the Colorado River, a drinking-water source for an estimated 20 million people in Southern California and Arizona.
"The public heath goal of 6 doesn't change what we are doing, and I think we are successful at what we are doing," Corbett said.
The cleanup has cost Kerr-McGee $110 million. Perchlorate levels are down to 2.5 parts per billion about 11 miles south of Hoover Dam, Corbett said.
Lockheed Martin has spent at least $80 million cleaning up groundwater contamination believed to have spread from the company's former rocket factory in Mentone, near Redlands.
In 2003, perchlorate in Riverside water ranged as high as 7.2 parts per billion, according to the city's latest water report.
Water with higher levels of perchlorate is blended with cleaner supplies to ensure that consumers receive tap water that meets the state's health goal, said David Wright, Riverside's utility director.
The city is working with Lockheed Martin to build more treatment capacity, Wright said.
George Alexeeff, deputy director of the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, said the 6 parts per billion was based purely on reviews of scientific studies.
The state's health goal is lower than the federal EPA's safe level because it takes into account perchlorate exposure from food and assumes that pregnant women drink more liquid than the estimates used by the federal government, Alexeeff said.
Pregnant women and their fetuses are most vulnerable to perchlorate toxicity, he said.
In sufficient amounts, perchlorate interferes with the thyroid gland's ability to make hormones that regulate brain and nerve development in growing fetuses, infants and children. Perchlorate can inhibit the gland's absorption of iodide, needed to make the hormones.
Perchlorate pollution in hundreds of water supplies nationwide is a legacy of Cold War-era military bases, defense-contractors' factories and other industries, as well as some fertilizers.
California last year set a health goal of 6 parts per billion, which is less than the levels found in some Inland water supplies. The Schwarzenegger administration required Alexeeff's office to re-evaluate the health goal, taking into account the National Academy of Sciences findings.
The Bush administration, trying to settle a dispute between the EPA and the military over how much perchlorate can be safely ingested, asked the National Academy to review research to determine what's safe. A report was issued in January.
The military and defense contractors have said for years that as much as 200 parts per billion of perchlorate in water is safe to drink. The EPA in 2002 set a preliminary safe level of 1 part per billion.
In February, after reviewing the National Academy of Sciences' analysis, the EPA revised its guideline to 24.5 parts per billion.
Canada last month chose to follow California's lead, rather than the EPA's.
California's health goal "is based upon a sound and thorough assessment," Paul Duchesne, a Health Canada spokesman, said by telephone.
Also last month, Massachusetts announced that the state will not change its advisory level of 1 part per billion, said Robert W. Golledge Jr., commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection.
Independent research is needed to learn more about the long-term effects of perchlorate on sensitive people, Golledge said, especially because perchlorate has been discovered in food and milk.
Millions of people could be ingesting perchlorate without knowing it, he said.
"This issue needs greater attention."
