News Coverage
Lettuce Samples Found Tainted
Conclusions on perchlorate are elusive, but environmental group calls for action.
Published April 27, 2003
A laboratory test of 22 types of lettuce purchased at Northern California supermarkets found that four were contaminated with perchlorate, a toxic rocket-fuel ingredient that has polluted the Colorado River, the source of the water used to grow most of the nation's winter vegetables.
The environmental group that paid for the testing by Texas Tech University conceded that the sample was far too small to draw definite conclusions about how much perchlorate is in the lettuce Americans eat. But the organization, the Environmental Working Group, said the results were alarming enough to warrant a broad examination by the Food and Drug Administration.
"It appears perchlorate in produce is reaching consumers, which should be a wake-up call for the FDA," said Bill Walker, a western representative in the group's Oakland office. "A lot of people might look at this and say it was only four out of 22 - what is the problem? Well, when nearly one in five samples of a common produce item are contaminated with a chemical component of rocket fuel, that's significant."