News Coverage
Officials try to quiet fears after traces of perchlorate are found statewide
Published June 25, 2004
Ever since reading about the likelihood that her kids' milk is tainted by tiny amounts of a rocket fuel ingredient, Fair Oaks mom Kristi Eberle has worried about what they are drinking.
Eberle fears there's no defense against traces of perchlorate detected in milk samples statewide and revealed this week by an environmental group. She takes limited solace in official assurances.
"It opened the door to a whole slew of additional concerns," said Eberle. "It was a feeling of being trapped and having no truly safe alternative."
State agriculture and health officials maintain there's no need for alarm. They don't plan to revisit a critical perchlorate risk analysis completed a few months ago.
But the report by the Environmental Working Group is sparking efforts to clean up the pervasive pollutant as well as drawing criticism.
"Irresponsible and misleading 'reports' only serve to create unnecessary fear and result in costly efforts to address a 'problem' that does not really exist," said a statement by Ladonna R. White, president of the Capitol Medical Society, the Sacramento chapter of an organization for African American physicians.
The environmental group, based in Washington, D.C., isn't backing down. "This is real," said senior vice president Richard Wiles. "The contamination is obviously there."
Perchlorate disrupts thyroid function, although the levels detected in California milk would not be expected to damage healthy adults. Long-term exposure is widely recognized as potentially dangerous for nursing infants and for children because thyroid hormone disruption can retard development.
Perchlorate, a component of rocket fuel, has been found in water supplies across the nation in recent years as new measuring tools find previously undetectable pollution. In San Bernardino County, a perchlorate plume jeopardizes the drinking water for 500,000 people.
Michael Payne, a toxicologist and director of the Dairy Quality Assurance Program at the University of California, Davis, said the milk report raises a tantalizing question about the spread of perchlorate in the food chain but said the danger from milk "is completely theoretical."
"My fear is that there would be consumer overreaction that would lead them to make changes to their diet that would actually not be helpful in maintaining their health," Payne said.
No one is questioning the fundamental finding of the Environmental Working Group, which bills itself as a public-interest watchdog organization.
Traces of perchlorate were found in 63 of 64 milk samples taken for two separate studies by the environmental group and the California Department of Food and Agriculture.
Several of the state's samples were higher than the "public health goal" of 6 parts per billion in drinking water. That is the level the state says poses "no significant health risk" for even the most sensitive people.
The public health goal will be used to set the state's drinking water standard. There is no state or national safety level set for perchlorate in milk or any other food. Allan Hirsch, spokesman for California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, said the state accounted for the chance of some perchlorate in milk or food when setting its mark for water. "Our public health goal is fine," he said.
Still, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has fired off several letters seeking an aggressive perchlorate cleanup plan. "There is irrefutable proof that perchlorate has, in fact, penetrated the food chain," Feinstein said in one letter.
California's dairy industry says it supports efforts to reduce perchlorate in water used to irrigate crops that cows eat.