PERCHLORATE: Enviros press Calif. to adopt strictest water limits

Greenwire, Staff
Published October 31, 2006

California's proposal to set the toughest perchlorate standards in the country for water got a boost from attendees of a public comment session, who said widespread contamination could impair women's thyroid gland functions. The state Department of Health Services is considering requiring water providers to clean up perchlorate concentrations higher than 1 part per billion. The U.S. EPA suggests a standard of 24.5 ppb, and Massachusetts has imposed a 2-ppb level. The state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment recommended a 6-ppb standard in 2004, but since then studies have come out showing perchlorate could affect thyroid functions in women at lower levels than previously thought. Perchlorate, a component of rocket fuel and fireworks, has been found in milk, vegetables, fruit, grains and drinking water in as many as 40 states. Public comment on the California proposal ends Friday. The Environmental Working Group's Renee Sharp said the current standard would "profoundly fail" as many as 272,000 women in the state. She urged DHS to review a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study released earlier this month that showed low levels of perchlorate interfering with some women's thyroids. But former state EPA head James Strock, now of the aerospace industry-funded Council on Water Quality, said California should take economic costs into account as well as health risks. "If the same health benefits can be achieved at lower costs, they should be," he said (Samantha Young, AP/San Francisco Chronicle online, Oct. 30). -- DK