News Coverage
Perchlorate may garnish your salad
Published April 27, 2003
If you enjoyed a lettuce salad sometime over the past six months, chances are it was grown in California or Arizona. And along with the croutons, you might have been munching down on the byproducts of toxic rocket fuel.
As distasteful as that sounds, that is precisely what a research group based in Washington, D.C., found.
Environmental Working Group today released the findings of a study that found four out of 22 types of lettuce purchased at northern California supermarkets in January were contaminated with perchlorate - the main ingredient of solid rocket and missile fuel.
Bill Walker, a western representative for EWG's Oakland, Calif., office, said the results aren't conclusive but it's a good bet that there's perchlorate in the majority of the nation's winter-grown lettuce that is irrigated by the Colorado River."We can't say with 100 percent certainty," Walker said, "but based on the time of year the samples most likely came from Imperial County, Calif., or Yuma County, Ariz., where almost all the lettuce is produced."
And some of that lettuce likely ended up on Utah store shelves.
"The probability is pretty high," said Dick Wilson, a manager for the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food. Beyond backyard gardeners, he said very little lettuce is grown in Utah.
Farmers, too, are concerned. But they don't want this to trigger a food scare.
"This is a problem. It's not one we created, but it's one we are concerned about," Hank Giclas, a vice president of Western Growers Association, told the Los Angeles Times. "In the meantime, we want people to continue eating fruits and vegetables.
EWG is calling on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to begin testing for perchlorate in lettuce and other crops irrigated by the Colorado River.
FDA officials said they are in the process of doing that.
"We do understand that there is a potential for perchlorate from irrigation water to end up in food," Terry Troxell, the director of the FDA's office of plant and dairy foods and beverages, told the Los Angeles Times. "We have already been moving in this area. We will certainly take their results into account."
Environmental regulators have detected traces of perchlorate in the Colorado River that they believe leached from the site of a former Nevada rocket-fuel factory. American Pacific Corp. purchased the factory after it closed, and when the factory was destroyed by fire in the late 1990, the company relocated to Cedar City under the name Western Electrochemical. The company could not be reached for comment.
Perchlorate is a toxic chemical that affects the thyroid gland. Woman of childbearing age, infants and children are at the greatest risk since the chemical can impede mental development in fetuses and young children.
The study focused on lettuce because the leafy green produce is 90 percent water.
As a result of its study, Environmental Working Group has recommended the federal government:
* Clean up the Colorado River and Lake Mead.
* Conduct a definitive study of perchlorate contamination in the American food supply and make all results public.
* Require future drinking water standards to reflect the potential for exposure through food.
* Compensate farmers and landowners for lost profits and property values as a result of contamination.
* Test irrigation water, not just drinking water, for perchlorate.
* Reject the current Bush administration's proposal that would exempt the Department of Defense sites from environmental regulations, including perchlorate cleanup.
This is a national concern, Environmental Working Group says.
"If the perchlorate levels in our samples are representative, exposure is not just a problem for people in areas where the water is contaminated, but a national concern for everyone who buys winter lettuce at the grocery store," according to the group's Web site, www.ewg.org.