News Coverage
Report claims some California milk has traces of perchlorate
Published June 21, 2004
Got Milk? If so, you might also have a key ingredient to rocket fuel.
Milk from cows raised in some parts of California may contain more of a toxic rocket fuel chemical than is considered safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, according to unreleased tests by state agriculture officials and independent laboratory tests commissioned by Environmental Working Group.
The EWG says it found the rocket fuel chemical in almost every sample it tested - 31 out of 32 samples purchased from grocery stores in Los Angeles and Orange counties. The average level of perchlorate in the samples was 1.3 parts per billion (ppb) - just above the EPA's currently recommended safe dose of 1 ppb.
Through a state public records act request, EWG says it also obtained results of tests for perchlorate in milk by the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA), which the agency has not made public or provided to state health officials. Those tests found perchlorate in all 32 samples of milk collected from unspecified sources in Alameda, Sacramento and San Joaquin counties, according to EWG. The average level of perchlorate in the samples was 5.8 ppb, or just below the state's recently set Public Health Goal (PHG) of 6 ppb.
Perchlorate, the explosive component of solid rocket fuel, can affect the thyroid gland's ability to make essential hormones. Currently there are no enforceable perchlorate safety standards at the state or federal level. Perchlorate contaminates more than 350 drinking water sources in California alone. There is a major perchlorate ground water contamination in the Morgan Hill area. The chemical is though to have seeped into the ground at a now-closed rocket plant.
Michael Payne, a veterinary toxicologist with UC, Davis, told the San Francisco Chronicle that the amounts being reported are minute. He compared them to that of a sugar cube in an oil tanker.