News Coverage
Rocket fuel ingredient linked to health problems
Published June 28, 2003
A prime ingredient in the rocket fuel made at the Radford Army Ammunition Plant and elsewhere has been found in water supplies in 20 states. It has turned up in a sample taken from an area beside the New River.
Perchlorate, a salt that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency links to thyroid damage and says could harm infants' brain development, has again been the subject of widespread news coverage in recent weeks.
The Wall Street Journal and Associated Press reported debate between the EPA and the Department of Defense about whether to test groundwater at 5,000 present and former military installations. There has been increasing attention paid to perchlorate since the late 1990s as it was discovered in wells, rivers and public water systems around more and more facilities where it was made or handled. Perchlorate contamination of the Colorado River has affected water supplies in Southern California, Southern Nevada and Arizona.
Rob Davie, the Army's operation's chief at the Radford arsenal, said Friday that the arsenal had not carried out comprehensive testing that would indicate whether the plant has a perchlorate problem.
"We haven't sampled enough to say there's none here," Davie said.
Davie said he wasn't sure if perchlorate is still used at the arsenal.
Perchlorate turned up in a 1999 water sample taken at an area used in the 1970s as a disposal site for ash from the burning of waste propellant, said Jim McKenna, who heads the arsenal's cleanup of waste left from former operations. The disposal site is in the eastern end of the Horseshoe Area, in a bend of the New River.
Because levels were low, just a few parts per billion, another sample was taken last year. Results are not yet available, McKenna said.
Lenny Siegel, executive director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight, a group that has followed perchlorate issues across the country, said the chemical seems to have entered the groundwater wherever it was used.
"They were making solid rocket fuel before there were environmental laws," Siegel said. "All focus was on - understandably - explosive safety."
"... If they made solid rocket fuel, there's going to be perchlorate contamination. I don't know of any place where they worked with it and didn't find it," Siegel continued. "I'll bet my entire reputation on it."
"That's a very broad statement to make," Davie said when asked about Siegel's comment. But, Davie added, "He's right that it deserves some attention."
Cal Baier-Anderson, a toxicologist at the University of Maryland who worked with citizens groups when perchlorate was found last year in drinking water around the Aberdeen Proving Ground, said researchers have been surprised at the how easily perchlorate escaped into the environment. At Aberdeen, the source of perchlorate apparently was flares and smoke charges used in training exercises, she said.
There is no federal exposure limit for perchlorate. The EPA has argued that health damage may begin at exposure to concentrations of just 1 ppb, while the military has urged a higher standard of 200 ppb. No standard is expected to be issued for at least a year.