News Coverage
Rocket fuel traces found in state milk
Published June 21, 2004
This spring, without telling other agencies, the California Department of Food and Agriculture found unhealthy amounts of rocket fuel in cow's milk sold across the state -- including Alameda and San Joaquin counties, according to an investigation results being released today.
Perchlorate, the explosive main ingredient in solid rocket fuel, was found in milk at concentrations equal to and above the state's newly minted public health limits for perchlorate in drinking water. The levels exceed the stricter provisional safe daily dose set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Yet agriculture officials, conducting the survey as state health officers were drawing up their health standard, never released the data. That came only after the Environmental Working Group, testing milk from Southern California groceries, found trace amounts of perchlorate and filed a public records request.
Together the findings suggest exposure to perchlorate, which impairs the thyroid's hormone-making ability and can contribute to motor-skill defects and mental retardation in children, are higher than scientists estimate, according to the Oakland-based environmental group.
"Mothers should not be forced to wonder if milk -- for many people the very symbol of a healthy diet -- is affecting their child's growth and development," the authors of the group's report conclude.
The department said Monday their test was simply an effort to validate cutting-edge detection technology. It was not a public health study, the agency said, and inconclusive data offer no need to reduce milk consumption.
Indeed, all sides cautioned Monday that the results are no reason to stop drinking milk, a key calcium source.
Rather, environmentalists and others said the findings highlight the need for more testing of the nation's food supply and for more comprehensive efforts to stop the spread of the highly soluble contaminant.
"We want to know where it came from and how it may have gotten there," said Michael Marsh, executive officer of the Modesto-based Western United Dairymen.
Perchlorate contaminates 350 drinking water sources in California alone, chief among them the Colorado River, which irrigates 1.4 million acres of cropland in California and Arizona. Hundreds of pounds of rocket fuel seep into the river daily from a shuttered military facility near Las Vegas.
Previous studies have found perchlorate in lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers and alfalfa irrigated with contaminated water. The compound presumably accumulates as cows eat the alfalfa.
The amounts, however, are minuscule. And some on Monday decried the environmental group's work as irresponsible, particularly if it scares people away from milk. There is no state or federal health limit for perchlorate in milk or any food.
Michael Payne, a veterinary toxicologist with the University of California, Davis, has studied perchlorate and watched both his grandmother and aunt die of osteoporosis caused, in part, by insufficient calcium.
"They both went into the hospital with broken hips and never came out," he said. "At this juncture, given what we know, there is no reason to panic."
California leads the nation in dairy production, supplying 20 percent of the nation's milk.
The state tested 32 milk samples from stores in Alameda, San Joaquin and Sacramento counties, finding perchlorate in every one, according to agriculture department data given to EWG. Concentrations ranged from 1.5 parts per billion in an Alameda County sample to 10.6 ppb for one from Sacramento.
The average concentration was 5.8 ppb. The state public health goal is 6 ppb. The U.S. EPA's "provisional daily safe dose" puts the limit at 1 ppb.
cb>"The new evidence certainly, we think, is strong reason to take a second look at that public health goal and see if it adequately reflects the variety of exposures the public is getting," said Bill Walker, the Environmental Working Group's West Coast vice president.