[CPEO-MEF] EPA decision on perchlorate under fire

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SAN ANGELO STANDARD TIMES
EPA decision on perchlorate under fire
By JOAN LOWY
July 15, 2003

The Environmental Protection Agency has decided not to regulate
perchlorate, a key ingredient in rocket fuel that has been found in the
drinking water of 20 million Americans at potentially unsafe levels.

The decision means that it could be a decade or more before the EPA
issues a safety standard for perchlorate, a chemical that studies show
interferes with normal thyroid function and may cause cancer. The
chemical persists indefinitely in the environment.

The agency has also decided not to set a safety standard for certain
byproducts of chlorine and other chemicals used to disinfect drinking
water that have been linked in numerous studies to birth defects and
miscarriages.

Instead, EPA officials decided to leave it up to each state to set
safety standards for the byproducts, which are found in the drinking
water of 250 million Americans.

The decisions were buried at the bottom of a nine-paragraph press
statement the agency released quietly late Friday afternoon and which
did not attract the attention of environmentalists and public health
advocates until Tuesday.

"This is nothing less than a sneak attack on America's drinking water
safety," said Erik Olson of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a
national environmental group. "These are major regulatory decisions that
they essentially were trying to hide from the American public."

This article can be viewed at:
http://www.gosanangelo.com/sast/news_national/article/0,1897,SAST_4957_2111618,00.html

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