State Plans to Regulate Perchlorate

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California
LA TIMES
State Plans to Regulate Perchlorate
By Miguel Bustillo
March 11, 2004

In a rebuff to the Pentagon, California weighs limits on the pollutant.
Some call the pending guidelines lax.

Despite opposition from the Pentagon, the Schwarzenegger administration
is planning to issue safety guidelines Friday for ammonium perchlorate,
a toxic ingredient of rocket fuel, munitions and fireworks that has
tainted drinking water supplies in 29 states.

The pending guidelines would make California the first state in the
nation to regulate perchlorate. The federal government has yet to act.

Environmentalists, however, have criticized California's pending
standards as being too lenient.

Studies of laboratory rats have shown that even tiny doses of
perchlorate can affect the thyroid's production of hormones that are
critical to early childhood development, which suggests that the
pollutant could be particularly threatening to pregnant women and young
children. However, the level at which perchlorate poses a danger to
human beings remains unclear.

The California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, which
conducts research into potentially harmful pollutants, has called for a
health goal of 6 parts per billion for perchlorate, according to several
officials in the California Environmental Protection Agency.

That figure -- equivalent to roughly six drops of water in a typical home
swimming pool -- would become the basis for a final regulation by the
California Department of Health Services limiting how much of the
chemical can remain in drinking water supplies.

Military contractors and the Pentagon, whose Cold War-era activities are
responsible for most of the perchlorate pollution, have heavily lobbied
the Schwarzenegger administration to delay setting a standard. Cleaning
it up could cost them billions.

Environmental groups are also unhappy, contending that the governor who
touted his green credentials during last year's recall campaign appears
to have watered down the health goal at the last minute.

"It sure looks like bending in the direction of industry, and that is
not what we were promised," said Bill Magavern, a Sacramento lobbyist
for the Sierra Club.

This article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-perc11mar11,1,4570182.story?coll=la-home-local

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