EPA Will Regulate Levels of Perchlorate in Drinking Water
The Washington Post
3 February 2011
By Brian Vastag
WASHINGTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency reversed Bush
administration drinking water policies Wednesday, announcing that it
will regulate perchlorate, a component of rocket fuel, and 16 other
chemicals, called volatile organic compounds, that can cause cancer at
high enough doses.
The perchlorate decision "is about protecting the health of between 5
[million] and 17 million Americans that are exposed to perchlorate in
the water they drink," said EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson in remarks
to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
In a statement, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who has sought to
regulate perchlorate since 2002, said, "I will do everything I can to
make sure this new protection moves forward."
The EPA said it would take an additional two years to propose a
perchlorate regulation, a pace that angered some environment groups.
"The science is already out there," said Jennifer Sass, a scientist
with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy
group. "Anything that anybody needed to say about this process is
already done."
The EPA has already collected 39,000 public comments regarding
perchlorate regulations.
In October 2008, the Bush administration bucked the advice of its own
EPA scientists and announced that it would not regulate perchlorate. A
Washington Post investigation at the time found that officials from the
Bush administration heavily edited a key EPA report to play down the
risks of the chemical.
A Government Accountability Office report also found that the
Department of Defense -- which, along with NASA, is a heavy user of
perchlorate -- sought to derail any perchlorate standards.
Perchlorate occurs naturally in very small amounts and is also used in
rocket fuel, explosives and fireworks. A 2010 Government Accountability
Office study reported perchlorate contamination at 70 percent of
Department of Defense facilities. A 2006 Food and Drug Administration
study also found perchlorate in 74 percent of a wide range of food
items it tested.
"A very long period of bad public policy was reversed today," said Mae
Wu, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
"We're both thrilled and relieved," said Renee Sharp, a scientist with
the Environmental Working Group, whose investigations have found
perchlorate in California groundwater and vegetables.
A group funded by rocket manufacturers, the Perchlorate Information
Bureau, objected to the decision, writing in a statement that "a
national perchlorate standard is not needed and would not provide a
meaningful public health benefit."
Studies of perchlorate show that the chemical can disrupt the thyroid,
a master gland essential for growth and development. That means that
fetuses are at highest risk for perchlorate damage, said Lynn Goldman,
dean of the George Washington University School of Public Health.
The battle over perchlorate now turns on the acceptable drinking water
concentration that the EPA will set under the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Environmental groups Wednesday called upon the EPA to set a standard of
one part per billion, the same concentration that California adopted
last month as a "public health goal," a strong step toward reducing the
state's current standard of six parts per billion. The only other state
to adopt a perchlorate drinking water standard, Massachusetts, sets a
limit of two parts per billion.
A 2010 study of 500,000 California newborns reported disrupted thyroid
function in infants whose mothers had been exposed to drinking water
with at least five parts per billion perchlorate. The study did not
assess effects at concentrations lower than that.
In a separate EPA decision, Ms. Jackson said the agency was moving
forward with its master drinking water safety strategy announced last
year, by regulating as a group 16 cancer-causing chemicals called
volatile organic compounds.