Tuesday, January 25, 2005

 

PERCHLORATE PARANOIA PERCOLATING IN PASADENA: Misperceiving "Malign Intent"

By Wayne Lusvardi

Newspaper columns in Southern California newspapers are bubbling with a new paranoia from those on the left side of the political spectrum about the recently released new safety guidelines for perchlorate in drinking water recommended by the National Academy of Sciences. The suspicion is that the Bush administration has somehow put its thumb on the prestigious National Academy, and like allegedly rigged elections and deceitful wars, is jeopardizing children's health by loosening the former EPA standard of 1 part per billion to 20 parts per billion of perchlorate in drinking water.

Letter writer Dr. Michael Storrie-Lombardi, M.D., in the Jan. 18 issue of the Pasadena Star News writes:

"Please encourage L.A. County and the governor to implement a higher set of
water quality standards for our children's drinking water in spite of the federal
government's malign intent."

South Pasadena resident Megeen McLaughlin writes in the Jan. 22 issue of the Star News:

"As a spiritual counselor, mother, sister, and friend, I speak with all too many
mothers who are tormented by the suffering of their children from learning
disabilities, attention deficit disorder, and other maladies. To think that these
afflictions may be linked to drinking water contaminated by perchlorate (a
component of rocket fuel) is all the more disturbing."

The editorial column of the Pasadena Weekly entitled "More Watered Down Answers" states:

"We've waited this long for the federal government to finally take some action -
and this is what they've concluded! Waiting a little while longer - at least until
we can find a handful of honorable people who haven't been morally contaminated
by greed and money to set standards affecting our very lives - isn't going to make
that much of a difference to anyone, except perhaps the people who have done
all the polluting and must now clean it up."

It is little wonder that the center of all this paranoia percolating to the surface is in the City of Pasadena, which is the original "home" of perchlorate. Engineer-scientist John Parsons reportedly first used perchlorate as a rocket fuel catalyst in the 1940's at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is located in Pasadena. Pasadena is an "all blue" city, with all its elected city officials and state and federal legislators from the Democratic Party.

Water agencies in Rancho Cordova, Pasadena, Redlands, Azusa, Rialto, Santa Clarita, Seal Beach have shut down groundwater wells and are facing huge cleanup costs to remove perchlorate from contaminated water supplies, all without any clear health benefits. Perchlorate has been detected in about 350 water wells in some 90 private and public water systems in California, about 90% of these in Southern California. Most affected wells contain less than 10 parts per billion (ppb) of perchlorate. Most of these Perchlorate "plumes" (subsurface ponds) are in proximity to World War II rocket fuel testing grounds or manufacturing plants and explosive or fireworks plants. But are all the water well shutdowns and paranoia about the new perchlorate guidelines justified or is it irrational?

Puncturing Bubbles of Perchlorate Science

The danger from perchlorate, dubbed "powdered oxygen," a salt-like substance used to provide oxygen so solid rocket fuel can burn, is not that it is poisonous or causes cancer, but that it is an endocrine gland disrupter. The fear is that the perchlorate molecule attaches to a protein that carries essential iodine to the thyroid gland. By taking the place of iodine, perchlorate is thought to result in stunted growth and development of infants or unborn children who are dependent on their mother's thyroid gland production.

All urban treated water supplies contain a form of chlorine, an ingredient in perchlorate, and ammonia which are the most effective disinfectants against deadly diseases. The molecular structure of chlorine in drinking water is not the same as in perchlorate. However, as microbiologist Raymond Gabler points out in his book Is Your Water Safe to Drink? chlorination of drinking water is a two-edged sword because it creates carcinogens in water that are more of a potential health hazard than perchlorate. For example, the water disinfectant chloramine (chlorine and ammonia) kills gold fish in a home aquarium but perchlorate does not.

The fear of perchlorate is not totally unfounded as up to the 1960's very high doses of potassium perchlorates were once used to treat thyroid conditions such as Graves disease - hyperthyroidism or too much thyroid hormone. The current treatment for hyperthyroidism is radiation treatment. The incidence of thyroid disorders in pregnancy is reported as 0.5% to 2%.

The problem with the fear of perchlorate, according to many independent university toxicologists, is that other natural substances in the human diet have the same or greater effect as perchlorate. Thiocyanates (a salt) can inhibit iodine production in the thyroid and are found in milk, broccoli, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts. A 3.5 ounce serving of Brussels sprouts has the same effect as eating about 8,000 ppb's perchlorate, 8-ounces of milk not laced with perchlorate has the same effect of about 16 to 80 ppb's of perchlorate, and even drinking water that meets the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) standard for nitrates equates to about 90 parts per billion of perchlorate. U.C. Riverside toxicologist Bob Krieger states that the perchlorate risk is poorly understood and amounts to no more of a danger than eating Brussels sprouts (see here). Moreover, it has now come to light that soybeans, used in tofu and soymilk, are another natural glandular disrupter similar to perchlorate.

There are even more disturbing problems with mandating costly cleanups of perchlorate from groundwater supplies.

The vast majority of the population in Southern California has for some 50-years been exposed to standard perchlorate levels (6 ppb) from Colorado River water without any documented widespread increase in hormonal abnormalities.

Secondly, casting aside the questionable methodologies of experimental studies with small sample populations, it would seem that the most reliable study of the health effects of perchlorate was that conducted on nearly 10,000 children from three cities in Chile where naturally occurring nitrate deposits make it the only place in the world where the effects of natural perchlorate have been measured for decades. Perchlorate is found in the groundwater in the Atacam Desert of Chile at about 120 parts per billion and dilutes into groundwater at 7 parts per billion, or about the same level as occurs in the Colorado River Aqueduct. Yet no effects on thyroid health among infants and children have ever been found beyond typical levels (J. Occup. Med. 2004, Jun: 46(6): 516-7).

The claim that perchlorate has entered the food chain and poses a health hazard in milk has also been proven to be bogus. As pointed out by Dr. Brahama Sharma, PhD, Fellow Royal Society of Chemists, it is chemically impossible for perchlorate to pose a health hazard in milk. Perchlorate (one atom of chlorine and four atoms of oxygen) is an ion which is negatively charged. Milk is composed of compounds of carbon, such as carbohydrates like lactose, which are abundant in milk and positively charged (Brahama D. Sharma, "Perchlorate Scare," Letter to Star News circa July 4, 2004). Thus, lactose in milk neutralizes perchlorate. In fact, one method of treating perchlorate contamination is by carbohydrate injection, which uses molasses or corn syrup as a neutralizer. (see here).

Dr. Michael Payne, a toxicologist at U.C. Davis, has stated: "Perchlorate definitely blocks (thyroid function) at high levels. But at these miniscule levels, any damage is theoretical. In fact, two studies conducted with populations' drinking water with much higher perchlorate levels than (those found in California milk) showed no adverse affects" ("Rocket Fuel Found in California Milk," SF Chronicle, June 22, 2004).

The dose makes the poison

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand the major principle of health science in determining if it is harmful - "the dosage makes the poison." Anything can be harmful, including air or pure water, depending on its concentration, length of exposure, and whether it can target a specific organ of the human body, such as the thyroid gland. A sleeping pill, beer, aspirin and many other products consumed daily contain substances which are likely to pose much more of a health risk than perchlorate. Drinking more than 4 to 5 beers per day for pregnant women can mimic some of the same health problems for unborns and infants as do high doses of perchlorate, such as growth retardation in the fetus, deformed organs, and central nervous system dysfunction. (see here). Actual high consumption of alcohol is a greater danger to young children than hypothetical perchlorate exposures.

What the controversy is evidently all about is an infinitesimal amount of perchlorate --about one-sixth of a drop of water by my calculation -- spread out over all the water that is used by a typical family over a period of one year (162,925 gallons).

Former EPA epidemiologist Dr. Steven Lamm, PhD, has stated that doses of 1000 milligrams per day were once used for medicinal purposes compared to about 4 micrograms (four millionths of a gram) from water and food exposures (see here). Lamm states that environmental exposure to perchlorate equates to about 1/250,000th of the toxic dose.

On January 10, 2005, a committee of scientists from the National Academy of Sciences concluded that perchlorate is safe to drink at levels of 20 ppb's, which is twenty times higher than the previous standard established by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2002 of 1 ppb. The National Academy used a safety factor of ten, which means to play it safe they have intentionally set the safe exposure level at one tenth of the real exposure level (200 ppb's). In June 2004 a distinguished panel of scientists at the U.C. Irvine Urban Water Research Center issued a recommendation of 100 ppb's as safe (see here). U.C. Riverside toxicologist Robert Kreiger has concluded an adult could safely drink water containing as much as 220 parts per billion of perchlorate. The U.S. Department of Defense has recommended 200 ppb's as safe.

The suspicion that the Bush administration has perhaps influenced the National Academy of Sciences to compromise its health standards is not born out by the above data. The new National Academy standard of 20 ppb's is five times lower than the 100 ppb standard set by U.C. Irvine and ten times lower what many other independent toxicologists consider as safe.

Perchlorate safety levels are a tug-of-war for resources and prestige between many organizations. The Council on Water Quality has reliable health data on perchlorate but is criticized for accepting funds from industry. Likewise, the Environmental Working Group is a big advocate for the unrealistic removal of all perchlorate from drinking water, but receives funds from quasi-political organizations such as the Heinz Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and Merck Fund. The safety levels recommended by toxicologists in the University of California system seem the most reliable.

Regulatory agencies have set perchlorate safety levels far, far below that recommended by expert panels of scientists. Regulatory guidelines for water well shutdowns have not been set by science but by default at the smallest amount of perchlorate that can be measured (4 ppb); or the amount that is found in the Colorado River Aqueduct (6 ppb). Scientists and regulators not only disagree on the safe amount of perchlorate in drinking water but can't agree on a standard way to measure it. Regulatory agencies use a parts per billion measure while the new national guideline has shifted to a parts per body weight measure that is, to say the least, confusing for determining the safe amount in local water supplies.

As U.C. Riverside toxicologist Bob Krieger has stated: "If you want something to oppose, how can you do any better than the military and rocket fuel? We drive these standards down to low levels based on the naivet‚ of the public."

Straining out gnats while swallowing camels

Constructing new high tech perchlorate treatment plants at $15 to $25 million each, with annual operating costs of $500,000 to $5 million, for negligible health benefits might be more of an environmental crime than criminalizing and shaking down industries and taxpayers. The Defense Department may have to spend as much as $55 billion to clean up perchlorate in and around military bases.

U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer has introduced a "Right to Know" bill about perchlorate standards for communities. We can only hope that full disclosure will explain the miniscule relative health risks, the huge costs involved, and the lack of any yet proven health benefits. Moreover, the public should be informed that shutting down local "contaminated" water wells means having to rely on expensive Colorado River water which paradoxically has the same amount of perchlorate as contaminated water wells. We also need to know that we cannot rid perchlorate from our drinking water for 25 to 30 years through conventional pump and treat methods. As R. Allan Freeze, a former U.C. Berkeley engineering geologist has stated in his book The Environmental Pendulum: A Quest for Truth about Toxic Chemicals, Human Health, and Environmental Protection, the dirty little secret of Superfund cleanups is that if we turn off the pumps and walk away from such "money pits," not much would happen that would really matter as it may take forever to clean up most sites and the health benefits may be negligible.

Programs to help people suffering from cancer, AIDs, and other real health afflictions are facing funding cuts as public resource dollars are shifted to perchlorate removal projects that have only theoretical health benefits. Perchlorate safety standards literally strain out gnats while swallowing a camel (Matthew 12:24).

Scientists and policy makers apparently do not have definitive answers about what is a safe amount in drinking water. There is insufficient scientific data to prove or disprove that trace levels of perchlorate cause significant increases in birth defects or intellectual deficits to children. Given the questionable results from perchlorate clean ups, wouldn't it be more prudent to use less costly methods of perchlorate remediation such as containment, targeted removal of "hot spots," and use of bioremediation methods of treatment?

Facts and financial prudence not political paranoia, or self interest cloaking itself as the public interest, should inform our community's response to the risk of perchlorate in our drinking water.

(Author: Wayne Lusvardi is a Pasadena resident and a real estate economist who formerly worked for the Metro Water District of S. California. He has published articles on water, energy, and environmental impacts on real estate. He is active in the Libertarian Party. This article was anonymously reviewed by a doctor of medicine. Contact: wlusvardi@yahoo.com.)

Two of the articles to which the above is a reply can currently be found here and here



UPDATE

On January 30th, 2004, I received the following curious email from Mercury610@aol.com:

The letter by one Wayne Lusvardi(January 27) entitled "Eat More Perchlorate" has just come to my attention.

Mr. Luswardi states, in part, "Why has Dr. Brahama Sharma, Ph.D., Fellow Royal Society of Chemists, stated that it is chemically impossible for perchlorate (one atom of chlorine and four atoms of oxygen) to be harmful in milk because perchlorate is a negatively charged ion that is neutralized by positively charged lactose, a carbohydrate ingredient in milk?"

Please be advised that to attribute to a person a statement without citing the source is a cardinal sin in the realm of scientific discussion.

On top of that, the name of the person mentioned above is erroneous. The name without MI "D" and variation or abbreviation thereof is NOT SYNONYMOUS. The name of the society mentioned is incorrect.

The person never stated that " because perchlorate is a negatively charged ion that it is neutralized by positively charged lactose, a carbohydrate ingredient in milk?"
At no time was it implied or explicitly stated that lactose is positively charged? This is an outlandish misrepresentation. It is clear that Mr. Wayne Luswardi is abysmally ignorant of chemistry and misrepresents what was stated. An immediate retraction of the attribution must be made.

Yours sincerely,

BRAHAMA D. SHARMA, Ph.D.,C.Chem.,FRSC(life)
name without MI "D" and variation or abbreviation thereof is NOT SYNONYMOUS

US CITIZEN
P O BOX 1626, PISMO BEACH, CA 93448-1626
Tel/fax: 805-773-0342

I get the distinct impression that Dr. Sharma is something of a fruitcake. He appears to be greatly roiled by the fact that Wayne mentioned his middle initial only on the second occasion he was referred to.




SECOND UPDATE

The articles Wayne was replying to have now gone offline but he has re-posted them here

posted by JR 12:38 PM