California Town Going Broke Partly Because Media Gets Story about Perchlorate Wrong

The Pasadena Pundit ^ | April 24, 2005 | Wayne Lusvardi

[WayneLusvardi]

California Town Going Broke Partly Because Media Gets Story about Perchlorate Wrong - Putting the environmental cart before the scienfitic horse Written by Wayne Lusvardi Saturday, April 24, 2005

Vector - In biology a vector is something, such as insects, that can spread disease. By extension, a vector could be someone who spreads a rumor or hoax: it could be anyone or anything that pollutes the information stream." --Alexandra Kitty, Don't Believe It! How Lies Become News (2005)

An April 23, 2005 story by Associated Press writer Erica Werner "Town's water tainted by perchlorate; 36 states eye problems" reports that the cost to cleanup up perchlorate from the groundwater in the city of Rialto, California, a former blue-collar town which once housed World War II munitions manufacturing plants, has ballooned to more than double the city's $40 million annual budget. The city has been compelled to hike water rates 65% and has sued the Defense Department and industrial polluters to recover its costs. If there is an epicenter for the politics of perchlorate it is the City of Rialto.

Perchorate does not cause cancer nor is it a poison. Perchlorate is a natural salt that was used in ancient Chinese fireworks and modern rocket fuels and munitions as a catalyst. Extremely high concentrations of perchlorate (like high concentrations of any substance including pure water itself) can pose a threat to unborn children and infants because it is suspected that it may interfere with iodine absorption in the thyroid gland leading to mental retardation. Very high concentrations (1,000 parts per billion) were once used to treat hyperthyroidism, which is now treated with radiation instead.

In response to the public fear about perchlorate fanned by environmental activists, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) initially set a safety standard of 1 part per billion in drinking water. The State of California initially set a safety standard of 6 parts per billion, which is the amount of perchlorate found in water from the Colorado River Aqueduct. In other words, the safety level was established at 6 ppb's in California not based on science but to prevent lawsuits against the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and other public water agencies which rely on imported water. The City of Rialto has had to set its own perchlorate standard at zero in order to protect its taxpayers from lawsuits from ambulance chasing law firms, which have posted websites soliciting people to come forward to sue the city and the Federal government for health maladies. So the threat of lawsuits, not science, has set the safety standard for perchlorate in California.

The paranoia about perchlorate has put the proverbial cart of environmental regulations before the horse of credible science however. The Associated Press story failed to report that earlier this year the National Academy of Science set a safety standard of 24.5 parts per billion and a prestigious panel of scientists from the University of California at Irvine have recently recommended a safety standard of 100 ppb's.

But science is being ignored due to the politicization of Proposition 65 in California which provides that any chemical identified as causing cancer or reproductive harm by any "authoritative body" can be the basis for litigation. In other words, government has set the safety standard for perchlorate in drinking water not on science but to protect itself from lawsuits while allowing lawsuits to proceed against business and industry. The preponderance of public water wells with perchlorate in California show a level of only 10 parts per billion. California Proposition 65 was originally meant to be a "right to know" law. However, what the public doesn't know is that the safety level for perchlorate is highly politicized and has very little to do with science and its regulation has no proven health benefits (see: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0817939326/qid=1114302422/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-5052461-4883018?v=glance&s=books).

The public has a "right to know" that a recent study by Texas Tech University researchers found that perchlorate in human breast milk is not related with drinking water that mothers are consuming and that there is no definitive correlation between lack of iodine and higher levels of perchlorate (see: http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/jcen?esthag/asap/html/es048118t.html).

Unfortunately, the breast milk samples for this study were apparently provided by environmental and child welfare activists. The Environmental Working Group, an environmental advocacy organization funded by the Theresa Heinz (Kerry) Family Fund may have been involved in providing breast milk samples and in interpreting the complex scientific findings to the media. This raises the question of whether the study was based on a biased sample and whether its findings were distorted in the media by activist science media disseminators (see related article at ChronWatch - http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=13974).

The implication of this new research is that perchlorate in urban drinking water supplies may follow alar, red dye #2, cyclamates and saccharin, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB's) in farmed salmon, trace levels of the pesticide aminotriazole in cranberries, and acrylamide as a bogus health scare. Further recent research at Texas Tech University preliminarily corroborates that perchlorate comes from food, not drinking water (http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/jafcau/2005/53/i02/abs/jf0493021.html).

Because the City of Rialto is no longer an agricultural center, the likelihood that perchlorate in drinking water is presenting a health threat is thus now questionable. Moreover, perchlorate has now been found to occur naturally in rock deposits (up to 3,741,000 ppbs - see U.S.G.S. Open File Report 03-314).

Another absurdity is that the City of Rialto has shut down water wells to comply with its zero perchlorate standard and has shifted to more expensive wholesale water from the Colorado River Aqueduct which has 6 ppbs of perchlorate! But, of course, this is "government" contaminated water, not industry contaminated water, so it is deemed safe (from lawsuits) by public officials.

Unfortunately, the mainstream media has become nothing more than a "vector" of disinformation about the misunderstood health issue of perchlorate in drinking water supplies.

About the Writer: About the author: Wayne Lusvardi worked for 20 years for the Metro Water District of So. Cal. and lives in Pasadena.

[Mind-numbed Robot]

Thanks for the information. You know as well as I that the environmental whackos and their media pimps are more interested in crippling coorporate America than they are in anyone's health. Examples like this are just further proof.

[Ramonan]

Rialto is part of megalopolis-LosAngelesPomonaUplandOntarioSanBernardino
Bet most of the people there do not know,do not care about
perchlorate

[Publius6961]

Let the nose into the tent and the rest is history.
This is the exact same hysterical approach to second hand smoke.
Turn a bunch of lawyers and neurotics loose with minimal science information and nothing would be permissible.

Instruments have advanced in sensitivity to the point that the ability to obtain data has outstripped the average human brain from processing the information.

And stupid laws result, benefiting no one.

[Old Professer]

They have only been able to measure it in single PPB since 1997; before that it didn't even exist as a recognized hazard, but what would a crusade be without a demon?

[ken21]

drive thru' rialto sometime!