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In late February,
scientists revealed that perchlorate—a toxic component of rocket
fuel —contaminates U.S. women’s breastmilk at high levels.
The most significant study of perchlorate in human breast milk to
date, from Texas Tech University’s Institute of Environmental
and Human Health, found at least trace amounts in the milk of all
36 nursing women’s samples studied, which included women from
California.
I am struck
by how clearly our work is cut out for us. We need to look no further
than the evidence of perchlorate in the milk of nursing mothers
to see that one policy change will make a world of difference to
countless generations of future Californians. There is a clear choice.
Perchlorate
is such a concern because it harms the thyroid gland. During pregnancy
and infancy, this damage can lead to irreparable harm to the developing
brain, resulting in lowered IQ and other learning disabilities.
The other disturbing
element of this new study is the likely source of the perchlorate
in the women sampled: their food. We have long known that perchlorate
has contaminated hundreds of drinking water sources across California
and the lower part of the Colorado River—a drinking water source
for millions of Southern Californians. Now, according to United
States Food and Drug Administration tests, not only are people drinking
perchlorate, they are ingesting it in the food they eat—food
that presumably has been watered with perchlorate-laden irrigation
water.
Moving up the
chain one more link, we quickly get to the real source of perchlorate
in our bodies: the aerospace industry. A multi-billion dollar industry,
these companies are responsible for poisoning the water we drink
and that grows our food. They have been careless, allowing perchlorate
to seep into the water table while storing and disposing of rocket
fuel. And they have been shameless, fighting communities’ efforts
to seek redress for closed wells and increased water costs. But
they have reached a new low. The information revealed by this new
study is shocking. A new mother eats food irrigated with perchlorate-tainted
water; she nurses her baby; she passes on so much perchlorate that
within one month of life, that newborn likely will exceed the government’s
recommended safe level—and the level that already has been
linked to brain impairments in other studies. And yet the aerospace
industry wants to set the level at more than 200 parts per billion—based
on what they say might be “safe” for adult men who weigh
upward of 150 pounds. We cannot let this happen.
The aerospace
industry must be held to account. The State of California must set
a cleanup limit for perchlorate in drinking water that requires
polluters to clean up fully every last drop of perchlorate-contaminated
water in California. Local communities should not pay for one cent
of the clean-up costs, or for the costs of importing clean water
when their local wells are too poisoned to drink from. We at Environment
California doggedly will pursue a just result for current Californians—and
all those who are yet to come (see page 1 for more on what we are
doing to solve this problem).
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