Clean Water Program Reports

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Executive Summary

We write on behalf of the Environmental Working Group, NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), Environment California, Clean Water Action, the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, the Center for Public Environmental Oversight, Physicians for Social Responsibility - Los Angeles, the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water, and Latino Issues Forum, as well as our organizations' more than one million members and activists, to petition your Office to immediately intitiate a review of the public health goal (PHG) for perchlorate and to amend that PHG in light of new scientific data.

Two factors justify urgent review of the perchlorate Public Health Goal at this time, in advance of the March 2009 statutory deadline. 

First, recent studies, including one published in October 2006 by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), demonstrate that exposure to perchlorate in drinking water at concentrations below 6 parts per billion poses "a significant risk to health," including to "subgroups that comprise a meaningful protion of the general pollution." The CDC study, for example, documented anti-thyroid effects in a large population of women exposed to perchlorate at concentrations far lower than levels previously shown to have such effects.  These rsulting, significant risks are of particular concern in light of emerging data that shows that the "additive effect of exposure to 'perchlorate' in food' is higher than previously understood.  Taking some of this new information into account, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MADEP) in June 2006 finalized a maximum contaminant level (MCL) and cleanup standard of 2 parts per billion.  The subsequent publication of the CDC study justifies promulgation of an even more protective PHG.

Second, the Department of Health Services is presently engaged in a rulemaking to establish California's MCL for perchlorate in drinking water.  The California Safe Drinking Water Act not only permits, but requires, the Department to promulgate an MCL below 6 parts per billion if the lower MCL is both 'feasible' and necessary to 'avoid known or anticipated adverse effects on public health with an adequate margine of safety."  However, the Department's establishment of an MCL below the PHG may cause confusion among some members of the public or even generate oposition among interests that do not support the more protective, scientifically basaed MCL.  For these reasons, DHS may be reluctant to establish an MCL lower than the PHG, notwithstanding the new sicenc and the nondiscretionary standards of the Health and Safety Code.

We appreciate your consideration of this petition and look forward to a prompt response.  A more detailed analysis follows and we request that the enclosed the referenced studies and date, as well as these comments, be included in the administrative record.  Please do not hesitate to contact us should you have any questions.