PERCHLORATE

US: Arms Factories Pollute Drinking Water … by Peter Waldman, Wall Street Journal … December 16th, 2002 … Rancho Cordova, California -- For years, Greg and Doris Voetsch felt they were living a suburban dream here on the banks of the American River. Just 15 miles from downtown Sacramento, they raised four kids on homegrown cherries, pears, cucumbers and string beans, along with salmon and rainbow trout caught in the Sierra-fed waters flowing just beyond their back door. Mr. Voetsch, a landscaper, used tobacco juice, instead of pesticides, to keep the aphids at bay. Snow-melt was their air-conditioning, cooling the hot summer breezes. The cost of living was "almost nothing," Mr. Voetsch says. But trouble seeped into their paradise. In 1983, 13 years after the family moved here, surgeons removed two tumors, each of a different type of cancer, from Mr. Voetsch's thyroid gland. Five years ago, the Voetsches learned that the home they bought in 1970 lies on the edge of a so-called plume of underground water polluted with waste from a nearby missile factory. Among the chemicals found in local drinking wells is perchlorate, the main ingredient of solid rocket fuel and a known toxin. The Voetsches believe it was in their water and, they suspect, their garden soil. "We lived off the land and never thought twice about it," Mr. Voetsch says. In the human body, perchlorate affects production of thyroid hormones -- a phenomenon that the Environmental Protection Agency says can cause thyroid ailments such as Graves' disease and cancer in adults. Fetuses and newborns, the EPA says, are at even greater risk, susceptible to neurological and other developmental damage. For decades, millions of Americans have been unknowingly exposed to perchlorate through their local water supplies. No one denies that the chemical is toxic. But the level at which it becomes dangerous in drinking water is the subject of a fierce debate that pits the EPA against the Pentagon and its defense-industry allies. As a result, the U.S. is still years away from establishing a nationally enforced standard, and until it does so, a poisonous chemical lingers in the environment in amounts that could still be causing the slow spread of serious disease on a large scale. To date, the EPA has identified 75 perchlorate releases in 22 states, including Arizona, Texas, Nebraska, Iowa, New York, Maryland and Massachusetts, as well as California. The Colorado River, the main water source for about 15 million homes across the Southwest, contains perchlorate at roughly seven parts per billion -- seven times the level that the EPA's National Center for Environmental Assessment says is safe. Defense-industry dumping is suspected in nearly all these cases, though perchlorate has also been linked to fireworks and other explosives, automobile airbags and Chilean fertilizers, some of which may have been used near the Voetsches' home. The EPA says it will take hundreds of years and cost several billion dollars to clean up the known plumes.

Perchlorate - if the name rings a bell it just might be because it’s in our drinking water. ADEQ is aware as is Motorola and Arizona American Water Company (the giant multinational for profit water purveyor) and the City of Phoenix, Maricopa County Environmental Health, everyone except you…?

Perchlorate – was released during the fiery explosion of the PEPCON plant in Las Vegas in May 1988, leaking unknown quantities into Lake Mead and the Colorado River the primary source of water for metro Arizona

Perchlorate – one of thousands of chemicals “we” permit industry and government regulators to play the shell game with us on the long term debilitating health implications to mankind and our biosphere.

Perchlorate – another ingredient “for-profit-corporations” have learned to unleash their lap dogs from academia to challenge the science.

If “we” want the truth, it is really quite simple, just follow where the money leads and along the way connect the dots.