How much perchlorate is too much in our drinking water?

That’s a question the EPA is dodging, according to the watchdog Environmental Working Group. (See previous post.) This rocket fuel has been contaminating our waters since Cold War rocket launches and is “a potent thyroid toxin that may affect fetal and infant brain development,” according to the EWG article.

The EPA has been shielding defense contractors from the potential hundred-million-dollar cost of cleaning our waters, said the EWG, and continued to do so when the EPA last fall decided not to regulate perchlorate as a water pollutant.

In response to concerns expressed by scientists, the EPA in January issued a “health advisory” on perchlorate and asked for review of the issue from the National Academy of Sciences. Meanwhile, infants are getting too much perchlorate, from both the powdered formula and from the water used to mix it.  The perchlorate from the powdered formula comes from polluted water drunk by the cows, presumably.

The CDC study published in March “said that reconstituting cow’s milk/lactose formula with water contaminated with perchlorate at just 4 parts per billion (ppb) would cause 54 percent of the infants consuming the mix to exceed the so-called ’safe’ dose set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),” said the EWG. ” Many scientists contend that the EPA ’safe’ level is too high to protect public health.”

While all this politicking is going on, I am doing something to protect my family from pollutants: I got a triple-carbon filter for my tap water from Multi-Pure, the leading brand. I’m very happy with my durable unit. Check out a home water filter today!