Petrochlorate
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Perchlorate, the explosive ingredient in solid rocket fuel, has leaked from military bases and defense and aerospace contractors' plants in at least 22 states, is contaminating drinking water, dairy milk, produce and many other foods and plants affecting millions of Americans.
Effect On Thyroid
In the past year, CDC scientists have found that a significant number of women are at risk of thyroid hormone depression from perchlorate exposure. Perchlorate impairs the thyroid’s ability to take up iodide and produce hormones critical to proper fetal and infant brain development. Further, studies show that breast milk may have even more worrisome levels of perchlorate.
The EPA's proposed safe exposure level for the rocket fuel contaminant perchlorate is not protective of public health. In the past year, CDC scientists have found that a significant number of women are at risk of thyroid hormone depression from perchlorate exposure.1
Jet Fuel Lettuce
In a front-page story on Dec. 16, 2002, The Wall Street Journal reported that “tests on several vegetable samples from a perchlorate-contaminated farm in Redlands found the plants concentrated perchlorate from local irrigation water by an average factor of 65, according to calculations by Renee Sharp of the Environmental Working Group in Oakland, Calif., one of the few nonprofit groups focused on perchlorate contamination. That means the perchlorate dose in the vegetables was 65 times the amount in the water.” Sharp told the Journal: “If people are eating it, on top of drinking it, the EPA will have to lower its proposed drinking-water standard substantially.”
In a 1999 study, the EPA’s National Environmental Research Lab grew lettuce seedlings in perchlorate-contaminated water and found that “perchlorate was accumulated in the leaves to significant levels” — by factors of 100 times or more.2 The tests showed that lettuce was able to take up and store 95 percent of the perchlorate in the water. This extraordinarily high rate of bioaccumulation would mean that lettuce grown in water with even low levels of perchlorate could deliver large doses of the toxin to consumers — doses far higher than the EPA’s provisional drinking water standard.
Another 1999 lab study found that a variety of native (non-crop) plants took up perchlorate from water, a potential biological aid to remediating s oil and water contaminated by the chemical.3 Incredibly, despite the troubling results of these studies and the absence of data on perchlorate in U.S. or imported produce, the EPA concluded that “the available information ... suggests that foods do not contribute to” perchlorate accumulation in the human body.4
According to EWG’s analysis, if a pregnant woman were to eat a typical serving of vegetables with the contamination level found at Lucky Farms, she would get a dose of rocket fuel more than 100 times higher than the EPA considers safe in a liter of drinking water.5
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One sample of “leafy vegetables” contained 386 micrograms of perchlorate per one-cup serving, and the average amount of perchlorate in the vegetable samples was 146 micrograms per two-ounce serving.
The CDC/BU (Boston University) study,6 which examined breast milk from 49 Boston area women, found that the average breast fed infant in this study is being exposed to more than double the dose of perchlorate that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers safe; highly exposed babies are ingesting up to 10 times this amount. In a related 2006 study, the CDC found perchlorate in the urine of every one of 2,820 people tested, suggesting that food is a key route of exposure in addition to drinking water.7 Applying the results of the CDC study to the California population, EWG estimates that at exposure to 5 ppb of perchlorate in drinking water, 1 in 10 California women of childbearing age with low iodine intake would be diagnosed as sub-clinically hypothyroid and require medical treatment when pregnant to protect themselves and their babies.8
Go Organic
This is another reason why we need to be aware of toxicity and organic produce. It seems most, if not all, toxins in the environment, cause a suppression of the thyroid hormones. Eat as much organic as you can. Stay up-to-date with my website and other websites that highlight environmental toxicity.
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By reading the information you have provided and that from the studies, it seems that perchlorate is in the water and that plants will then take up the ...
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