Senators call for study of perchlorate in water tables

Tuesday, Sept. 9, 1997 | 10:39 a.m.

Senators from the two states want the National Institutes of Health to study the question.

"Water is a resource more precious than gold in the West, especially drinking water," Sen. Harry Reid D-Nev., said Monday night. He teamed up with Sen. Barbara Boxer D-Calif., to amend the Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations bill to include a NIH study on how perchlorate affects public health.

The amendment was adopted by the Senate.

The growing concern follows discovery of high levels of perchlorate in Lake Mead, east of Las Vegas, and the Colorado River system. Both are a source of drinking water for Southern Nevada and California residents.

There is "a serious lack of information about how this compound affects the health of those who are exposed to it and how we could clean it up," Reid said.

The Reid-Boxer amendment directs the NIH to conduct a study of the health risks of perchlorate with a special emphasis on vulnerable groups like seniors, children and pregnant women.

"The only scientific studies that we have right now on perchlorate come out of the California Department of Health Services, Reid said. "We don't know enough about how this substance affects humans. It is believed that seniors, pregnant women and children are especially susceptible to it, due to its effect on the thyroid gland."

In the House, Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., has proposed spending $2 million on perchlorate cleanup technology.

Currently, no federal standard exists for safe levels of perchlorate in drinking water, but California has set 18 parts per billion as the level to trigger remedial action. Eighteen drinking supply wells that exceeded the level have been closed.

The primary health concern related to perchlorate is that it may interfere with the thyroid gland's ability to use iodine to produce hormones. In a hormone-deficient condition, metabolism, growth and development can be affected, California health officials have said.

Last month, water samples collected from the Las Vegas Wash confirmed that perchlorate - a component of the rocket-fuel oxidizer, ammonium perchlorate - had reached levels between 1,050 and 1,680 parts per billion upstream of Lake Mead's North Shore Road Bridge. The wash discharges into Lake Mead about six miles upstream of Southern Nevada's drinking supply intakes, where the levels were diluted to 11 parts per billion. The same level has been found in treated drinking water delivered to the Las Vegas Valley.

Last week, scientists for the Nevada Environmental Protection Division investigating the problem detected relatively high levels of perchlorate in a monitoring well at the Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp. plant in the BMI complex. The complex sits on an island of Clark County land surrounded by Henderson.

The high perchlorate level - 3.7 million parts per billion - was found in one of 47 monitoring wells being tested. So far, samples from 10 wells have contained perchlorate.

Kerr-McGee and the old Pacific Engineering plant that was operated by American Pacific Corp. near Henderson were the only U.S. producers of ammonium perchlorate.

American Pacific now produces the product at a plant outside of Cedar City, Utah, because their Henderson facility was destroyed by a series of explosions in 1988.

Kerr-McGee continues to produce the compound at its BMI plant near Henderson. The company stores 5,000 tons of ammonium perchlorate at its Apex facility, 17 miles northeast of Las Vegas.