The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has released data showing potentially unhealthy levels of a chemical used to manufacture explosives in more than 90 percent of the milk and lettuce sampled nationally, including milk sold in Maryland.
Perchlorate - an ingredient in solid rocket fuel, bombs, gunpowder, fireworks and highway flares - is being studied by the FDA because of questions about whether it is contaminating food and water supplies, according to a preliminary agency report released this week.
"At this point, until more is known about health effects of perchlorate and its occurrence in foods, the FDA is ... not recommending that consumers alter their diets," said Kim Rawlings, a spokeswoman for the agency. "But the FDA now intends to expand its perchlorate survey, to include additional food types."
The chemical is receiving increased scrutiny nationally because it seeps from buried explosives at military bases, and from dumping areas near rocket launching pads, into water supplies that are used to irrigate lettuce sold to consumers and alfalfa fed to dairy cows, said Bill Walker, a vice president of the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit organization that has been studying the pollutant for about five years.
Perchlorate can cause mental retardation and lower IQs in children and attack the thyroid glands, hurting their ability to make hormones necessary for growth and development, according to the organization. It publicized the FDA findings yesterday, after they were posted on the FDA's Web site Monday.
"This new data clearly shows that perchlorate is clearly a nationwide problem, and it needs a national solution," Walker said. "The government needs to spend a lot of funds to clean up this pollutant, because the defense industry and NASA are responsible for this, along with the defense contractors."
Walker said perchlorate pollution has shut down dozens of drinking wells in more than 20 states.
The city of Aberdeen closed four municipal wells in April 2003 after perchlorate escaped into the water supply from the Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground, where explosives have been tested for decades.
But the FDA cautioned yesterday that the results released this week are preliminary and that it is conducting more research to determine the health effects of the chemical and its prevalence in food.
The FDA survey of 232 samples of milk and lettuce in 15 states was conducted from December 2003 through Aug. 19, 2004, said Rawlings.
