Bush Trashing the Environment

[Xiahou]

Xiahou - surely you can see that it is more important to keep anything remotely poisonous out of drinking water? Anything beyond that is debatable, but water must remain clear.

Water is poisonous. We should probably ban it until we can determine the what, if any, levels are safe.

Perchlorate could use some form of monitoring, sure- but it's also a naturally occurring substance that has uses in medicine. EWG throwing around labels like "neurotoxin", just makes me roll my eyes. And I'm certainly glad that the EPA's initial guidance of 1ppb never made it into any sort of binding regulation. Where on earth did they get that? It's like they pulled it out of the air.

A new report by the National Academies' National Research Council on the health effects of perchlorate, a chemical that in high doses can decrease thyroid function in humans and that is present in many public drinking-water supplies, says daily ingestion of up to 0.0007 milligrams per kilogram of body weight can occur without adversely affecting the health of even the most sensitive populations. That amount is more than 20 times the "reference dose" proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in a recent draft risk assessment.

link