THE CALIFORNIA PERCHLORATE NONSENSE AGAIN

The Greenies' own study contradicts them .... not that you would ever guess from the publicity

Spin: Perchlorate found in human breast milk
Unspin: Study finds perchlorate in breast milk NOT from drinking water!

Once again a major environmental health study gets top billing in the headlines of the San Francisco Chronicle only to get the story all backwards. The headline "Rocket fuel contaminant found in women's breast milk" (Feb. 23) merely regurgitates press releases from politicians and environmental activists posing as scientists and fails to tell the true story behind the recent report that perchlorate was found for the first time in human breast milk. So how did this story get spun in the media as just the opposite of what the study found?

Perchlorate does not cause cancer nor is it a poison. Perchlorate, a salt, was used in ancient Chinese fireworks and modern day rocket fuel as a catalyst or oxygenating agent. Potassium perchlorate in very high concentrations (1,000 parts per billion or ppb) was once used to treat thyroid gland disorders, which are now treated with radiation. The fear is that perchlorate inhibits iodine from the thyroid gland resulting in mental retardation in infants and children. But why does the public fear infinitesimally small doses of perchlorate in drinking water when it now appears, as the Texas Tech study states, that "a comparable control population with no perchlorate exposure may be mythical?" One reason is that "all reality is media reality," as one of the characters states in Michael Crichton's new environmental novel State of Fear. ..

.... curiously no mention is made in any of the newspaper articles of the two major findings of the study (quote): (1) "perchlorate in breast milk does not appear to be well-correlated with the water the respective mothers are consuming;" and (2) "If we take all the available data, there is no meaningful correlation between the perchlorate and iodide levels in breast milk." The researchers further hypothesized that perchlorate consumption comes primarily from food rather than from water! Moreover, perchlorate has been mysteriously found in Massachusetts, Texas, and New Mexico in places not associated with rocket testing, military bases, or munitions or fireworks plants and can occur in high concentrations (up to 3,741,000 ppbs) in natural rock deposits (see U.S.G.S. Open-File Report 03-314).

In other words, despite that the Pentagon may spend up to $165 billion to clean up perchlorate from contaminated drinking water supplies (GAO), and many local water agencies have been nearly financially insolvent due to perchlorate clean up costs, there is no evidence in a sample of mothers with traces of perchlorate in their breast milk that it came from the water they were drinking. Other recent studies have tentatively suggested the same. This startling finding should have been the headline pasted across the newspapers rather than "perchlorate found in breast milk."

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THOSE INCONVENIENT FACTS

As we all prepare to celebrate Earth Day on April 22, let us hearken for a moment to Steven Hayward, who is one of nature's rare creatures -- two parts scholar, one part troublemaker. As author of well-regarded biographies of both Ronald Reagan and Winston Churchill, Hayward is a man always worth hearkening to, even if, like me, you aren't completely sure what hearken means. I want you to hearken to Hayward because many people who should be, aren't. Hearkening, I mean.

In addition to his work in historical scholarship, Hayward does research in environmental law under the auspices of the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco. For several years now he has been releasing an annual Index of Leading Environmental Indicators. It's his own way of celebrating Earth Day. And sure enough, for several years now, the leading lights of the environmental movement have been pretending Hayward and his index don't exist. Why? Hayward is an optimist. His index of environmental indicators is a collection of good news. And, for the professional pessimists of the green movement, too much good news is bad news.

In last year's index, for example, Hayward and his colleagues cheerfully noted that levels of ambient air pollution in the U.S. had dropped dramatically, beginning in 1976. By 2002, ozone was down 31 percent, sulfur dioxide 70 percent and carbon monoxide 75 percent. Lead, once one of the deadliest, scariest and most ubiquitous pollutants, had dropped 98 percent. U.S. water quality, though much more difficult to measure consistently over so large an area, has also shown steep improvement. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the percentage of the U.S. population served by community water systems with no reported violations of health-based standards has grown from just under 80 percent a decade ago to nearly 95 percent today.

This year, when Hayward releases his new index, the EPA data will be even sunnier: U.S. air quality, measured in levels of particulates, is better than it has been since such measurements were first made. Environmentalists downplay the happy news for understandable reasons, not all of them cynical. It is true that professional activists of every ideological coloration thrive on trauma and trouble, according to the general principle that a frightened citizenry is a generous citizenry -- at least when it comes to offering money to professional activists. At the same time, a true-believing environmentalist might sincerely worry that over-attention to successes in the fight for a clean environment will lead to a risky complacency and false optimism.

Yet, not all optimism is false. Hayward's optimism is grounded in reason and experience -- particularly in his belief that technology, know-how and the entrepreneurial spirit, prompted by the market and urged on by government, will overcome our environmental difficulties. His index suggests he has history on his side.

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AUSTRALIA GETS IT RIGHT

Environmental groups have been threatened with the loss of their tax deductible status if they engage in political advocacy. The federal Minister for the Environment, Ian Campbell, sent a letter to environmental groups at the end of February in which he made it clear that a tax deductible status was dependent on organisations working on "the conservation of the natural environment and not for any other purpose, such as political activity".

Some groups have had their Federal Government funding cut by tens of thousands of dollars, forcing them to consider letting staff go. The director of the Nature Conservation Council of NSW, Cate Faehrmann, said her organisation had lost $85,000 in federal grants, or about 20 per cent of its annual budget. "It's the ongoing silencing of any voice of dissent," she said. "This money is vital to environment groups, and the Government knows it."

Senator Campbell announced on Friday that grants to environmental groups would now be capped at $10,000 and directed towards organisations doing practical work, such as tree planting and water quality projects. "I've got no doubt that, right across the country, we're spending far too much on bureaucracy and administration, and we need to make sure [that] more of it gets to the pointy end," Senator Campbell said yesterday. "Many groups are missing out [on grants]. There are hundreds of groups who apply for funds who don't get it, and we thought if we had a cap on it we'd be able to give far more support to small, local volunteer groups."

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

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