http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/11/politics/11report.html?th=&oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=January 11, 2005
Science Panel Issues Report on Exposure to Pollutant
By FELICITY BARRINGER
WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 - In an eagerly awaited report on perchlorate, one of the most controversial unregulated toxic pollutants in the country's drinking water and food supplies, the National Academy of Sciences said Monday that people would be safe if exposed to daily doses 20 times those under consideration by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Depending on how federal and state regulators interpret the academy's recommendation, the Defense Department, its contractors and other federal agencies responsible for contamination from perchlorate, a component of solid rocket fuel, could avoid cleanup costs of hundreds of millions of dollars.......
.....Pentagon scientists, using the same human studies that underpinned the academy's report, had concluded that the maximum safe level of perchlorate in drinking water supplies was 200 parts per billion.....
Large doses of the chemical, in widespread use by the Defense Department since the 1950's, have been shown to inhibit the thyroid gland's ability to take up iodide from a person's diet. Insufficient iodide has been linked with impaired neurological development, but the report said that the evidence the panel examined "is inadequate to determine whether or not there is a causal association between perchlorate exposure and adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes in children."