Just as EPA is working to formulate a regulatory standard for perchlorate in drinking water for the first time, a National Academy of Science panel has asserted that perchlorate is 20 times less dangerous than the standard in consideration by EPA. However, NRDC has discovered that the White House and the Pentagon attempted to influence the scope of the study in order to get the weaker standard. Perchlorate is a toxic rocket fuel ingredient that has been linked to thyroid problems in children. After the administration stonewalled NRDC�s attempts to used the Freedom of Information Act to request government documents about the White House decision to refer the perchlorate issue to an NAS committee, NRDC sued and received over thirty boxes of documents. While they are still going through the documents and much has been redacted, they have already made some startling discoveries:

• Documents showed that the DoD and industry lobbyists petitioned the government to change the scope of the NAS study. Furthermore, Senior White House officials with no technical scientific background reviewed and made changes to the highly technical request to NAS to conduct the study. �While the existence of these edits and their authors are known from the Vaughn Index, the text of every White House document relating to this review was redacted in its entirety, or the entire document was withheld,� according to the NRDC press release.
• The White House and Pentagon also influenced the composition of the NAS panel. White House and Pentagon officials were directly involved in the decision of who should be on the NAS panel, assuring not that the panels would have proper scientific expertise, but that they would be friendly to the politics of the administration. The panel included:
  • Richard Bull was named a panelist despite his ongoing work as a paid expert witness for Lockheed-Martin in litigation involving perchlorate and other contamination of drinking water in California. After repeated objections from NRDC and many others, and after he publicly took the position at an industry-funded meeting that low-level perchlorate exposure was innocuous - while the NAS review was ongoing - Bull finally resigned in June 2004, late in the NAS deliberation process.
  • Charles Capen remains on the NAS panel. He was a paid consultant on perchlorate issues to the aerospace industry-funded organization Toxicology Excellence in Risk Assessment (TERA).
  • James Lamb, a private consultant at the Weinberg Group, remains on the NAS panel. The Weinberg Group describes itself as follows: "For twenty years, leading companies have depended on the Weinberg Group when their products are at risk. Our technical, scientific and regulatory experts deliver the crucial results that get products to market and keep products on the market. The Weinberg Group has successfully partnered with leading companies from around the world in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical device, chemical, consumer product, food and cosmetic industries."
  • Michael McClain worked for pharmaceutical giant Hoffmann-LaRoche for many years, and has since done extensive industry consulting. McClain's NAS biography was revised after questions were raised about the lack of disclosure of panelists' conflicts of interest. The final version states: "He reviewed scientific studies on perchlorate for private clients and provided comments to the EPA Peer Review Panel on Perchlorate in February 1999."
• Industry and the Pentagon continued to lobby NAS after the panel convened. According to NRDC, �they have been in regular contact with NAS, and have submitted dozens of documents, letters and emails, and hundreds of pages of new, generally unpublished data, studies and reviews to the NAS panel, right up to October 2004, when the panel was concluding its deliberations.�

Check out the NRDC press release for more information and links to the documents.