On the Perchlorate Bandwagon

As could be expected, Boxstein (our CA senators) are all riled up about perchlorate. Who would blame them, given the coordinated hysteria launch so expertly executed by the greens and their MSM friends yesterday? (here and here)

A University of Texas study found the chemical (a left-over from rocket production and other aerospace fun) in mother's breast milk basically everywhere. Since it's believed perchlorate can impair iodine absorption, and since a lack of iodine might affect the thyroid and hence the brain, maybe we should be riled up. Maybe it explains the rising tide of stupidity the Left seems to think caused the Bush victory.

Or maybe not. Some questions:

• The heyday of perchlorate production and pollution was the 1950s through early 1980s, in the aerospace boom years. Wouldn't perchlorate levels have been even higher then, and is there any evidence that those levels caused any human health damage?
  
• We've got over 50 years of history here. Is there any evidence of an increase in poorly developed brains over that period?
• If it's in breast milk everywhere, how did it get there? Are we supposed to accept that it got there from irrigation water on crops, without asking how it got into water everywhere if there weren't rocket production facilities everywhere?
• Do we know what perchlorate levels were before the aerospace boom?

That last one's the kicker. My guess is that they were about the same, and that the salts that are measured as evidence of perchlorate in the human body can come from other sources.

Like all greenie hysteria, this latest doom-frenzy fails to answer two questions:

1. If everything's cleaner now than it was in 1970, thanks to the Clean Air and Clean Water acts, why is this a problem now?
   
2. With all these crises threatening our health, why is it we continue to live longer, and live healthy for more years before the onset of the late-life disease?

It certainly seems we should have solid answers for all these questions before spending the $200 million that Feinstein's going to ask for.

And that raises a final question: Is it just a coincidence that Feinstein's got a bill already in the works, or is it all part of the magestically orchestrated perchlorate panic campaign?

There. I think I'm off this bandwagon now.