SAN MARTIN
– Members of one San Martin family wash their infant child – and
its clothes – only in bottled water in order to avoid the prospect
of using water tainted with perchlorate.
Meanwhile, another area mother is seriously considering draining
her swimming pool, worried that children will accidentally gulp
some contaminated water while playing.
SAN MARTIN – Members of one San Martin family wash their infant child – and its clothes – only in bottled water in order to avoid the prospect of using water tainted with perchlorate.
Meanwhile, another area mother is seriously considering draining her swimming pool, worried that children will accidentally gulp some contaminated water while playing.
With stories of fear and extreme measures like this as a backdrop, a special committee of doctors, health officials and residents has formed to gain information on the most pressing concern in South County’s perchlorate contamination problem – the chemical’s impacts on health.
The Perchlorate Medical Advisory Group met for the first time Tuesday night at the county government center in San Martin. While the group is in its infancy, so far its members hope to review the existing body of medical information on perchlorate’s health effects and also network in order to learn as much as they can.
Eventually, the group could also advise the county and other agencies on what their next steps – such as a survey or study here – should be, and how to go about them.
Like many things about perchlorate, answers on its health effects are not yet extensive because the chemical is such a new issue. The idea of the committee is that many minds and backgrounds working on the issue here are better than one.
“I don’t think any one of us has the experience alone to tackle this,” said Dr. Martin Fenstersheib, the county’s public health officer.
The committee will report to the larger community action group on the perchlorate issue recently organized by the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board. Like that group, members hope to keep the health committee fairly small to keep things manageable.
Members present Tuesday included Fenstersheib and two other staffers from the county’s Public Health Department, representatives of the California Department of Health Services and federal Department of Health and Human Services, three private physicians and South County residents Sylvia Hamilton, Bob Cerruti and Evelyn Heinrichs.
The group may also include a pediatrician and members to represent migrant farmworkers and the agricultural community. Other independent observers of the perchlorate issue – such as members of the Environmental Working Group – may also be invited to help counterbalance government representation.
The committee agreed Tuesday that it should begin by reviewing the existing body of medical literature on perchlorate in order to get up to speed and determine how to proceed.
“It sounds like there’s certainly a lot of information out there we can learn about,” Fenstersheib said.
Down the road, an issue the group could address is whether – and how – to pursue attempts at epidemiological studies or surveys on perchlorate’s health effects in San Martin or a correlation between the contamination and illnesses or conditions. Fenstersheib said the first order of business would be to gather information to determine what kind of study to do – something the group’s experts and residents can help with.
“We want to use our resources the best way we can,” he said.
Officials can review medical literature for a number of different purposes, including both setting regulations on exposure and trying to understand what a given exposure may mean to a community, said Dr. Richard Kreutzer of the state’s health department’s Environmental Health Investigations Branch.
Regulatory levels are meant to be safe for a very large population, and are usually set well below potential levels that could be associated with a specific change in the way the body functions, he said. Because of this, they’re also usually substantially lower than the levels where officials would expect to measure a health effect – such as an illness – in an individual who has been exposed.
“By looking at the literature to answer two different questions, it’s important to agree what question is being asked,” Kreutzer said.
There could be several challenges in gauging whether perchlorate has produced measurable human health effects in a population.
Thyroid problems generally aren’t tracked as a reportable disease, although they are screened in association with newborn infants. Newly enacted regulations on the privacy of medical information could be a complicating factor. Different people may respond to perchlorate in different ways or severities – just as they do with, say, cigarette smoke.
Initially, there are some mixed opinions on whether a study would be useful.
Dr. Richard Boll, a private physician from Morgan Hill, warned that it may be impossible to do a meaningful study in San Martin with its small population.
“I see our committee being more educational and finding out what else is out there, rather than doing our own study,” he said.
Dr. Sabir Khan, a nuclear medicine specialist with Kaiser Permanente, thought at least a preliminary study should be conducted to gauge if a problem exists.
Officials could start by identifying people who receive thyroid medication and then looking at their health and potential exposure to the contamination, he said.
According to the California Environmental Protection Agency, scientific studies have suggested perchlorate can disrupt thyroid hormone production. Inhibited thyroid function can result in hypothyroidism and in rare cases, thyroid tumors.
Sensitive populations include pregnant women, children and people who have health problems or compromised thyroid conditions.
