Yesterday, I Posted the news that the Assembly Committee on Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials had nearly-unanimously approved AB 492. I commented that this was curious, since a main goal of AB 492 is to require reports from dry cleaners using perchlorate as to how they dispose of the chemical. The problem is, dry cleaners don't use the chemical.
The Committee just ignores this reality. The official Committee analysis of the bill just published on the State Assembly's website states:
" Background on Perchlorate.
1)Perchlorate is a salt used as an oxidizer in rocket fuel, highway flares, matches, air bag inflators and in other uses such as dry cleaning." (emphasis added).
I understand one could, in theory, nevertheless defend AB 492 by arguing that perchlorate is in fact used in a number of industries other than dry cleaning and that there have been substantial perchlorate disposals into drinking-water and other health-sensitive sources as a result of disposals from such industries (see, e.g., my Post of March 30, 2005-- map of perchlorate disposals). However, these facts raise more questions than answers regarding the need for, and wisdom of, imposing the additional reporting burdens and accompanying expense that would be required by AB 492, if enacted. The official Committee analysis does not indicate that any of these questions have been considered. Some examples of this point:
1. Is there any reason to believe perchlorate disposal to drinking-water sources and/or other health-sensistive sources constitutes a contemporary (as opposed to historic) practice?
Multiple provisions of the Health & Safety Code and the Water Code already prohibit and/or require clean up of any such disposals. Is there any evidence from existing agency investigation and enforcement data that people continue to ignore these Codes? Or is the agency investigation and enforcement data rather indicative of problems only with pre-Code, historic disposal practices? The Committee's analysis ignores these questions.
2. Is there any reason to believe that perchlorate contamination constitutes an actual threat to human health? In this regard, the Committee analysis states:
"Impairment of thyroid function in expectant mothers may impact the fetus and newborn and can effect changes in behavior, delayed development, and decreased learning capability. Changes in thyroid hormone levels may also result in thyroid gland tumors. Recent studies have found high levels of perchlorate in human breast milk, dairy milk, and winter lettuce." (emphases added).
Even the Committee is thus not sure whether human health is being threatened. Indeed, there are experts (see my Post of March 9, 2005) who contend there is, at least in the Untied States, very little evidence that perchlorate is having the effects about which the Committee worries. Moreover, while I don't know to what specific "recent studies" the Committee analysis refers, the most prominent recent study of perchlorate contamination in breast milk has resulted in no consensus as to whether or not the contamination poses a health risk(see Post of February 24, 2005).
I am sensitive to a charge that insisting on actual proof of adverse health effects before taking legislative action is failing to give the benefit of the doubt to protecting human health. However, as is often the case with charges made in the abstract, such a charge misses the real-world issue.
We would, for example, all arguably be safer if the government would put crossing guards at every single crosswalk on major public highways. Since we don't have the resources to do this, we instead target such guards to help guarantee safety at only those crosswalks where pedestrians are at greatest risk (e.g., children's school crossings).
The same analysis applies with respect to expending increased public resources regarding perchlorate-- by doing so, are we diverting resources from the investigation of, and enforcement regarding, other chemicals with a much more certain connection to adverse health effects? The Committee analysis does not appear even to have asked this basic question.
3. What is the effect of the increased regulatory burden on California businesses?
Regarding the fiscal effect of AB 492, should it become law, the Committee analysis says: " FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown, but some administrative costs to DTSC associated with collecting the reports and any potential analysis or enforcement." (emphasis added).
It's kind of disturbing, don't you think, that the Committee has recommended enacting legislation based at least in part on a faulty factual premise (that dry cleaners use perchlorate), on incomplete risk analyses and on "unknown" regulatory costs. As if all this weren't disturbing enough, the Committee analysis has completely ignored the potential effect of AB 492, if enacted, on the California economy.
No estimate is given, or apparently even known, as to the costs to business to comply with AB 492, if enacted. One may be permitted reasonably to worry that the seemingly smooth track to enactment of such a flawed piece of legislation will be taken by the business community as yet one more signal business addresses should perhaps read "Nevada" rather than "California".
