Rocket fuel found in breast milk

A study published this week found the toxic rocket fuel chemical perchlorate in every one of 36 samples of breast milk from nursing mothers in 18 US states.

The study comes just days after the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) adopted a safety standard for perchlorate in drinking water recommended last month by the National Academy of Sciences. The findings of today's breast milk study raise serious concerns for breast-feeding infants relative to the EPA/NAS safety standard.

Although breast-feeding infants drink little or no water, they could be exposed to dangerous amounts of perchlorate through breast milk. The study authors characterized the health risks from perchlorate in breast milk in unusually stark language: "it is obvious that the NAS safe dose of 0.7 µg/kg/d will be exceeded for the majority of infants and some will also exceed the 10 µg/kg/d dose at which brain morphology changes were observed in nursing rat pups."

The study by Texas Tech University is the first ever to look for the rocket fuel contaminant in human breast milk. It confirms many scientists' long-standing suspicion that significant levels of perchlorate could be passed on to nursing infants. The average level found - 10.5 parts per billion (ppb) - is five times higher than the average level of perchlorate found in 47 samples of cows' milk collected by Texas Tech scientists from supermarkets in 11 states.