Smelly tap water leads me to Karen Silkwood

I moved to Henderson, Nevada, last month. In the last couple of days, I've started noticing a strange smell in the tap water. I've been unable to find anything online to explain the sudden change, and I'll give the municipal water district a call tomorrow. (We get our water from Lake Mead... they claim it's super clean but I've learned otherwise!)

But while I was googling, I learned a little bit about perchlorate, a chemical used in the manufacture of rocket fuel, among other things. So far the EPA has failed to regulate it even though it is known to interfere with proper thyroid function and is suspected of reducing the IQs of exposed infants and children. (The issue has already gotten some attention since Obama took office; his pick to head the EPA, Lisa Jackson, failed to regulate perchlorate in New Jersey.)

Turns out that there was a major accident at a chemical plant here in Henderson in 1988 that was one of the major U.S. producers of the chemical. Perchlorate got into the Las Vegas Wash and from there into the Colorado River which supplies drinking water to residents of Arizona, Southern California, and Mexico. It also provides irrigation water, and perchlorate is believed to become concentrated in certain crops such as lettuce. It's also been found in milk throughout California. (Don't think you're safe if you don't live in the West, it's been found in breast and dairy milk nationwide.)

I checked Henderson's latest water report, and average perchlorate levels range from 2.8 to 3.5 parts per billion (ppb) depending on the plant. Several years ago EPA suggested a maximum safe value of 1 ppb but has since increased that to 15 ppb based on pressure from the Department of Defense and other government agencies.

The company that is still working on cleaning up the aftereffects of the spill in Henderson filed for bankruptcy last year but claims that that won't affect its remediation efforts.

Who owned the plant that caused this mess? Kerr-McGee. And as if I didn't have enough reason to hate them already: I've long believed they were responsible for Karen Silkwood's death following her efforts to draw attention to their lax environmental safeguards and poor treatment of employees at a nuclear fuel plant in Oklahoma.