Controversy Cut from News Story: Reporter's Article on Perchlorate Study was Modified, Deleting Details of Controversy DAVID DANELSKI / The Press-Enterprise 19dec04

When nationally known science writer Rebecca Renner opened the September 2002 issue of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, she found her article about perchlorate drastically rewritten. [See both submitted and printed versions below]

Gone was the context and controversy about the rocket-fuel chemical that has polluted drinking-water supplies, milk, lettuce and other foods.

Renner, who had been assigned to write a news story about a study of 37 healthy adults exposed to perchlorate, didn't learn who helped make the changes to her article until last week.

The study's co-author, a paid consultant for the perchlorate industry, had assisted one of the journal's editors in rewriting Renner's work.

The editing work was described in a letter from the consultant's boss to the Perchlorate Study Group, a consortium of perchlorate consumers and producers. The letter sought compensation for "editing the EHP news article (Renner, 2002)."

The Sept. 12, 2002, letter from Intertox, a Seattle-based consulting firm, told how the company's then-chief toxicologist, Gay Goodman, changed Renner's article.

To explain the basis of "invoice 98803," Goodman's co-author, Intertox director Richard Pleus, wrote that the first version of Renner's article "was potentially very damaging" to the Perchlorate Study Group.

"Dr. Goodman gained the trust of the editor, and through a cooperative process entailing five or more drafts, provided substantial and critical improvement to the article," Pleus wrote to the Perchlorate Study Group.

Renner, whose work has appeared in Scientific American and other respected publications, said she was appalled.

Removed from her article were details of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's concerns about how perchlorate could harm neurological development of fetuses and how studies of animals supported the EPA's position.

Also deleted was Renner's disclosure that the Perchlorate Study Group co-sponsored the research.

The article ran under the headline, "Reprieve for Perchlorate. Effects Not a Significant Concern," a statement reflecting industry's position on the chemical.

"My name was misused, and my journalistic reputation was misused," Renner said. "It is outrageous that my article was changed by people working for industries that have a totally vested interest and a huge stake in the outcome of this issue, and that it was changed in a covert way."

Goodman, in a written response to questions, said she received a letter from the journal that asked for her "cooperation" in the preparation of Renner's story.

"I was asked to correct any errors of fact in the news article and to recommend editorial changes to any text that inaccurately or poorly represented the information presented in our paper," Goodman wrote. "This I did. ... I was not asked to contact the author of the news article and did not do so."

The journal independently made other changes, and she reviewed them for accuracy, she said.

The study by Goodman and her co-author, Pleus, was published in the same issue of the environmental journal.

The journal gave drafts of Renner's story to Goodman because she was the official contact person for anyone seeking information on the study, said Susan Booker, the journal's managing news editor.

The journal, a 35,000-circulation publication of the federal government's National Institute of Environmental Health Services, is published 17 times a year and read by scientists, regulators, health-care workers and other professionals and academics.

Booker added that the magazine's standard procedure is to share drafts of articles about scientific studies with the studies' authors to be sure that the articles accurately reflect the scientists' work. Articles printed in the journal's Science Selections section are intended to summarize studies in layman's terms from their researchers' perspective, she said.

Renner said the changes to her story made the journal appear to be naïve about the perchlorate controversy.

But Booker said that including information about the controversy surrounding perchlorate and other studies with contrary results did not fit the format of the section.

"The decision was made to limit the additional context that was added by Rebecca because it went beyond the scope of the topic of the research article," added Kimberly Thigpen, the journal's news editor, in a telephone interview.

Renner said that her past articles on other studies included background similar to the material cut from her perchlorate story.

Thigpen acknowledged that the Intertox letter revealed a potential conflict of interest in the editing process. Because of that concern, the magazine decided this month that news articles should be vetted by outside parties to be sure they are balanced.

"Gay Goodman, who is under the payroll of the Perchlorate Study Group, essentially got to rewrite a story about her own manuscript and run it under my name," Renner said in a telephone interview.

SUBMITTED VERSION
by Rebecca Renner

PRINTED VERSION
Reprieve for Perchlorate Effects Not a Significant Concern

Should millions of people in the southwest who drink water contaminated with parts-per-billion levels of the rocket-fuel ingredient perchlorate be concerned for their health? Perhaps proposes EPA, perhaps not say to Oregon Health and Science University professor Monte Greer and colleagues in this month’s issue.

In January, the agency released a draft toxicological review recommending that concentrations of less than 1ppb are safe in drinking water. Perchlorate affects the thyroid by inhibiting the uptake of iodine that the gland uses to produce thyroid hormones. EPA made the recommendation to ensure that mothers who drink perchlorate-contaminated water do not give birth to children with diminished IQs because maternal thyroid hormone plays a role in fetal brain development. Rat experiments conducted for the review can be interpreted to bear out these concerns. But in Greer’s study when human volunteers drink perchlorate, the results suggest that the generally low ppb levels of water contamination seen in southwest are not a cause for concern, according to the authors. In this month’s issue, Greer’s team concludes on the basis of their human study that was also conducted for the review, that several hundred-ppb perchlorate is not a concern in drinking water. The team writes, “Assuming drinking water is the only significant source of exposure, 180 to 220 ppb (and possibly much higher) should be of no health concern in iodine-sufficient populations”.

Greer’s team bases its conclusion on an experiment designed to find out the dose-response relationship between perchlorate and the inhibition of iodine uptake by the thyroid in healthy humans. Similar studies were previously performed by Lawrence and co-workers (Thyroid 2000. 10:659-663; letter to Thyroid, 2001. 11: 295). The study was undertaken as part of EPA’s toxicological review and was funded in part by the Perchlorate Study Group, a consortium of military and industrial concerns that use and manufacture perchlorate. Thirty-seven people between the ages of 18 and 57 volunteered to drink perchlorate dissolved in drinking water at one of 4 doses at 4 set times a day for two weeks. The doses were 0.007, 0.02, 0.1 or 0.5 mg/kg-day. In 24 subjects the team measured the uptake of radioactive ¹²³I (RAIU), eight- and 24-hours after ingestion on 4 different days. In another eight people they only did baseline and day 14 measurements.

For every RAIU measurement, the team found a strong dose-response relationship. Iodine uptake decreased in a linear fashion with the logarithm of dose. Iodine uptake measured 15 days after exposure had returned to baseline. Based on this dose-response, the team estimated the no-effect level at 5.2 or 6.4 µg/kg-day. This would be the approximate adult dose from a drinking-water supply containing perchlorate at 180 or 220 µg/L (ppb). Greer et al. found that 15 days after exposure, iodine uptakes had returned to baseline.

The iodine inhibition did not produce significant changes in the level thyroid hormones in blood serum. In the highest dose group there was a slight downward trend in thyrotropin (TSH) levels. This is the reverse of expectations and the authors have no explanation for it. The lack of significant hormonal changes after a 2-week experiment was expected because the thyroid gland contains a reserve of excess hormone that could last over a year, the authors write.

There were small but significant differences in the response observed by Greer compared with the two previous studies by Lawrence. Greer’s team found less inhibition of radioiodide for a given dose of perchlorate. The most likely explanation is the difference in how the volunteers drank their perchlorate, the Greer team speculates. In Greer’s study they drank a fixed amount at a fixed time. In Lawrence’s study the volunteers were able to drink their perchlorate-laced water whenever they chose.

The relevance of this study to the general population depends in part on whether US residents have sufficient levels of iodine, an issue that is unclear, according to the authors. What is clear is that the significance of this study will be hotly debated when it comes to setting human health guidelines for perchlorate in drinking water.

(1)

Although perchlorate has pharmaceutical uses in the treatment of thyroid disorders, it is most commonly used as an oxygen source in rocket propulsion systems. This latter use is believed to be the source of perchlorate found in drinking water supplies throughout the U.S. Southwest at concentrations ranging from 5 to 20 parts per billion (ppb). But the millions of people drinking this perchlorate-laced water need not be concerned for their health, according to research by Monte Greer, the late head of the Endocrinology Section at Oregon Health & Science University, and colleagues [EHP 110:927-937].

Perchlorate inhibits the uptake of iodine, which is used by the thyroid to produce thyroid hormone. If iodine uptake is inhibited by too much for too long, the result could be hypothyroidism, a condition in which blood levels of thyroid hormone are abnormally low and those of the pituitary hormone thyrotropin (TSH) are abnormally high. Because maternal thyroid hormone level plays a vital role in fetal brain development, the authors say it is important to protect against even mild hypothyroidism in pregnant women.

The research team wanted to establish the extent to which thyroidal iodine uptake is diminished in people given one of four daily perchlorate doses. In particular, they wanted to measure the no-effect level, the highest daily perchlorate dose a person can ingest without experiencing any inhibition of iodine uptake.

To do this, the team enrolled 37 volunteers between the ages of 18 and 57 to drink a fixed volume of perchlorate solution 4 times a day for 14 days. To evaluate thyroidal iodine uptake, they administered a trace amount of radioiodine and then measured the accumulated radioiodine uptake (RAIU) over the thyroid at 8 and 24 hours. To establish the baseline uptake, the researchers performed an initial measurement of the RAIU before the volunteers ingested any perchlorate. The RAIU was also measured 15 days after stopping exposure.

The RAIU measurements performed during perchlorate exposure revealed a strong dose-response relationship, with the RAIU relative to baseline decreasing uniformly from the lowest to highest doses. The researchers also found that at 15 days postexposure the RAIU did not differ from baseline in any dose group. Based on the overall dose-response relationship they found, the researchers estimate the no-effect level for perchlorate inhibition of thyroidal iodine uptake to be at least 5.2 µg/kg-day, the approximate adult dose from a drinking water supply containing 180 ppb perchlorate. Further, based on the observed variability among the study volunteers, the team calculates a 95% probability that uptake will be inhibited by less than 9.5% in persons exposed to perchlorate at this dose. They call this amount of inhibition "physiologically insignificant" for groups (such as the U.S. population) with sufficient iodine intake.

The researchers measured thyroid hormone and TSH levels in serum prepared from blood drawn throughout the study. The only change observed was a slight downward trend in TSH in the high-dose group during the exposure period, with a return to baseline by 15 days postexposure. This finding was unexpected, say the authors, because if iodine uptake is inhibited to the point that thyroid hormone levels are depressed, this should lead to an increase in TSH secretion, not a decrease. The observed effect was thus the opposite of any expected change, and the authors have no explanation for it.

The team also measured the amount of iodine excreted into the urine; they will describe those results in a separate report and evaluate the extent to which iodine nutrition affects the inhibitory response at a given dose of perchlorate. The authors did not estimate a safe level of perchlorate exposure for iodine-insufficient populations. However, they say that iodine supplementation should be provided to iodine-insufficient persons or populations regardless of whether there are known exposures to perchlorate, other inhibitors of iodine uptake such as nitrate or thiocyanate, or foods that naturally contain such inhibitory compounds or their precursors.

(2)

In the letter below, Intertox director Richard Pleus wrote that the first version of Renner's article "was potentially very damaging" to the Perchlorate Study Group.

Per your email request, I have supplied information on the invoices we sent to you covering the May-June time frame. 1 have addressed each of your question, below.