Re: Perchlorate Behavior in a Municipal Lake Following Fireworks

Kelly, I am looking at a printout of the paper right now, and I don't
see see any email contact link, only his professional mailing address
at the EPA. Then too, perhaps I'm missing something. Until I've
digested an thought about the paper, I will reserve comment.

Here in New England the hot button issue has been up to now, the
sodium content of our drinking water which has included a health
warning on our water bills.. Recently alarms have gone up about the
perchlorate content, but until now this evidently has not become an
issue worth mentioning by our water suppliers.

The perclorate issue has made the newspapers, but so far the primary
comtaminants have been isolated to industrial sources, not the
miniscule contributions made by fireworks. Still, fireworks will be no
doubt focus upon as a contributor. Thats the way the cookie
crumbles...those less able financially to defend themselves will be
found to be the primary cause of the contamination...disregarding that
few perchorate fall to earth after comtustion.

Kelly, if it returns to a perchlorate issue, not much will be lost,
since we can alway return to the popular compositions of the 1950s
-1970s, where potassium nitrate and potassium chlorated formed the
foundation of the poular oxidizers then in use. From my standpoint,
these worked just fine.

Harry C.










On May 29, 8:40 pm, Kelly Jones <kellyjon...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
My quick notes:

- Actually, the author DOES supply an email contact; out of respect for
his privacy I will not publish it here but it is available in the posted
doc.

- Wintersmith Lake is 108 acre-feet - pretty small as lakes go. To
achieve a uniform concentration of 44ug of perchlorate would require
just 5.7 kg of perchlorate. Since the measuring stations were so close
to the ignition site, it's possible that the average concentration was
smaller than 44ug. At any rate, it doesn't take much perchlorate to get
the reported levels in that lake.

- As the author notes, perchlorate is eliminated by combustion. Why
then is any perchlorate getting into the lake? Are these blind stars?
Or does even complete combustion result in excess perchlorate? (Are
typical pyro compositions rich in perchlorate, or stoichiometric?)

Kelly


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