Perchlorate and Thyroid problems

[Guest guest]

WSJ.com - Perchlorate Runoff Flows To Water Supply of Millions

To all, A lengthy, horrifying, and important article about perchlorate and

thyroid disease. I hope you'll have the time to read. Happy holidays, Zoey

December 16, 2002 2:05 p.m. EST

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Perchlorate Runoff Flows

To Water Supply of Millions

A Fuel of Cold War Defenses

Now Ignites Health Controversy

By PETER WALDMAN

Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

RANCHO CORDOVA, Calif. -- For years, Greg and Doris Voetsch felt they were

living a suburban dream here on the banks of the American River.

Just 15 miles from downtown Sacramento, they raised four kids on homegrown

cherries, pears, cucumbers and string beans, along with salmon and rainbow trout

caught in the Sierra-fed waters flowing just beyond their back door. Mr.

Voetsch, a landscaper, used tobacco juice, instead of pesticides, to keep the

aphids at bay. Snow-melt was their air-conditioning, cooling the hot summer

breezes. The cost of living was " almost nothing, " Mr. Voetsch says.

But trouble seeped into their paradise. In 1983, 13 years after the family

moved here, surgeons removed two tumors, each of a different type of cancer,

from Mr. Voetsch's thyroid gland. Shortly after, his two older daughters, both

in their 20s at the time, had surgery to treat thyroid-related problems. Last

year, his 67-year-old wife, who has had thyroid trouble for years, had a benign

brain tumor removed. The couple's daughter-in-law, who grew up nearby, also has

thyroid problems. Her son -- the Voetsches' grandson -- is autistic.

Five years ago, the Voetsches learned that the home they bought in 1970

lies on the edge of a so-called plume of underground water polluted with waste

from a nearby missile factory. Among the chemicals found in local drinking wells

is perchlorate, the main ingredient of solid rocket fuel and a known toxin. The

Voetsches believe it was in their water and, they suspect, their garden soil.

" We lived off the land and never thought twice about it, " Mr. Voetsch says.

In the human body, perchlorate affects production of thyroid hormones -- a

phenomenon that the Environmental Protection Agency says can cause thyroid

ailments such as Graves' disease and cancer in adults. Fetuses and newborns, the

EPA says, are at even greater risk, susceptible to neurological and other

developmental damage.

For decades, millions of Americans have been unknowingly exposed to

perchlorate through their local water supplies. No one denies that the chemical

is toxic. But the level at which it becomes dangerous in drinking water is the

subject of a fierce debate that pits the EPA against the Pentagon and its

defense-industry allies. As a result, the U.S. is still years away from

establishing a nationally enforced standard, and until it does so, a poisonous

chemical lingers in the environment in amounts that could still be causing the

slow spread of serious disease on a large scale.

To date, the EPA has identified 75 perchlorate releases in 22 states,

including Arizona, Texas, Nebraska, Iowa, New York, land and Massachusetts,

as well as California. The Colorado River, the main water source for about 15

million homes across the Southwest, contains perchlorate at roughly seven parts

per billion -- seven times the level that the EPA's National Center for

Environmental Assessment says is safe.

Defense-industry dumping is suspected in nearly all these cases, though

perchlorate has also been linked to fireworks and other explosives, automobile

airbags and Chilean fertilizers, some of which may have been used near the

Voetsches' home. The EPA says it will take hundreds of years and cost several

billion dollars to clean up the known plumes.

A NEW POISON

Perchlorate is one of a newly recognized group of toxins

called endocrine disrupters chemicals. Read the full article3.

The EPA wants suspected water supplies tested nationwide for perchlorate,

but the Pentagon, which argues perchlorate isn't dangerous in small doses, is

resisting in many cases. Instead, the Pentagon has asked Congress for an

exemption from environmental laws covering the cleanup of explosive residues at

operational sites.

It's impossible to determine definitively whether perchlorate caused the

Voetsches' ailments and similar maladies reported by hundreds of other people in

affected areas. California's Department of Health Services is studying local

health statistics for correlations between perchlorate levels in local drinking

water and rates of thyroid and other disorders associated with the chemical.

Eight states have passed advisory limits on perchlorate, ranging from one part

per billion in land, Massachusetts and New Mexico, to two ppb in California

and 18 ppb in Nevada.

The EPA worries even the smallest traces of perchlorate are dangerous,

particularly to infants at risk of neurological damage because thyroid-hormone

production is crucial to normal brain development. In January, the agency's

national assessment center proposed a draft " reference dose " for perchlorate in

drinking water of one part per billion. That recommendation, when finalized

after a peer review process, goes to the EPA's Office of Water, which ultimately

proposes a national standard after weighing costs and benefits.

" After everything I've seen on perchlorate, I'm a lot more concerned about

even subtle deficiencies of thyroid hormone on brain development than I was

before, " says biologist Zoeller, an endocrine expert at the University of

Massachusetts at Amherst and one of the 17 peer reviewers of the EPA's draft

reference-dose report.

Billions in Cleanup Costs

The Pentagon and several of its major contractors, all facing billions of

dollars in possible cleanup and liability costs, say perchlorate is perfectly

safe in trace amounts. They argue the chemical, an ordinary salt ion similar to

nitrate, should be allowed in drinking water in concentrations up to 200 ppb.

" The scientific basis for believing there's harm has not been established, " says

Maureen Koetz, assistant undersecretary of defense for the environment.

That perchlorate is an issue at all is a legacy of the Cold War, when the

priorities of containing communism trumped domestic considerations for the

environment and public safety. The military started using perchlorate in solid

rocket fuel and other propellants in the 1940s. At the time, the chemical wasn't

considered very toxic. Millions of tons of it were simply flushed onto the

ground, left to flow unimpeded into streams and underground aquifers.

The polluting continued for years after evidence began to mount of the

dangers of perchlorate. A three-month investigation by The Wall Street Journal

has found that even after California regulators tried to control disposal of the

chemical in the 1950s, companies dumped it with impunity. It wasn't until the

1970s, after passage of federal clean-water laws, that the defense industry

began trying to contain perchlorate waste for treatment. But by then, the

chemical had already begun its long, slow seep into water supplies nationwide.

As late as 1976, in fact, Aerojet-General Corp., operator of the missile

plant near the Voetsches' home, built a special, 3,500-foot pipeline to dump

toxic waste into unlined earthen pits -- directly disobeying a local water-board

order issued just months earlier, state documents show. At first, Aerojet told

investigators the pipe was just a stopgap measure to bypass a clogged holding

pond.

" A 3,500-foot pipeline may not quite be temporary, " acknowledges

, longtime general counsel of Aerojet's parent, GenCorp Inc., of

Sacramento. But Mr. and other defense-industry officials say that the

contractors' disposal practices were state-of-the-art at the time, particularly

for a chemical they didn't -- and still don't -- consider very harmful.

Moreover, the defense suppliers say they followed all orders and guidelines

issued by the Pentagon, which owned and managed most of the perchlorate supply

and put its own inspectors inside factories to ensure proper handling.

The Pentagon, for its part, says its job is national security, not

environmental safety. " We are no different from any other set of individuals who

operate in states and localities and follow the laws, " says Ms. Koetz, the

assistant undersecretary of defense. " We do not consider it our job to get out

in front of the health and environmental regulatory agencies in terms of

discovering " pollution risks.

" Should someone have connected the dots in 1962, 1972 or 1982?

Absolutely, " says Mayer, an EPA Superfund official in San Francisco and

the agency's point man on perchlorate. " But it didn't happen. There isn't any

one person or one agency that definitively dropped the ball. Everyone did

nothing. "

That's what upsets people living in perchlorate-polluted areas. Though

tests revealed high levels of perchlorate in the Voetsches' neighborhood water

as far back as 1963 -- seven years before they moved in -- state water

regulators declared local wells safe. The Voetsches joined a class-action

lawsuit in 1998, filed in Sacramento state court, accusing Aerojet, Boeing Co.

and two local water utilities of negligence and fraud. The defendants contest

the allegations, and the case is pending.

" I think they knew it was dangerous and just kept doing it, " says Mr.

Voetsch, now 68 years old. " There was nobody there to stop them, and nobody was

the wiser. "

Perchlorate fueled the takeoff of American rocketry. During World War II,

the Navy tapped Theodore von Karman, a Hungarian-born aeronautics professor at

California Institute of Technology, to develop engines powerful enough to lift

planes off the short flight decks of aircraft carriers. He and some other rocket

hobbyists from CalTech founded Aerojet in Pasadena, Calif. Their breakthrough:

so-called jet-assisted takeoff rockets, fueled by solid perchlorate compounds

that were highly charged but stable enough to be handled safely aboard ships.

Perchlorate, dubbed " powdered oxygen, " is combusted inside a rocket engine

with aluminum powder and a rubber-like polymer to stoke an intense burn. To

propel a rocket, the solid fuel must be ground and molded into a particular

shape. Over time, the fuel breaks down, requiring continual replacements. That's

why, for more than 40 years, tons of perchlorate were routinely flushed from

rockets and missiles onto the ground and into water supplies.

Aerojet began manufacturing at a plant in the San Valley town of

Azusa, Calif., about 40 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. Nearly from the

start, it had discharge problems. In 1949, the Los Angeles County engineer

warned the company in a letter that dumping its hazardous waste into " cesspools "

and " seepage beds " posed an " extreme hazard " to the underground water supply. " I

cannot too strongly emphasize the necessity of obtaining a sewer connection in

the shortest possible time, " pleaded the county engineer, who noted Aerojet was

already in violation of local discharge restrictions. Aerojet was never

punished, and its Azusa plant was connected to an industrial sewer line in 1952.

Move Out of the City

Hemmed in by the burgeoning Los Angeles suburbs, Aerojet moved most of its

rocket operations north to some abandoned gold-dredging fields in Rancho

Cordova, about 15 miles east of Sacramento. In 1951, shortly after buying the

site, an Aerojet employee calculated that about 1,000 gallons of liquid waste,

plus 300 pounds of ammonium perchlorate, would flow into the underground aquifer

every day. Most of the waste would have " a deleterious effect on both plant life

and the underground water supply, " he warned in an internal memo. But ammonium

perchlorate might " be beneficial in a sewage stream and possibly be slightly

beneficial on plant life, " he added.

As in the San Valley, Aerojet designed a system in Rancho Cordova

to channel waste into unlined leaching ponds, apparently assuming whatever

pollutants did reach groundwater would be diluted to safe levels. But when those

designs were circulated for comment to California's water, health, and

fish-and-game departments in Sacramento, the regulators unanimously panned the

proposed " percolation beds " as posing grave pollution risks to streams and

underground aquifers, state documents show.

Officials sought specific toxicity advice on perchlorate from a botany

professor at the University of California at . He replied that perchlorate

was " known to be toxic to plant life " and was unlikely to break down " in course

of percolation through gravel. " For treatment, he recommended evaporation in

" sealed beds " and " absorption and contact with organic matter. "

Today, this so-called biological method is a common way of extracting

perchlorate from water. " It's astonishing how right he was, " says Mr. Mayer of

the EPA.

On May 15, 1952, California's Central Valley Regional Water Pollution

Control Board, over Aerojet's objections, issued Resolution No. 127, barring

" entry " of perchlorate and eight other chemicals into local groundwater and the

nearby American River. That same year, medical researchers published their

findings that perchlorate blocks the uptake of essential iodide into the thyroid

gland, thus inhibiting thyroid-hormone production.

Neither the medical findings nor the water board's order had much effect.

By 1955, regulators were finding perchlorate in local groundwater. Though

hampered by primitive test methods and Navy secrecy, a state hydraulic engineer

reported that untreated discharges of some 310 pounds a day of perchlorate were

being dumped into " abandoned gold dredger pits. " The good news, he reported, was

that the waste was seeping into the ground more slowly than expected. The bad

news, reported a few months later, was that a nondrinking well on Aerojet's

property was contaminated with 1,000 ppb of perchlorate, indicating " waste water

from the sump is commingling with underlying groundwater. "

Mr. , the GenCorp general counsel, says Aerojet's disposal

practices met all safety and regulatory requirements of the day. " You were

supposed to put [perchlorate] in these pits, " he says. " We thought the pits were

impermeable. "

In 1957, a national task group on underground waste reported perchlorate

contamination had spread over " several square miles " east of Sacramento. The

group's report, published in the American Water Works Association Journal,

described perchlorate as a " weedicide " toxic to plants at 1,000 to 2,000 ppb. It

said the perchlorate plume near Sacramento ranged from 3.5 million to five

million ppb. Also that year, some Harvard University researchers, using studies

on guinea pigs, found that perchlorate, after passing through the placenta from

the mother, depleted thyroid-hormone production in fetuses.

In 1958, the Water Pollution Control Board notified Aerojet that its

discharges were " consistently in violation of the board's requirements. " At a

special briefing for state agencies in 1960, board engineers described Aerojet's

operations as a mess, with " four or five major discharges " into a creek feeding

the American River and many smaller releases onto the ground. Aerojet, citing

security, wouldn't tell regulators all the chemicals it was using, according to

regulators' documents from the briefing.

" We pointed out that just because we do not know what is going on in this

area, an area of extremely permeable sediments, the board should not give

industry a blank check to discharge anything [it] desired to the groundwater

basin, " a state engineer wrote after the briefing.

The upshot was Resolution 62-21, the board's 1962 order to Aerojet not to

discharge anything " deleterious to human, animal, plant, or aquatic life " into

local waters. The resolution set maximum discharge levels for 21 chemicals --

1,000 ppb for perchlorate -- and ordered Aerojet, for the first time, to

" disinfect " all waste before it left Aerojet's property.

But this was the year of the Cuban missile crisis, and Aerojet had other

concerns. A unit of General Tire at the time, Aerojet was playing a big part in

helping the U.S. close the missile gap with the Soviet Union. At the height of

the rocket race in the early 1960s, Aerojet's Sacramento County facility

employed 22,000 workers in three shifts, seven days a week. In 1962, they helped

build and deploy the first solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile, the

Minuteman I. Because it didn't require hours to load, as liquid-fuel rockets do,

the Minuteman is believed to have helped steel President Kennedy's nerve during

the Cuban missile crisis.

Aerojet's operations were overseen by 300 to 400 full-time Pentagon

inspectors who approved every facet of design, production and waste disposal,

says Aerojet's Mr. . " Had we known we could have done something to keep

this [perchlorate contamination] from happening, they would have given it to

us, " he says. " Everybody involved thought they were doing the right thing. "

Burning the Stuff

In 1961, Aerojet had begun burning its excess perchlorate, along with

drums of the chlorinated solvent trichloroethylene, or TCE, which is now

considered carcinogenic. Still, large quantities of the chemicals continued to

go into the ground, according to accounts by former Aerojet employees given to

California investigators in a 1979 criminal probe. (That state investigation was

dropped in the mid-1980s, when Aerojet agreed to sign a consent decree to clean

up its waste.)

In write-ups of those witness accounts obtained by the Journal, several

employees described a chemical " sludge " left over after burning that Aerojet

would let seep into the ground or would bury in separate pits. Former employees,

including one identified as the foreman of Aerojet's chemical-waste-disposal

unit from 1963 to 1968, said they dumped hazardous chemicals into a septic

lagoon meant for human waste. Witnesses also said many workers continued dumping

perchlorate and TCE into " rock piles " and open ponds. (TCE was heavily used to

clean missile parts laden with solid rocket fuel.)

Meanwhile, tests of the underground aquifer at the Aerojet site showed

steadily rising concentrations of perchlorate -- from 18,000 ppb in the

mid-1950s to 91,000 ppb in 1979. In the decade after 1955 alone, Aerojet

processed roughly 19 million pounds of ammonium perchlorate at " grind station "

Line 03, company documents say. The " daily washdown " of the area flowed into

unlined ponds.

The water board issued more discharge orders, with little effect. In

February 1976, for example, the board granted permission to Aerojet's Cordova

Chemical unit to dig an injection well for inserting waste deep underground. The

board's order explicitly barred " pollution " and discharging waste to any

" surface drainage courses. " Yet just three months after that order came out,

Cordova built the 3,500-foot pipeline to channel waste straight into an unlined

dredger pit.

" That's the worst thing I know about on this whole place, " says Aerojet's

Mr. . The general counsel says that Aerojet never hid its perchlorate

contamination. He points out that the company notified the water board in the

mid-1970s that it detected perchlorate in its groundwater at 50 times the

board's allowable limit. No one worried about it then, Mr. says,

because, among other reasons, Aerojet's wells weren't for drinking.

Perchlorate became a drinking-water concern in 1985, when the EPA detected

it in wells serving about 42,000 households near Aerojet's original facility in

the San Valley, near Los Angeles. The agency found concentrations

ranging from 110 ppb to 2,600 ppb. But five of the six so-called field blanks --

samples of purified water that were also tested to assure data quality --

inexplicably tested positive for perchlorate. Flummoxed, EPA reviewers threw out

most of the test results as unreliable. (Today, some EPA officials believe those

field blanks probably came from Colorado River water or other tainted sources.)

EPA scientists asked the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta

for guidance on possible health risks from perchlorate. The response, written by

the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry on Jan. 26, 1986,

underscored the same toxicity concerns the Pentagon and EPA are still arguing

about 17 years later. The agency " strongly recommended " retesting the San

wells.

" Although the limited data available does not suggest that several

[thousand ppb] of perchlorates would represent an acute threat to public

health, " the toxic-substance agency letter concluded, " the effects of continued

low-level perchlorate ingestion need to be described as soon as possible. "

Superfund Sites

Those effects remained undescribed for more than a decade afterward. In

1992, the EPA, citing the 1952 study on perchlorate's effects on thyroid-hormone

production, issued its first health assessment of the chemical, proposing an

initial reference dose for perchlorate of four ppb in drinking water. By then,

Aerojet's facilities in Northern and Southern California had both been named EPA

Superfund sites because of contamination by TCE and other known carcinogens. The

Sacramento facility, in fact, was treating groundwater for other toxic agents

and reinjecting it into the aquifer with 8,000 ppb of perchlorate still in it --

with regulators' full assent.

" We did not have any data which indicated that perchlorate had been

identified as a contaminant of concern, " testified Pinkos, who oversaw

Aerojet's cleanup for the regional water board from 1979 through 1988, in a

recent deposition.

After the EPA's 1992 health warning, state officials watched warily as

Aerojet's perchlorate plume spread toward drinking wells in Rancho Cordova. At

the time, the most sensitive test equipment could detect perchlorate at levels

only above 400 ppb. The defense industry, meanwhile, was fighting the EPA's

health assessment, arguing in a 1995 report to the EPA that the reference dose

should be 42,000 ppb in drinking water. Aerojet itself grew less cooperative

with state officials, regulators say. " Plumes tended to stop at their fences, "

one quips.

The logjam broke in early 1997, when a California state lab, prodded by

residents in Rancho Cordova, developed a new method for measuring perchlorate

down to four ppb. With the lower detection limit, the substance quickly turned

up in Rancho Cordova's wells at levels reaching 300 ppb.

The Voetsches learned in the media about the thyroid-disrupting

contaminant shuttering nearby wells. Mr. Voetsch says he attended several

community meetings, following up with various public and private officials to

pursue his family's case. But the only person who returned his calls, he says,

was a local geographer and Navy vet named Larry Ladd, who has made perchlorate

pollution his passion. The Voetsches then joined the class-action lawsuit, led

by the law firm that employs Brockovich, the toxic-tort paralegal played by

in the film of the same name. The suit, among several filed over

perchlorate contamination, is mired in the courts, and Mr. Voetsch says he

hasn't heard from the lawyers in years.

" I'm thoroughly convinced no one wants to know what's going on here, " Mr.

Voetsch says.

The firm's chief attorney, Masry, says the perchlorate clients

haven't been contacted in several years because a judge put a stay on their

case, pending legal motions, but should be hearing from the firm shortly.

With more-sensitive tests, perchlorate quickly turned up in several water

supplies in Southern California. In 1997, the San Valley plume -- 11

years after its initial discovery -- had spread to a five-square-mile area

beneath about 250,000 residents, according to the San Basin Water

Master.

In nearby San Bernardino County, perchlorate plumes prompted closure of

dozens of wells, threatening some communities with water shortages. When local

Defense Department officials got wind of a plume in Redlands, Calif., they

circulated an internal " bellringer " report telling colleagues to keep the

information secret. The June 1997 report noted 250,000 residents could be

" adversely affected, " with " pregnant women and children " among the most at risk.

Yet, citing the local outrage at perchlorate's discovery in wells near

Sacramento several months earlier, the report warned of " far reaching

ramifications when the public learns of the situation. " Its conclusion: " Future

procurement programs could be adversely affected due to increased environmental

costs. "

Plumes Spread

In 1997, the Pentagon and several defense contractors, under EPA pressure,

launched the first toxicological studies to determine perchlorate's effects at

low exposure levels -- the same studies that ultimately led to the EPA's

reference dose this year. Meanwhile, perchlorate plumes popped up at defense

sites all across the country -- Texas and Utah in 1998, then Kansas, Missouri,

Nebraska, Iowa, West Virginia and land the next year.

When the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California found the

chemical in taps in Los Angeles, scientists traced the plume 400 miles up the

Colorado River to Lake Mead, above Hoover Dam. From there, they tracked the

plume 10 miles westward, up a desert riverbed called the Las Vegas Wash, to

Kerr-McGee Corp.'s giant ammonium perchlorate plant in , Nev.

The Navy built the plant in the 1940s to make perchlorate compounds for

the war. Inherited by Kerr-McGee in a 1967 merger, the facility spilled

thousands of pounds of perchlorate waste every day through the mid-1970s into

unlined evaporation ponds. The chemical leached into shallow groundwater over

the years, seeping into the Las Vegas Wash, the main drain into Lake Mead for

wastewater coming from Las Vegas.

Perchlorate was detected in Kerr-McGee's groundwater back in the

mid-1980s, and it was ignored. The company was then treating the aquifer for the

metal chromium-6, and reinjecting high levels of perchlorate-tainted water back

underground, say officials of Nevada's Division of Environmental Protection.

" The guidance on perchlorate was lacking, " says Corbett, director of

environmental affairs for Kerr-McGee, based in Oklahoma City.

Kerr-McGee is spending roughly $70 million to extract perchlorate, too,

but is catching only about half the 900 pounds a day seeping into the Las Vegas

Wash, EPA officials say. The company, which has filed a lawsuit seeking Pentagon

reimbursement for the cleanup costs, says it's adding new systems to capture

much more of the perchlorate. Still, so much perchlorate has already entered

Lake Mead that the levels below Hoover Dam -- all the way out to Los Angeles --

have hardly budged in five years, ranging from five to 10 ppb.

'Decades of Dilution'

" It will probably take decades for the dilution effect to flush it all

out, " says Zimmerman, an environmental regulator in Nevada.

In addition to slaking thirsts across the Southwest, the Colorado River

water irrigates 95% of America's winter lettuce crop, grown in Yuma, Ariz., and

California's Imperial Valley. The EPA says it still doesn't know if lettuce and

other vegetables accumulate perchlorate from irrigation water, but preliminary

indications aren't good. Tests on several vegetable samples from a

perchlorate-contaminated farm in Redlands found the plants concentrated

perchlorate from local irrigation water by an average factor of 65, according to

calculations by Sharp of the Environmental Working Group in Oakland,

Calif., one of the few nonprofit groups focused on perchlorate contamination.

That means the perchlorate dose in the vegetables was 65 times the amount in the

water.

" If people are eating it, on top of drinking it, the EPA will have to

lower its proposed drinking-water standard substantially, " Ms. Sharp says.

For now, that standard is only a recommendation. Enactment of a national

standard will have to wait until either the EPA or the defense establishment

prevails. Meanwhile, Aerojet and Lockheed Corp. are already spending

hundreds of millions of dollars to extract perchlorate from aquifers they

polluted in California, with much of it being reimbursed by the Pentagon.

Lester thinks it's too little, too late to help her. She grew up on

Rancho Cordova's perchlorate plume, near the Voetsch family, and fell sick with

Graves' disease at age 15. Now 20, she wants to become a large-animal

veterinarian, but is still enfeebled by skin problems, muscle pains and other

complications of her disease. She blames perchlorate and had joined another

class-action suit, but she heard this month that the law firm is dropping her

case.

" It doesn't seem like the government cares very much about this problem, "

she says. " It's not like perchlorate is killing people. It's slow. "

Write to Waldman at peter.waldman@....

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Updated December 16, 2002 2:05 p.m. EST

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