Like other perchlorates, this salt is a strong oxidizer when the solid is heated at high temperature although it usually reacts very slowly in solution with reducing agents or organic substances.

This colorless crystalline solid is a common oxidizer used in fireworks, ammunition percussion caps, explosive primers, and is used variously in propellants, flash compositions, stars, and sparklers.

[9] For a commercial use, potassium perchlorate is mixed 50/50 with potassium nitrate to fabricate Pyrodex, a black powder substitute, and when not compressed within a muzzle loading firearm or in a cartridge, burns at a sufficiently slow rate to prevent it from being categorized with the black powder as a "low explosive", and to demote it as "flammable" material.

Perchlorate ions, a common water contaminant in the USA due to the aerospace industry, has been shown to reduce iodine uptake and thus is classified as a goitrogen.

In another related study were subjects drank just 1 litre of perchlorate-containing water per day at a concentration of 10 ppm, i.e. daily 10 mg of perchlorate ions were ingested, an average 38% reduction in the uptake of Iodine was observed.

[16] This may well be attributable to sufficient daily exposure, or intake, of stable iodine-127 among these workers and the short 8 hr biological half life of perchlorate in the body.

[17] So, perchlorate administration could represent a possible alternative to iodide tablets distribution in case of a large-scale nuclear accident releasing important quantities of iodine-131 in the atmosphere.

As for the stable iodide intake to rapidly saturate the thyroid gland before it accumulates radioactive iodine-131, a careful cost-benefit analysis has to be first done by the nuclear safety authorities.

So, the decision of perchlorate, or stable iodine, administration cannot be left to the individual initiative and falls under the authority of the government in case of a major nuclear accident.