On September 13, 1994, the US Environmental Protection Agency released its draft reassessment of dioxin compounds. The term "dioxin compounds" includes not only the most potent dioxin (often called TCDD) but also dioxin-like compounds such as certain dioxins, furans and PCBs. Approximately 90% of our dioxin burden is provided by these dioxin-like compounds and only 10% by TCDD.
The draft report demonstrates the profound potency of dioxin and dioxin-like compounds, and the astonishing range of their toxic effects. That, however, is the easy part. What is much more difficult is to halt the production, use and incineration of chlorinated compounds, which involves political action and change.
Although written in a dry, sometimes unnecessarily technical manner, the reassessment information is terrifying. The thousand-page report includes the following findings:
1. Current, average levels of dioxin are causing damage.
The average amounts of dioxin compounds that humans and wildlife in industrialised countries are now carrying in their bodies cause changes in hormone levels, increased production of certain enzymes and changes in cell function, and create a new human cancer risk ranging from 1 in 1000 to 1 in 10,000. In other words, average levels of dioxin contamination are harming people and wildlife.
(Dioxin compounds are carried by the air, water and animals throughout the world, because most dioxin compounds are extraordinarily persistent and build up in the food chain, in the fats of animals.)
While the EPA refers to this contamination as "background" levels of dioxin, tissues of humans frozen from 100 years ago contain almost no dioxin. These current "background" levels are the direct result of chlorine-using industries (including the pesticide industry), which came into existence in the 1920s. Most pesticides are chlorinated and/or manufactured using chlorinated compounds.
2. Those exposed to higher than average dioxin levels are experiencing even more damage.
Some people (and wildlife) have what the EPA calls "special" exposures. These groups include certain occupational groups (e.g., in chlorine-using and incineration industries), people living near dioxin-emitters (e.g., chlorine-using pulp mills, medical waste incinerators burning chlorinated materials), nursing infants and subsistence fishers.
Dioxin compounds cause several types of cancer, disrupt the orderly growth of organs in embryos and irreversibly impair how the organs function, kill embryos, reduce fertility, cause abnormalities in and reduce the size of male sexual organs, cause the immune system to be over-active in some cases and in other cases suppress the immune system.
Immune system impairment decreases the ability of a person to resist viruses, bacteria, parasites and cancer. Dioxin compounds may increase risk of diabetes and increase endometriosis in women.
3. The main route of dioxin contamination is food.
In the USA, people receive almost 90% of their dioxin contamination from eating dioxin-contaminated milk, dairy products, beef, pork and chicken. The terrestrial food chain becomes contaminated primarily by dioxin compounds that settle out of the air from incineration of chlorinated materials.
Ironically, hospital waste incineration is listed by the EPA as the largest source of airborne dioxin compounds in the US, and municipal waste incineration as the second. The EPA states that together, these two sources produce about 90% of air emissions of dioxin, although it has monitored very few incinerators.
The draft report does not mention that the materials being incinerated include such products as chlorinated plastics, PVC products, white paper, pesticides and solvents from Monsanto, Dow and other chlorine-producing and chlorine-using corporations.
Now that the EPA draft reassessment is out, the chlorine and waste incineration industries would like us to debate further exactly how much dioxin causes exactly which types of damage by exactly which mechanisms.
However, more risk assessment of dioxin is not what is needed at this point — 15 years ago, research showed that dioxin caused miscarriages in monkeys at one part per trillion parts body weight. What is needed is for corporations, businesses and consumers to stop producing and using chlorinated chemicals; almost no chlorine use is currently essential. Until the production and use of chlorine compounds and incineration of chlorinated materials are eliminated, the killing and damage will continue.
[Pesticide Action Network Updates Service.]