Various sources of Dioxin

The chemical 2,3,7,8 –TCDD belonging to the dioxin family of chemicals has the unsavoury reputation of being labelled ‘the most toxic chemical on Earth’.
Certain forms of dioxin are created naturally, through forest fires and volcanoes but the larger bulk of the chemical is primarily produced as a by-product of modern day manufacturing processes. It is a contaminant that is created during the manufacture of chlorine containing products such as wood preservatives, pesticides and it is a by-product of the paper bleaching process. It is also created during a variety of burning processes such as rubbish incineration and the burning of fossil fuels.

Simply put this chemical is a by-product of 21st century urban life.

 

Other forms of dioxin are widely used in domestic environments, where they are used in homes to control weeds in lawns and gardens.
Also 2,4,5-T was one of the active ingredients in the herbicide family known as Agent Orange that was used to spray 3.6 million acres of Jungle during the Vietnam War.

 

The dangers of Dioxin

Initial lab tests on a variety of animals showed dioxin to be a lethal carcinogen. It was, for instance a thousand times more poisonous to guinea pigs than arsenic. It also gained some notoriety when in 1997, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) a part of the WHO, classed 2,3,7,8-TCDD as a group 1 carcinogen meaning that it was a known human carcinogen. Also a recent study carried out in July 2002 has linked dioxin with an increased incidence of breast cancer.
In light of this the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suspended the use of 2,4,5-T for most purposes including their use in herbicides.
But more delicate experiments revealed that real dangers of dioxin. While it took usually large doses of dioxin to impair the reproductive systems of adult rats, a number of groundbreaking experiments discovered that extremely small doses of dioxin did long-term damage to the reproductive systems of males exposed in the womb.
A single small dose of dioxin on the fifteenth day of pregnancy in rats, proved to be devastating. Male pups born to mothers given dioxin showed noticeable abnormalities in their reproductive organs when they grew up and showed sperm count reductions as low as 56%.
Dioxin was an endocrine disruptor.

 

Human exposure to Dioxin

We incorporate dioxin into our bodies through various routes. The chemical is so ubiquitous that nearly everything we interact with could potential contain trace amounts of dioxin.
But the major source of dioxin comes through out diet. It bioaccumulates in the food chain and it is fat-soluble. According to a recent study most North Americans obtain more than 90% of their dioxin load from meat and dairy products and a staggering 23% from milk alone.

 

The potential of Dioxin

Dioxin acts like a powerful hormone capable of producing very strong, oestrogen-like effects at very low doses – doses that are very close to those found in the human population.
Dioxin further highlights the dangers of the pollution costs of the modern world. Not only are the chemicals that we produce a danger to us, but the by-products created during their manufacture has also found its way into our bodies.
Dioxin is a very dangerous chemical for a number of reasons. It is an endocrine disruptor of unknown potential, like PCB’s and DDT. However, unlike the other two chemicals its production cannot be so easily stopped. It cannot be banned. Dioxin is the type of chemical that we’ve always feared. The type that isn’t deliberately created for some purpose but one that is created as a consequence of our activities. To stop producing dioxin we have to stop the processes that underlie modern urban life.
How can we stop the burning of fossil fuels, that we need so urgently for electricity? How can we stop burning the wastes that we produce in our cities? How else can we rapidly break them down?