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What is dioxin?

Dioxin is one of the most toxic chemicals known. A draft report released for public comment in September 1994 by the US Environmental Protection Agency clearly describes dioxin as a serious public health threat. The public health impact of dioxin may rival the impact that DDT had on public health in the 1960's. According to the EPA report, not only does there appear to be no "safe" level of exposure to dioxin, but levels of dioxin and dioxin-like chemicals have been found in the general US population that are "at or near levels associated with adverse health effects." The EPA report confirmed that dioxin is a cancer hazard to people; that exposure to dioxin can also cause severe reproductive and developmental problems (at levels 100 times lower than those associated with its cancer causing effects); and that dioxin can cause immune system damage and interfere with regulatory hormones.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer [IARC] --part of the World Health Organization --announced February 14, 1997, that the most potent dioxin, 2,3,7,8-TCDD, is a now considered a Class 1 carcinogen, meaning a "known human carcinogen."

Dioxin is a general term that describes a group of hundreds of chemicals that are highly persistent in the environment. The most toxic compound is 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin or TCDD. The toxicity of other dioxins and chemicals like PCBs that act like dioxin are measured in relation to TCDD. Dioxin is formed as an unintentional by-product of many industrial processes involving chlorine such as waste incineration, chemical and pesticide manufacturing and pulp and paper bleaching. Dioxin was the primary toxic component of Agent Orange, was found at Love Canal in Niagara Falls, NY and was the basis for evacuations at Times Beach, MO and Seveso Italy.

Where does dioxin come from?

What health effects are related to exposure to dioxin and dioxin-like compounds?

• Sperm count in men worldwide has dropped to 50% of what it was 50 years ago.
• The incidence of testicular cancer has tripled in the last 50 years, and prostate cancer has doubled.
• Endometriosis - the painful growth outside the uterus of cells that normally line the uterus - -which was formerly a rare condition, now afflicts 5 million American women.
• In 1960, a woman's chance of developing breast cancer during her lifetime was one in 20. Today the chances are one in eight.

How are we exposed to dioxin?

In EPA's dioxin report, they refer to dioxin as hydrophobic. This means that dioxin, when it settles on water bodies, will avoid the water and find a fish to go in to. The same goes for other wildlife. Dioxin will find animals to go in to, working its way to the top of the food chain.

Men have no ways to get rid of dioxin other than letting it break down according to its chemical half-lives. Women, on the other hand, have two ways which it can exit their bodies:

• It crosses the placenta... into the growing infant;
• It is present in the fatty breast milk, which is also a route of exposure which doses the infant, making breast-feeding for non-vegetarian mothers quite hazardous.

Chart from EPA Dioxin Reassessment Summary 4/94 - Vol. 1, p. 37
(Figure II-5. Background TEQ exposures for North America by pathway)

Where can I get EPA's reports on dioxin?

EPA's Scientific Advisory Board has completed its reassessment of dioxin.

To get copies of the dioxin report, contact Sam Rondberg at the EPA at (202) 260-2559.

The final final report issued by the Health and Exposures Panels of the Science Advisory Board regarding the dioxin reassessment is now available. Get your copy by calling the SAB at: 202-260-8414, or fax: 202-260-1889.

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