Re: dioxin fingerprints

["Sam McClintock" <scmcclintock@ipass.net>]

  > From: Jon Campbell <jon@cqs.com>
  > Now, dioxin formation is another matter. Anytime you
  > have free chlorine around organics there is the opportunity
  > to create dioxin. 
  
  This is incorrect; dioxin formation is generally considered a forced
  reaction.  Otherwise the oceans would be a wealth of dioxins and
  uninhabitable.  
  
  > I forgot to mention. Again, as in the case of chlorine
  > water treatment, there is no controversy about the
  > presence of dioxin in household wastewater, but much
  > about where it comes from...
  
  Totally agreed.  Almost impossible to eliminate trace contamination in
  a lot of things and will be for generations to come - it is getting
  better, but dioxins and PCBs have invaded about every piece of
  biosphere on this planet.  Now whether it is *formed* at the house is
  another subject altogether, though.
  
  Again, I am a little away from my expertise (which centers on air, not
  wastewater).  However, I did bother to start looking through some
  reference material.  One of the more recent articles in Chemosphere had
  an abstract that basically said that chlorination at the POTW does
  *not* lead to an increase in dioxins (Chemosphere 1997
  Mar;34(5-7):989-997).  I also acknowledge this is just one article and
  far from the whole story.  I'll be making a few efforts at the library,
  pull out full texts of reference material, let you do the same, we'll
  see where it goes.
  
  Sam McClintock
  scmcclintock@ipass.net