Re: dioxin testing in milk

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

  > From: talia l javid
  > i am doing a report/experiments on dioxin for school.  is there 
  > any way, or is it impossible to test dioxin amounts in different 
  > brands of milk (or meat or anything)?  any information on this 
  > would help me big time!  
  
  You have already been pointed to a couple of different references, but
  most of those cover specific food groups, not brands of the same group.
  
  It is possible to test just about anything, including milk and meat,
  for dioxin.  It is done all the time.  However, the testing is
  generally expensive.  A dioxin/furan analysis for a single sample of
  milk will run between $1000 to $2500 depending on the laboratory doing
  the analysis and how quickly you want the results.  Most of this
  expense is a result of the cost of the equipment needed to run the
  analysis, a high-resolution gas chromatograph and mass spectrometer,
  the extraction process necessary to get a sample, and the technical
  expertise needed to the do all this.  Very few labs in the United
  States test routinely for dioxins; those that do generally have a large
  backlog of work (two to three weeks worth).
  
  A problem that may impact your results is that different brands of milk
  get their milk from a large number of different areas or farms.  So the
  same brand of milk may have widely varying concentrations of
  dioxin/furans depending on where in the state or country it came from.
  
  Sam McClintock
  scmcclintock@ipass.net