Belgian dioxin scare health risks "unlikely"

[Alan Watson <alanwatson@gn.apc.org>]

But what if those eating eggs/ chicken were also fish or fish oil consumers?

-------------------------
Belgian dioxin scare health risks "unlikely"
ENDS Daily - 17/09/99
-------------------------
The crisis over dioxin contamination of Belgian livestock
that swept through Europe in June, carrying Belgium's
government with it (ENDS Daily 15 June) is "very
unlikelyÖ[to] cause adverse health effects on the general
population," a team of scientists has reported.  In a
letter to this week's edition of the scientific journal,
Nature, the scientists claim that it would require
consumption of 30-40 meals of highly contaminated chicken
or eggs to double the human body's burden of
polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) and dioxin.  "Even in such
an extreme case," the body levels achieved would be no more
than expected in someone regularly eating contaminated
seafood.  Based at Leuven University and the Belgian
agriculture ministry, the scientists estimate that a total
of 50kg of PCBs and 1g of dioxins were accidentally mixed
into the recycled fat that was then processed into animal
feed.  The note that the pattern of the contamination was
an "almost exact replica" of outbreaks of poultry poisoning
by polychlorinated compounds that occurred repeatedly in
the USA and Japan in the 1950s and 1970s.

Contacts:  Nature (http://www.nature.com), tel: +44 171 833
4000.  References: "Food contamination by PCBs and
dioxins," Nature, Vol. 410, pp 231-232.

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