Re: Belgian dioxin scare health risks "unlikely"

["Dian R. Deevey" <diandv@taconic.net>]

Is there any information about other possible routes of administration of dioxins/furans to humans other than eating
contaminated foods?  I am thinking of the large amounts of these compounds that can attach to very fine particulates produced
by the combustion process, and be inhaled.  Particulate matter  less than 2.5 microns in diameter enters deep into the lung
and remains there indefinitely.  I am told that there are few mechanisms for removing these things ever from healthy lungs,
and very few for smokers and those with impaired lung function.

Dian Deevey

Alan Watson wrote:

> 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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