[Dioxin-l] dioxin in burgers
Jon Campbell
Jon.Campbell@MetraTech.com
Tue, 4 Jan 2000 12:26:59 -0500
Andy,
Welcome to the list. Your credentials are terrific. I wish I had them -
I am merely a popularizer, a distiller of credible and documented technical
information for the general public, and cannot therefore be an expert
witness. I am a software engineer by trade, trained in physics.
I would be personally interested in seeing your publications on mercury
and atrazine, as those are of keen interest to me because of two threads of
my own activism: atrazine because it is the one of the most used herbicides,
and mercury because of its proliferation from incinerator stacks and in
people's mouths because of mercury amalgam fillings.
If you do risk assessments, you might be interested in Peter Montague's
publication on the issue, Rachel's #519: Ethical Hazards of Risk Assessment,
http://www.rachel.org It's actually quite profound and fun to read. Click on
Rachel's, then on Browse back issues, scroll to #519.
As for being a professional in the industry: some of our most active
contributors are consultants who do assessments, testing, etc. Others are
researchers and university professors and activists (mostly people like me,
whose work life is different than their life work).
This list is open to anyone interested in the issue of dioxin and
hormone disruption. The people I object to (and I think the feeling is
pretty widespread among members of the list) are those who object to the
revelation of the truth of the pollution and contamination that is
prevalent, or minimize it, without any data to back them up. Michael Oros
and David Bell joined the list and immediately began denouncing people for
posting the kind of information that we have been sharing for several years
on the list, and their attitude appears to be that they think they are going
to "reform" how we express ourselves here. Our experience in the past is
that such people were industry PR types that joined the list expressly to
disrupt it, so their diatribes against several of us who have been on the
list for several years was suspicious, to say the least. I have come to the
conclusion that they are just plain misinformed. They are still "In The
Matrix" and perhaps their subscription will be a rude awakening to The Real
World (refs to the popular film The Matrix, a sci-fi film with profound
symbolism to our world).
Cheers and regards
Jon Campbell
-----Original Message-----
From: Andy Friedmann [mailto:derwuestenfuchs@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2000 11:37 AM
To: dioxin-l@lists.essential.org
Subject: RE: [Dioxin-l] dioxin in burgers
Jon,
Sorry about the misquote. I'll check out those
sources.
Given the recent discussion regarding people's
motives, etc. I feel I should tell you my background
and current interests/affiliation. My degrees are
from Hamilton College (BA, German) and from Dartmouth
Medical School (PhD, Physiology). Since graduate
school I've spent 5 years conducting ecotoxicological
research and have published some papers on mercury and
atrazine. For the past year and a half I've worked
for consulting firms, primarily doing risk assessments
on contaminated sites.
I consider myself an environmentalist (I recycle
advidly, teach my kids to respect the environment,
vote based on politicians environmental stances, etc.)
I try to view pollution from a "dose makes the
poison" perspective, but also realize that there can
be effects that we don't know about.
No one is paying me to spend time on this list. My
interest is in the exchange of information (for which
I have much too little time) that will allow us all to
get closer to the truth about dioxins. I like hearing
varying points of views on the dioxin issue and would
enjoy discussing them on the list.
However, because I am a consultant and my clients are
industry, I realize this might make a number of people
nervous or doubt my intentions. If this is the
majority view, I'll unsubscribe.
Let me say one more thing in my 'defense'. While
working with industry I do my best not to distort
facts and always give my honest opinion. If I feel
something is dangerous based on my knowledge of the
toxicology, I say so. I think of my job as acting as
an intermediary between government and industry --
both pulling in opposite directions.
Sincerely,
Andy
--- Jon Campbell <Jon.Campbell@MetraTech.com> wrote:
> Michael did not write this, Jon Campbell did.
>
> That figure is in the updated EPA Dioxin
> Reassessment (not yet published).
> The original data is in the 1994 EPA dioxin
> reassessment, and summarized in
> the book "Dying From Dioxin" by Lois Gibbs. At the
> time, the EPA max
> allowable dose was 0.006 picograms per kg of body
> weight, so a 70 kg person
> was supposed to have a max dose of 0.4 pg. That
> figure has been pushed up to
> 0.01 pg/kg , probably as a result of industry
> pressure.
>
> Jon Campbell
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andy Friedmann
> [mailto:derwuestenfuchs@yahoo.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2000 10:39 AM
> To: dioxin-l@lists.essential.org
> Subject: [Dioxin-l] dioxin in burgers
>
>
> Michael wrote:
>
> "A single McDonalds hamburger has 100 picograms of
> dioxin in it, the EPA max dosage is 0.7 picograms
> for
> an ADULT."
>
> Pretty upsetting if true. What's the source of this
> number?
>
> Andy
>
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