[Dioxin-l] Open List?

[Ralph Ryder]

>>I have
>>conceeded that organo-halogens can be found in nature, but the hitch is to
>>what degree of presence compared to the plethora of anthropogenic
>>organo-halogens (both quantity and variety) now found in nature that were 
>>not
>>there one hundred years ago.
>

Barry Commoner Key note speaker, 2nd Citizens Dioxin Conference, St,
Louis 1994.

"...This proposal and the campaigns developed by Greenpeace and other
environmental organizations have already launched the issue of "banning
chlorine" into the domain of public debate. We have already heard the
replies from the industry and its friends. One argument, advanced by
the chemist G.W. Gribble, is that "[C]hlorine is as natural to our world
as carbon, oxygen and hydrogen." Of course that is true, but the point
is that chlorinated organic compounds are not so natural. They are rare
in living things; only about 600 such substances have been identified,
compared with tens of thousands of different organic substances made by
living things that are not chlorinated. Moreover, not a single
chlorinated organic compound has been identified as natural in mammals.
In Gribble’s compilation of 611 chlorinated (and other halogenated
organic) compounds produced by living things, there are numerous
examples from fungi, higher plants, algae, sponges, jellyfish, worms,
and other marine animals. There is exactly one entry under mammals -- a
chlorinated compound found in the urine of a group of cattle. Recently I
called the author of the paper cited by Gribble, Dr. K-C. Luk. He told
me that he had no way of knowing whether the chlorinated compound was a
natural metabolic product or was acquired by the cattle from the
environment. Given the huge amount of unnatural chlorinated organic
compounds that beset modern agriculture, I would bet on the environment. 
In fact, these data are very illuminating. It looks as though in the
early evolution of living things, a few organochlorine compounds were
included in their biochemical systems. But when the first mammals -- or
possibly vertebrates -- emerged, chlorine was abruptly excluded from
this new form of life. As a result, chlorinated organic compounds like
dioxin are incompatible with the distinctively complex hormonal systems
and developmental processes that are characteristic of vertebrates,
especially mammals. The chemical industry has violated this biological
taboo, and we are all paying dearly for this transgression -- for, in
the words of the IJC, it has created "the spectre of damaging the
integrity of our own species [and probably of other vertebrates as well]
and its entire environment." 
>

**************************************************************** 
Ralph Ryder
Communities Against Toxics
PO Box 29
Ellesmere Port
Cheshire UK
CH66 3TX
Email ralph@tcpublications.freeserve.co.uk
Tel/Fax 0151 339 5473
****************************************************************