It's Final: Dioxin Causes Cancer

By Tim King Dioxin causes cancer. And you eat it pretty much every day. That was the word from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in June. The EPA has studied dioxin until its chemists and statisticians became blue in the face. Two times the well intentioned agency came out with standards and claims regarding dioxin. Once agency officials even reported there was no acceptable limit for the dangerous toxin. But both times critics of the EPA sent the agency's scientists back to their labs wring their hands in distress. Their dioxin studies were flawed. But the third time's a charm. Dioxin causes cancer. There's not much wind left in the nay sayers. The argument is over. Now the argument may be about EPA's newest finding. Dioxins (there are more than 70 different dioxin compounds) are 10 times more toxic than agency scientists thought, the EPA said in the report it released in June. The quibblers are now going to hang their lab coats on that red herring. Let them. There's more important work to do than split hairs with scientific bean counters. Dioxin causes cancer. We've smeared it across the planet. It's in mother's milk whether those mother be human women in Tokyo or Mankato, Minnesota or polar bear mothers on the icy shores of Hudson Bay. And that, dear reader, is where the battle lies. If you care about what human mothers or bear mothers feed their babies you need to care about this dioxin thing. And, if you're a livestock or poultry farmer dioxin should cause your blood to run cold. Dioxin builds up in the fatty tissue of animals. According to the EPA humans who eat lots of animal products are 10 times more likely to get cancer from dioxin than humans that don't. Polar bears don't have dietary choices. Humans, as livestock farmers know well, do have choices. Dioxin contamination of livestock products - beef, pork, milk cheese, eggs, ect., could well become another heavy straw on the back of the farm camel. There's already a long list of reasons that have caused thousands of consumers to turn to vegetarianism. They hardly need another. Farmers and environmentalists seem to be on the same side on this issue. Listen to this: "A lot of people eat a fatty diet, and EPA is insinuating that Americans should cut back on fat," Monica Rhode with the Center for Health, Environment and Justice in Falls Church, Virginia, told the Los Angeles Times on June 13th. "This should not be about a fat free diet for Americans but a dioxin free diet for polluters."

The copyright of the article It's Final: Dioxin Causes Cancer in Food Safety is owned by Tim King. Permission to republish It's Final: Dioxin Causes Cancer in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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