Dioxin levels still high in U.S. food

[Guest guest]

Dioxin levels still high in U.S. food

JoAnn Guest

Nov 17, 2006 19:43 PST

 

ioxin levels still high in U.S. food

Study finds Americans eating 22 times the maximum dosage

Mike Tolson / Houston Chronicle 29mar01

http://www.mindfully.org/Food/Dioxin-Levels-Food.htm

 

Levels of toxic chemicals known as dioxins remain high in the U.S.

food supply even though they have declined in the environment, a new

study says.

 

In the first comprehensive study of common food samples from around

the country, scientists at the University of Texas School of Public

Health at Houston found no decline from test samples taken more than

a decade ago.

 

Through food alone, Americans are getting 22 times the maximum

dioxin exposure suggested by the U.S. Environmental Protection

Agency, the

study said. Among nursing infants, that level is 35 to 65 times the

recommended dosage.

 

" It means we still have to tighten up and clean up our environment

more than it is right now, " said Dr. Arnold Schecter, who directed

the study.

 

 

" We have to reduce the highly toxic, persistent chemicals in the

environment. I don't think that's saying anything too radical. "

 

Meat and dairy products are considered the biggest culprits. Dioxins

concentrate in animal fat, and the best way to avoid them is to eat

more fruits and vegetables.

 

" This is just one more reason for having less animal fats in our

diets, " Schecter said. " Blood samples from pure vegans, who consume

no animal

products, show that they have less dioxins in their bodies than

average Americans. "

 

People should drink low-fat milk and eat leaner meat, Schecter said.

Broiling was the most effective cooking method of reducing dioxins,

he added.

 

Dioxins are a family of 219 toxic chemicals found in the environment

mostly as a by-product of industrial processes such as smelting,

bleaching of paper pulp and manufacturing of some herbicides or

pesticides.

 

Occasional natural occurrences, such as volcanic eruptions or forest

fires , can also produce them.

 

These chemicals are often referred to as " repeat offenders " because

they belong to a pernicious class of organic pollutants that do not

dissolve

or lose their chemical stability.

 

Once introduced to the human body, their half-life is seven years.

 

The higher one goes in the food chain, the higher the level of

dioxins found.

 

Health effects of prolonged dioxin exposure include impairment of

immune, nervous and endocrine systems.

 

Chronic exposure of animals to dioxins has resulted in several types

of cancer.

 

Dioxins are now considered a known human carcinogen, Schecter said.

 

For the study, 110 food products were collected in 1997 in

supermarkets

in Atlanta, Chicago, Louisville, San Diego and Binghamton, N.Y.

Human milk was also studied to estimate infants' dioxin consumption.

 

Farm-raised freshwater fish had the highest levels of dioxin

contamination, far more than ocean fish.

 

This surprised Schecter's researchers until they learned that fish

farmers typically use animal feed.

 

" We're hoping that our work and that of other people will lead to

regulations that lower the levels in fish, " he said. " We need to

encourage fish farmers to use vegetable, not animal, feed. This has

already been done in some places. "

 

The UT study, published in the Journal of Toxicology and

Environmental

Health, is part of an ongoing effort by Schecter and his colleagues

to examine the extent and effect of dioxin exposure.

 

The good news, he said, is that the amount of dioxins showing up in

people's blood samples taken last year is declining.

 

He hopes that food samples collected this year will show a similar

decline in contamination.

 

The bad news is that dioxins last so long in people and in the

environment that the decline will be slow.

 

Dioxins are found throughout the world in air, soil, water and food,

with the highest concentrations in soils and sediments.

 

There is international agreement on the need to control dioxins.

However, extensive stores of waste industrial oils rich in dioxins

create a problem for long-term storage.

 

They are hard to dispose of without contaminating the environment.

 

There have been several incidents of food contamination. In 1997,

chicken, eggs and catfish in the southern United States were found

with

high dioxin levels.

 

The source turned out to be bentonite clay, an ingredient in animal

feed, which was traced to a contaminated bentonite mine.

 

High levels of dioxins also were reported in poultry and eggs in

Belgium. The source of contamination was believed to be animal feed.

 

 

JoAnn Guest

mrsjo-

www.geocities.com/mrsjoguest/Diets