Word: dioxins
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Overseas, they have been asking them for some time. In recent years Europeans have become increasingly jumpy about bad food--and with good reason. Since the outbreak of mad-cow disease in 1996, the appearance of dioxin-contaminated Belgian chickens last spring and the later recall of contaminated cans of Coca-Cola in France and the Benelux nations, health officials have grown fussier about what their citizens consume--raising the doubts about GM food even higher...
...first the 500 Missouri residents polled responded positively to the move until polltakers suggested that an accident there could be more deadly than Times Beach, the Missouri town vacated 12 years ago because of its dioxin-laced soil. Suddenly, the pollsters found opponents outnumbering supporters nearly 2 to 1. Although labeled "privileged and confidential," copies of the $5,000 telephone survey are mysteriously ending up in the hands of reporters and environmentalists in both Alabama and Missouri...
Obviously, instead of searching the Bests for this year's perfect metaphor, we should be studying the Worsts, some of which we have also identified. The Environment rubric "A Little Is Too Much" refers to the discovery that even trace amounts of dioxin can be harmful. Doesn't it also apply to the year as a whole? A little O.J. is too much; even a trace amount of Newt Gingrich goes a long way; a mere grain of Forrest Gump is dangerous. In the cases of love, valour and compassion, of course, too much would still have been too little...
...this is a big but -- some species are more sensitive to dioxin than others. Just because rats and fish are affected in certain ways does not necessarily mean that humans will have comparable reactions. And doses that harm animals are not necessarily large enough to damage people. On the other hand, humans soak up many different chemicals, and the results may be cumulative...
Whatever the impact of pollutants on men and women, solid evidence is hard to come by. Even when a cause-and-effect relationship is established, as in major industrial accidents, the data are confusing. In the years after a large dioxin release in 1976 in Seveso, Italy, for example, the incidence of leukemias, lymphomas and soft-tissue cancers in men and gall-bladder and bile- duct cancers in women rose -- but breast and endometrial cancers in women actually went down. Possible reason: dioxin may sometimes interfere with the hormone system in beneficial ways...