Word: dioxins
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...environmentalists say dioxin and scores of other chemicals pose a threat to human fertility -- as scary an issue as any policymakers have faced. But in the absence of conclusive evidence, what are policymakers to do? What measures can they take to handle a problem whose magnitude is unknown...
...raises anew the dangers of dioxin, the agency needs to communicate its findings to the public in a calm and clear fashion. No one is eager to touch off the kind of hysteria that preceded the government's decision to move against Alar, the growth regulator once used by apple growers. When celebrities like Meryl Streep spoke out against Alar and the press fanned public fears, some schools and parents rushed to pluck apples out of the mouths of children. Yet all this happened before scientists had reached any consensus about Alar's dangers...
Rhetoric about dioxin may push the same kind of emotional buttons. The chemical becomes relatively concentrated in fat-rich foods -- including human breast milk. Scientists estimate that a substantial fraction of an individual's lifetime burden of dioxin -- as much as 12% -- is accumulated during the first year of life. Nonetheless, the benefits of breast-feeding infants, the EPA and most everyone else would agree, far outweigh the hazards...
John Graham, director of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, suggests that people should strive to keep the perils posed by dioxin in perspective and remember other threats that are more easily averted. "Phantom risks and real risks compete not only for our resources but also for our attention," Graham observes. "It's a shame when a mother worries about toxic chemicals, and yet her kids are running around unvaccinated and without bicycle helmets...
...again, off-again dioxin scare is, well, on-again. An Environmental Protection Agency report says the chemical, in all likelihood, causes cancer and even in trace amounts it may put the immune, reproductive and developmental systems at risk. "We've gone through a period in which the public has pooh-poohed other potential dangers," says TIME senior editor Charles Alexander. "People have said we've over-reacted to alar and radon and asbestos. This report goes against that trend. It says that dioxin really is dangerous...