Word: dioxins
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...controversy did not die down, however. Veterans groups continued to blame the dioxin-tainted herbicide for everything from birth defects to degenerative nerve diseases. After a federal judge ruled that the lack of scientific evidence meant the government was not liable for any part of a $180 million award from a class-action suit, advocates pressed their case with Congress and the media...
...however, researchers have developed exquisitely sensitive techniques for sniffing out compounds. Today these tests can detect one part per quintillion -- roughly the same as a tablespoon of liquid in all the Great Lakes combined. At that level of analysis, laboratory studies would probably reveal that virtually all food contains dioxin, for example, because small amounts of the toxic substance are released by volcanoes and picked up through the soil. Yet there is no flexibility in the Delaney Clause to compensate for such a phenomenal increase in scientific capability...
...governor, Clinton frequently ignored calls by environmentalists to challenge EPA decisions in cases of toxic-waste management, water quality and wilderness protection. Jacksonville, located 12 miles north of Little Rock, is home to three Superfund sites that contain high levels of dioxin and other toxic industrial chemicals that have been seeping into groundwater and soil and environmental groups challenge Clinton's conclusions that these sites do not pose a significant health problem...
Marilyn Leistner doesn't believe scientists anymore -- at least not the ones who once denounced dioxin but now downplay its dangers. Leistner was the last mayor of Times Beach, Mo., the town of 2,400 that the U.S. government evacuated and closed down in 1982 because it was contaminated with dioxin, considered by many to be one of the most fearsome of chemicals. The mayor saw dioxin's toxic effects all too clearly: the elderly forced out of their homes and into retirement centers, people so paranoid that every common illness was assumed to be dioxin poisoning, neighbors quarreling...
Well, no. It was not so much the chemical that caused the chaos as it was a questionable government judgment about the risks of dioxin. Now that some scientists are asserting -- 10 years too late -- that the concentrations of dioxin present at Times Beach were not harmful, the dispossessed residents, and the public in general, have every right to be confused...