Word: dioxins
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...medical detectives at the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control have a well-earned reputation for relentlessly tracking down the causes of such mysterious ailments as Legionnaires' disease. But the agency's record is in danger of being blemished by a bitter controversy over Agent Orange, a defoliant containing dioxin, a suspected carcinogen...
...started a battle that would rage long after the last American helicopter left Saigon. Over the past 13 years, some 35,000 Viet Nam veterans have vigorously pressed Washington to compensate them for injuries and illnesses that they believe were caused by exposure to Agent Orange. The herbicide contains dioxin, a potent poison that causes cancer in laboratory animals. But Government officials have delayed paying most claims, pointing to a lack of scientific proof that Agent Orange hurt the soldiers. Last week researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control issued a report designed to help resolve the controversy...
...surprising that a new generation of incinerators is developing. But NIMBY operates here too: some Minneapolis residents have mounted strong protests against a burner under construction near the downtown area. Like anti-landfill sentiment, opposition to incinerators has a reasoned basis. Environmentalist Barry Commoner insists that incinerators actually synthesize dioxin, a highly poisonous substance. True, scrubbers and other filters can eliminate dioxin from smoke, but not its concentrated form in the ash residue, causing a prickly problem of how and where to get rid of that hazardous waste...
...solemn controversy. Last year a local physician noticed an unusually high number of cancer-related deaths in the tiny riverside hamlet of Hartford (pop. 300), whose people have always been accustomed to eating fish from the Pigeon River. In May, after EPA tests detected tiny traces of cancer-causing dioxin in fish from the Pigeon, the survivors of one husband and wife, who died of cancer within a month of ! each other, filed a $6 million wrongful-death suit against Champion. The dioxin controversy may tempt Cocke County to take a second look at the compromise plan to improve...
...longest jury trial in U.S. history -- a 44-month marathon -- finally ended last week in Belleville, Ill. The long-suffering twelve-member circuit court jury found Monsanto Co. guilty of failing to warn the town of Sturgeon, Mo., about the risk of a 1979 spill containing the toxic chemical dioxin. The jury ordered the chemical company to pay $16.2 million in damages, then left the courthouse to celebrate with Judge Richard Goldenhersh over margaritas and daiquiris at a nearby Mexican restaurant. Monsanto, meanwhile, announced that it will appeal...