Word: dioxins
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...LeMunyon of Cedar Springs called in investigators. They discovered that cattle in his herd, and those on at least seven other farms in the state, have been ingesting a wood preservative called pentachlorophenol (PCP)-probably when the animals licked the sides of their feed bins. Because the preservative contains dioxin, a substance related to the highly toxic chemical that has made the Italian town of Seveso uninhabitable, state officials banned sales of PCP and quarantined suspect cattle. No PCP-contaminated milk has reached the state's consumers. But some stores in Michigan have begun advertising that they sell only...
...Environmental Protection Agency, however, is more concerned about a contaminant that often appears as an impurity in manufactured 2,4,5-T -dioxin, which one EPA scientist has called "by far the most toxic product known to mankind." Small animals have been killed and birth defects caused in rats by dioxin concentrations of less than one part per billion-lethal levels so minute that researchers have trouble measuring them. Because of this experimental difficulty, the EPA says it still lacks sufficient evidence to press for a ban on 2,4,5-T. But, using a newly developed method of analysis...
...Dioxin forms during the manufacture of 2, 4, 5-T, a chemical in the military herbicide arsenal known as "agent orange." "Dioxin is 100 times more poisonous than the most powerful nerve gas," Meselson said...
They found that dioxin is especially dangerous because of its stability and cumulative toxicity, Meselson said. "As a result of these properties, the poison may pass down the food chain until eventually a human could eat an animal with a high accumulated level of dioxin," he noted...
...Dioxin has caused birth defects and death in animals, and Meselson said that there have been scattered reports in South Vietnam of fatal herbicide poisoning. In addition, the five scientists found that in some areas in South Vietnam, after herbicide spraying, the rate of still births doubled...