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...EPA 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...
...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...
According to sources familiar with drafts of the EPA report, it will say that dioxin remains a serious potential threat to human health and that possible links between the chemical and health problems, among them reproductive ills, should be further explored. "This study ranks with the Surgeon General's pronouncement that smoking causes lung cancer," says Sierra Club pollution expert George Colling, prematurely and hyperbolically, in the latest issue of the organization's monthly newspaper. And Peter deFur of the Environmental Defense Fund predicts that the document will lead to much tighter regulations, and in some cases even...
...little greater than the 5 or 10 nanograms of dioxin and comparable chemicals found in a typical kilogram of human tissue. It is not surprising that these compounds are so biologically active, since they are metabolized in a fashion similar to natural chemicals. Says Linda Birnbaum of the EPA's Health Effects Research Laboratory, who was one of the driving forces behind the agency's decision to study dioxin: "You name almost every hormone system in the body, and dioxin interacts with it. And when you're dealing with hormones, they all talk to each other. When you ring...
...Federal Government. Last month the EPA proposed the first nationwide emissions standards for mowers, garden tractors and other gas- powered garden machinery. The regulations go into effect next year, and by 2003 they are expected to reduce hydrocarbon emissions produced by such equipment 32% and carbon-monoxide emissions...