DIOXIN
Almost all disposable menstrual products are bleached with chlorine compounds. The bleaching process is used to help make the products appear more white, giving the image of 'cleanliness.' It serves no other purpose. Tampons are not sterile. This process causes the production of a group of chemicals known as dioxins. Some of the dioxin is retained in the paper pulp, and some runs off and becomes a pollutant in the ecosystem.
Pulp mill polluter blocks results of EPA tests
FDA - Dioxin and Rayon Concerns
What health effects are related to exposure to dioxin and
dioxin-like compounds?
Where can I get EPA's reports on dioxin?
Totally biased thus far? Here's the equal opportunity corner
The Other Side Speaks Out - The FDA Responds: Tampons and Asbestos, Dioxin, &Toxic Shock Syndrome
from: http://www.enviroweb.org/
Where does dioxin come from?
Dioxin pollution is affiliated with paper mills which use chlorine bleaching in their
process and with the production of Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) plastics. Dioxin is
also formed by burning chlorine-based chemical compounds with hydrocarbons. The major
source of dioxin in the environment (95%) comes from incinerators burning chlorinated wastes.
top
What is dioxin?
Dioxin is one of the most toxic chemicals known. A draft report released for public comment in
September 1994 by the US Environmental Protection Agency clearly describes dioxin as a
serious public health threat. The public health impact of dioxin may rival the impact that DDT
had on public health in the 1960's. According to the EPA report, not only does there appear to
be no "safe" level of exposure to dioxin, but levels of dioxin and dioxin-like chemicals have
been found in the general US population that are "at or near levels associated with adverse
health effects." The EPA report confirmed that dioxin is a cancer hazard to people; that exposure
to dioxin can also cause severe reproductive and developmental problems (at levels 100 times
lower than those associated with its cancer causing effects); and that dioxin can cause immune
system damage and interfere with regulatory hormones.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer [IARC] --part of the World Health
Organization --announced February 14, 1997, that the most potent dioxin, 2,3,7,8-TCDD, is a
now considered a Class 1 carcinogen, meaning a "known human carcinogen."
Dioxin is a general term that describes a group of hundreds of chemicals that are highly
persistent in the environment. The most toxic compound is 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin
or TCDD. The toxicity of other dioxins and chemicals like PCBs that act like dioxin are
measured in relation to TCDD. Dioxin is formed as an unintentional by-product of many
industrial processes involving chlorine such as waste incineration, chemical and pesticide
manufacturing and pulp and paper bleaching. Dioxin was the primary toxic component of Agent
Orange, was found at Love Canal in Niagara Falls, NY and was the basis for evacuations at
Times Beach, MO and Seveso Italy.
top
What health effects are related to exposure to dioxin and
dioxin-like compounds?
Sperm count in men worldwide has dropped to 50% of what it was 50 years ago.
The incidence of testicular cancer has tripled in the last 50 years, and prostate cancer has
doubled.
Endometriosis - the painful growth outside the uterus of cells that normally line the uterus -
-which was formerly a rare condition, now afflicts 5 million American women.
In 1960, a woman's chance of developing breast cancer during her lifetime was one in 20.
Today the chances are one in eight.
top
How are we exposed to dioxin?
The major sources of dioxin are in our diet. Since dioxin is fat-soluble, it bioaccumulates up the
food chain and it is mainly (97.5%) found in meat and dairy products (beef, dairy products,
milk, chicken, pork, fish and eggs in that order... see chart below). In fish alone, these toxins
bioaccumulate up the food chain so that dioxin levels in fish are 100,000 times that of the
surrounding environment.
In EPA's dioxin report, they refer to dioxin as hydrophobic. This means that dioxin, when it
settles on water bodies, will avoid the water and find a fish to go in to. The same goes for other
wildlife. Dioxin will find animals to go in to, working its way to the top of the food chain.
Men have no ways to get rid of dioxin other than letting it break down according to its chemical
half-lives. Women, on the other hand, have two ways which it can exit their bodies:
It crosses the placenta... into the growing infant;
It is present in the fatty breast milk, which is also a route of exposure which doses the
infant, making breast-feeding for non-vegetarian mothers quite hazardous.
top
Where can I get EPA's reports on dioxin?
Much of this new research into the health effects of dioxin was undertaken in response to
industry challenges to EPA's findings on the toxicity of dioxin in 1991. Now, 3 years later,
dioxin was found to be more dangerous than ever. Copies of the EPA Health Assessment report
may be obtained by contacting:
CERI/ORD Publications Center
USEPA
26 W. Martin Luther King Drive
Cincinnati, OH 45268
(513) 569-7562; fax (513) 569-7566.
They have online versions of some of the reports at: http://www.epa.gov/nceawww1/dioxin.htm
EPA's Scientific Advisory Board has completed its reassessment of dioxin.
To get copies of the dioxin report, contact Sam Rondberg at the EPA at (202) 260-2559.
The final final report issued by the Health and Exposures Panels of the Science Advisory Board
regarding the dioxin reassessment is now available. Get your copy by calling the SAB at:
202-260-8414, or fax: 202-260-1889.
