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EPA Finds Dioxin Not-So-Bad

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Message John Jonik

The US EPA recently released part-one of its dioxin report, the non-cancer part.   Even non-scientists can see glaring problems with this.   Here is link to the EPA's review of its several hundred page Update of Assessment for Dioxins.

EPA Updates Science Assessment for Dioxins / Air emissions of dioxins have decreased by 90 percent since the 1980s      http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/33bcba60ed25a9b1852579a700604ed7?OpenDocument

Just that short review raises many troubling questions:

>  EPA here says dioxins "naturally exist in the environment "...but it doesn't note that natural dioxins are extremely rare, like at deep sea vents and some volcanic sites. 

> This review ignores that previous EPA "Dioxin Re-Assessment" (June 2000) found dioxins to be "unlikely in nature", and overwhelmingly "anthropogenic"....man-made...industry made, a by-product of industrial chlorine....chlorine having been industrially gassed out of its natural chlorine dioxide.   This review didn't mention the word "chlorine"...which is like talking about bullets, but ignoring guns and gunmen.    Chlorine is very useful for some businesses (pesticides, pharms, plastics, petroleum, synthetics, paper, etc.), but that's only if the industries don't have to pay for the extensive human and environmental harms caused by chlorine-dioxin.    Benign alternatives exist, but they are not so profitable.

> This short review mentions food and water but doesn't mention that the June 2000 EPA dioxin material acknowledged presence of dioxins in cigarette smoke.    It didn't mention that non-tobacco chlorine parts of typical cigarette create the dioxin.      Search up "Muto Takazawa dioxins tobacco" to see what the EPA used as reference.   Since dioxin is unlikely in nature, the dioxin didn't come from scapegoated natural tobacco plants.  It came from the Dows, Bayers, Miles, and numerous chemical and pharmaceutical providers of tobacco pesticides, and from paper-pulp suppliers.  None indicted...so far.    To blame tobacco plants for "smoking-related" diseases is to perpetrate the old scam....to blame "acts of God" (nature), and primary victims, for every industrially-caused disease to come down the pike.

> EPA's "Dioxin Re-Assessment" corrected the myth that dioxins come from forest fires (as if dioxin is Nature's Fault), with acknowledgement  that dioxins in forest fire smoke do not come from the forests (trees, other plants, birds, etc.) but from air-borne industrial pollutants that have contaminated forests.   But here's the EPA, contradicting itself,  going back to blaming forest fires for dioxin.  

>  "Backyard burning of trash" ignores that this can only be chlorine-contaminated trash....bleached paper, plastics, wire insulation, etc.    People who burn trash in their yards (how extensive is that?) may know nothing of chlorine and dioxin.   To suggest that they are causes of dioxin in our environment (and in fatty tissues and etc.) is more scapegoating....a cold distraction from the chlorine interests and the sold-out government officials who allow and enable the whole situation. 

>  To blame "certain industrial activities" for dioxins in our environment is pretty feeble.  That may mean vehicle exhaust from a zillion tail-pipes, emissions from synthetic fabrics and plastics in homes and job sites and everywhere, chlorine pesticide residues in most cigarettes, chlorine-bleached paper on most cigarettes, municipal and industrial incinerators, dioxins relayed through non-organic meats and vegetables, and so on.

> "Most Americans have low level exposure to dioxins".   But this is about more than just exposure.  It's about body burden.    Scientists have reported for years that not "most" but everyone on earth now has dioxins in their system.   The EPA ignores that there is no possible safe level of dioxins, and that even "low level exposures" add up and bio-accumulate in fatty tissues.  Body burdens may not be so "low level".     Funny how anti- "smoking" crusaders co-opt (steal) the same long-used "no safe dose" slogan of anti-dioxin activists.    And funny that so many anti-smoking activists are part and parcel of chlorine interests....the very ones who work zealously (and globally) to prevent any discussion of chlorine in cigarettes and dioxin in the smoke (and in smokers).

>  EPA proudly works with the USDA...both being responsible for decades of dioxin-producing chlorine pesticides on crops, including the sixth-most pesticide intensive crop, tobacco.     The EPA and USDA do not want to hear cigarettes being more educationally described as  "Pesticide Pegs" or "Dioxin Dowels".   Neither does the FDA, charged with regulating tobacco.
  In spite of the notoriety of "smoking-related disease", and that inhalation of dioxin is the absolutely worst exposure path (because of high efficiency of the lungs)...the EPA does not prioritize, and barely mentions, the dioxin-in-cigarette-smoke issue.  It doesn't even insist on specific warning labels.   How many  EPA staff members and researchers are former, current, or future chlorine industry agents? 

>  EPA says it is interested in "reducing exposure to dioxin", but it continues to allow the widely-hated cigarette industry to contaminate typical cigarettes with dioxin-forming chlorine.  And that's despite many (if not most) so-called "smoking-related" diseases being identical to symptoms of dioxin exposures...many impossible to be caused by exposure to smoke from any natural plant, even "sinful" tobacco. 

>  This review doesn't mention dioxin's role in Love Canal, Times Beach, Agent Orange and other areas where dioxin problems were (and are) not exactly "insignificant".  There is no thought of "Never Again" here.

   But things aren't all bad.  Chlorine-dioxin has been maintaining endless lines of sick customers for health care industries, particularly cancer care and pharms, and their investors.   This atrocity wouldn't have been perpetrated for just money, would it?

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Long time activist in areas relating to industrial toxics, media content and control, death penalty, Mumia Abu-Jamal, hemp prohibition, civil rights, insurance influence in public governing, religious influence in public governing, unsafe foods, (more...)
 
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