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Ryan Bodanyi 05/27/04

Reader opinon on Midland Daily News article Residents pack MCFTA to hear dioxin answers

Date: May, 27 2004 Although I understand the concern about property values, the fault lies at Dow's doorstep, not the DEQ's. It's Dow's contamination and the fact is, if you don't clean it up it'll still be there, to poison future generations of people and children. And as regards the health impacts of dioxin, it's worth noting the opinion of Dr. Linda Birnbaum, Director of the EPA's Environmental Toxicology Division and one of the world's leading experts on dioxin. She has many things to say about dioxin, both here: http://www.gmasw.com/diox1993.htm and here: http://www.trwnews.net/bb1202.htm, but one passage struck me among too many to quote (from the first link):

"Dioxin is a carcinogen. There are at least 18 studies in mammals, all of which are positive. You may have heard that dioxin is a tumour promoter, and not a carcinogen, because it does not directly interact with the DNA. I think we start to dance on the heads of pins because when I am saying dioxin is a carcinogen here, if you feed animals in long-term studies without adding any known initiator, dioxin by itself still causes an increase in tumours. It does not cause only one type of tumour, it causes tumours at multiple sites. It causes it in both males and females, and it has been detected in rats, mice and hamsters. In addition, work from the U.S. EPA laboratory has indicated that dioxin causes increases of tumours in medaka, at multiple sites and short latency and at high incidence."

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