#640: Chlorine Chemistry News

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Date: Thursday, March 04, 1999 10:09 PM

Subject: #640: Chlorine Chemistry News

>=======================Electronic Edition========================

>. .

>. RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY #640 .

>. ---March 4, 1999--- .

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>. CHLORINE CHEMISTRY NEWS .

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>

>CHLORINE CHEMISTRY NEWS

>

>Several new studies have implicated chlorinated chemicals in

>human disease, including breast cancer and tooth decay. Chlorine

>chemistry is clearly the premier example of humans adopting a

>new technology without thinking about the consequences.

>

>

>BREAST CANCER

>

>A recent study in Denmark reveals a relationship between breast

>cancer and the chlorinated pesticide dieldrin.[1] The

>prospective study examined blood taken in 1976 from 7712 women

>enrolled in the Copenhagen City Heart Study. In the following 17

>years, 268 of the women developed breast cancer.

>

>The blood samples drawn in 1976 were analyzed in 1993 for 46

>chlorinated chemicals, including 28 individual PCBs

>[polychlorinated biphenyls], and 18 other chlorinated compounds

>such as DDT, mirex, aldrin, dieldrin and others.[2] Of the

>compounds studied, only dieldrin was significantly elevated in

>the blood of women who developed breast cancer.

>Beta-hexachlorocyclohexane (beta-HCH) was also elevated in women

>with breast cancer, compared to those without breast cancer, but

>the finding was not statistically significant.

>

>In Denmark, about 14% of all women (one in seven) develop breast

>cancer, and the incidence of the disease has more than doubled

>in the past 30 years.

>

>Most of the identified " risk factors " for breast cancer indicate

>that estrogen (female sex hormone) in a woman's blood plays an

>important role in the disease. The major known " risk factors "

>for breast cancer are early menarche (early age when the period

>begins), late menopause, not having any children, late

>conception of the first child, and hormone-replacement treatment

>after menopause. All of these factors tend to increase a woman's

>lifetime exposure to estrogens circulating in the blood.

>

>The Copenhagen study found that the risk of breast cancer was

>twice as high in women with the highest concentrations of

>dieldrin in their blood serum, compared to women with the lowest

>concentrations. Furthermore, a significant dose-response

>relationship was evident -- the more dieldrin in the blood, the

>greater the chance that breast cancer would develop.

>

>Some previous studies have implicated certain organochlorines in

>breast cancer, while other studies have shown no such

>relationship. (See REHW #571, #572, #573, #574, #575.)

>

>The authors of the Copenhagen study say theirs is the first to

>properly compare blood levels of organochlorine compounds

>because they adjusted completely for varying levels of serum in

>the blood of each individual. They conclude that, " These

>findings support the hypothesis that exposure to xeno-oestrogens

>may increase the risk of breast cancer. " Xeno-oestrogens are

>industrial chemicals (such as pesticides) that can mimic estrogen

>in the human body.

>

>The use of dieldrin in Denmark and in the U.S. was banned about

>20 years ago but, in the industrialized world, nearly everyone's

>body still contains small amounts of stored dieldrin, along with

>several hundred other industrial poisons, many of them

>chlorinated.

>

>

>DIOXIN

>

>For several years, U.S. and European health authorities have

>been hinting that the general public is being exposed to levels

>of dioxin that are probably causing harm in sensitive people.

>(See REHW #390, #391, #636.) Now the federal Agency for Toxic

>Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) has confirmed the bad

>news.

>

>The term " dioxin " encompasses a family of 219 different toxic

>chlorinated chemicals, all with similar characteristics but

>different potencies.

>

>Because some dioxins are more toxic than others, scientists have

>established a way of comparing the toxicities and the quantities

>of various mixtures of dioxins. The technique is called TEQ, or

>toxic equivalents. The TEQ system takes into account the

>variations in toxicity, expressing toxicity in terms of the most

>toxic dioxin, which is TCDD, or 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-

>dioxin.[3]

>

>Dioxin is a highly toxic, unwanted byproduct of many industrial

>processes, including incineration of municipal, medical and

>hazardous wastes; metal smelting; the burning of fossil fuels;

>the manufacture of many pesticides and other chemicals. (See REHW

>#636.) We are all exposed to dioxin through our diets, mainly by

>eating fish, meat, and milk products. Vegetarians get much less

>than the average, but they do not get zero because dioxin falls

>out of the air onto vegetation.

>

>Last December, the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and

>Disease Registry (ATSDR) in Atlanta published the long-awaited

>final report, TOXICOLOGICAL PROFILE FOR CHLORINATED

>DIBENZO-P-DIOXINS.[4] The report had been circulating in draft

>form since 1991. In the final report, ATSDR establishes a

>Minimum Risk Level (MRL) for chronic (long-term) exposure to

>dioxin. An MRL is the amount of total dioxins (expressed as

>TEQs) that ATSDR believes people can take in day after day

>without suffering adverse health effects.

>

>ATSDR's official MRL for chronic (long-term) exposure to dioxin

>is one picogram of dioxin TEQ per kilogram of body weight per

>day.[4,pg.264] The new ATSDR report says that the average

>exposure of U.S. citizens is currently three to six times as

>high as this " safe " level.[4,pg.253] (A picogram is one

>trillionth of a gram, and there are 28 grams in one ounce.)

>

>Thus ATSDR gives us reason to wonder whether people are being

>harmed at current background levels of dioxin.

>

>Shortly after ATSDR released its final dioxin report, a new

>study was published showing that some people have defective

>teeth as a result of exposure to current background levels of

>dioxin.[5]

>

>The new study was conducted by dentists in Finland who have been

>studying dioxin for a decade. In the early 1980s, they noticed

>that many children had poorly developed molars -- discolored and

>soft. The normal hard enamel coating was partially missing,

>making the teeth subject to decay.

>

>The researchers hypothesized that the children were being

>exposed to some toxin early in life and this was interfering

>with normal growth and development of their teeth.

>

>Chinese children born to mothers who were accidentally exposed

>to high levels of dioxins showed tooth problems similar to those

>in Finnish children.[6] Taking this as a clue, the Finnish

>dentists began exposing rats to low levels of dioxin. They found

>that they could produce the same kind of tooth defects in the

>rats that had been seen in the Chinese and Finnish children.[7]

>

>Next they studied 102 Finnish children, ages 6 to 7, whose

>mother's breast milk had been tested for dioxins when the

>children were four weeks old. Seventeen of the 102 children

>(16.6%) had soft, mottled molars, with insufficient enamel to

>protect the teeth from decay. If a tooth fails to develop a

>proper enamel coating, the tooth is subject to decay for the

>rest of the person's life because enamel never develops later.

>

>The Finnish study found that children with the worst teeth were

>born to mothers with the highest levels of dioxin in their

>breast milk, thus establishing a dose-response relationship.

>

>The researchers examined PCBs separately from the other dioxins

>and dioxin-like compounds and they found that the PCBs did not

>contribute to the children's tooth problems.

>

>The Finnish researchers' new findings " are very exciting in a

>scientific sense--and very concerning in a public-health

>sense--because they demonstrate effects from [dioxin] exposures

>at background levels, " says Birnbaum, a well-known dioxin

>researcher with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

>(EPA).[8]

>

>According to ATSDR, many people in the U.S. and elsewhere have

>dioxin exposures that exceed the average. These

>include:[4,pgs.485-497]

>

>** People who are exposed at work, or through environmental

>contamination, such as people living in Times Beach, Missouri;

>

>** People living near incinerators that are burning municipal,

>medical or hazardous wastes, or people living downwind from

>coal-burning power plants;

>

>** People living near any of the 110 Superfund sites where

>dioxins have been identified. (Superfund sites are

>chemically-contaminated places that the federal government has

>identified as dangerous to human health.)

>

>** Sport fishers in the Great Lakes regions are very likely to

>have high exposure to dioxin, with Lake Huron the highest, Lake

>Michigan next highest, and Lake Erie the lowest.

>

>** Currently 66 fish advisories have been issued by 21 states

>because of dioxin-contaminated fish. Three states -- New York,

>New Jersey, and Maine -- have statewide fish advisories in

>effect for all of their marine coastal waters, warning people to

>limit the amount of fish they eat because of dioxin

>contamination.

>

>** Many indigenous people eat far more fish than the average.

>Under these circumstances, even low levels of dioxin

>contamination in fish can add up to a hazard.

>

>** Subsistence farmers who consume their own farm-reared meat

>and dairy products may be highly exposed if they live downwind

>from an incinerator or a metal refinery or other source of

>dioxins.

>

>** People eating food grown on soil treated with sewage sludge

>may be in danger. ATSDR says, " Exposure to [dioxin] from land

>application of municipal sewage sludge or paper mill sludge also

>can occur through the dietary pathway if people consume food

>grown or animals grazed on sludge-amended lands. " [4,pg.497] And:

> " Most recently, MacLachlan... reported that the prolonged use of

>sewage sludge as a soil amendment on English farms under some

>conditions can lead to an increase in the concentrations of

>[dioxins] in both the soil and in cow's milk. " [4,pg.497]

>

>The question is, can humans do things differently in the future,

>or are we doomed to stumble from one uninformed decision to

>another? Are there social mechanisms (such as environmental

>impact analysis) that could help us avoid massive mistakes like

>chlorine chemistry?

>

>==========

>[1] Annette Pernille Hoyer and others, " Organochlorine Exposure

>and Risk of Breast Cancer, " LANCET Vol. 352 (December 5, 1998),

>pgs. 1816-1820.

>

>[2] The 18 organochlorines are: mirex; dieldrin; aldrin; endrin;

>alpha-chlordane; gamma-chlordane; heptachlor; heptachlor

>epoxide; oxychlordane; transnanochlor; gamma-hexachlorocyclo-

>hexane; beta-hexachlorocyclohexane (beta-HCH); hexachloroben-

>zene (HCB); o,p'-DDT; o,p'-DDE; p,p'-DDT; p,p'-DDE; p,p'-DDD.

>

>[3] M. Van den Berg and others, " Toxic equivalency factors

>(TEFs) for PCBs, PCDDs, PCDFs for humans and wildlife, "

>ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH PERSPECTIVES Vol. 106, No. 12 (December

>1998), pgs. 775-792.

>

>[4] Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry,

>TOXICOLOGICAL PROFILE FOR CHLORINATED DIBENZO-P-DIOXINS

>(Atlanta, Ga.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,

>Public Health Service, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease

>Registry, December, 1998). Available from ATSDR; telephone

>1-888-42-ATSDR or (404) 639-6357.

>

>[5] Satu Alaluusua and others, " Developing Teeth as a Biomarker

>of Dioxin Exposure, " LANCET Vol. 353 (January 16, 1999), pg.

>206.

>

>[6] B.C. Gladen and others, " Dermatological findings in children

>exposed transplacentally to heat-degraded polychlorinated

>biphenyls in Taiwan, " BRITISH JOURNAL OF DERMATOLOGY Vol. 122,

>No. 6 (June 1990), pgs. 799-808.

>

>[7] A. M. Partanen and others, " Epidermal growth factor receptor

>as a mediator of developmental toxicity in mouse embryonic

>teeth, " LABORATORY INVESTIGATION Vol. 78, No. 12 (December

>1998), pgs. 1473-1481.

>

>[8] J. Raloff, " Dioxin can harm tooth development, " SCIENCE NEWS

>February 20, 1999, pg. 119.

>

>Descriptor terms: dioxin; chlorine chemistry; pesticides; breast

>cancer; dieldrin; studies; fish; meat; milk; food safety;

>incineration;

>

>

>

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