Speaking of Ageny Orange and other toxins...

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http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jun2000/2000L-06-08-06.html

World Awash in Chlorine Based Poisons

By Cat Lazaroff

WASHINGTON, DC, June 8, 2000 (ENS) - Agent Orange, DDT, PCBs - they are

famous chemicals, notoriously toxic - notoriously banned. Yet they, and

their legal cousins, continue to contaminate the environment, wildlife, our

food and our bodies. A new book details the dangers of these related

poisons, and suggests an antidote: ban them all.

Plastic trash bags and many other common plastic products can contain toxic

organochlorines (Photo courtesy Universal Plastic)

The banned substances listed above have one important ingredient in common:

they all contain chlorine. They are part of a class of chemicals known as

organochlorines, formed when chlorine gas produced by the chemical industry

comes into contact with organic matter in industrial processes.

There are 11,000 organochlorines produced commercially, and thousands more

are formed as byproducts. They share the dangerous properties of persistence

and stability in the environment, and accumulation in the fatty tissues of

animals and humans.

Although organochlorines have only been produced in large amounts since

1940, they now blanket the entire planet, reaching from the deep oceans to

the high Arctic, from the Mississippi River to the Amazon rainforests.

" Everyone on Earth now eats, drinks and breathes a constantly changing and

poorly characterized soup of organochlorines, including dozens of compounds

that cause severe health damage at low doses, " said Joe Thornton, a

biologist at Columbia University's Center for Environmental Research and

Conservation.

Thornton has written a new analysis of the global consequences of

organochlorines, known as persistent organic pollutants (POPs). " Pandora's

Poison: Chlorine, Health and a New Environmental Strategy " presents a

compelling body of evidence suggesting that these chemicals have already

begun to cause large scale damage to public health, including increasing

cancer rates and impaired child development.

Fires, like this one at a PVC plastics plant in Canada, can release enormous

amounts of dioxin and other toxins into the air (Photo courtesy Greenpeace)

Analyses of human fat, mother's milk, blood, breath, semen and urine

demonstrate that everyone - not just those living near major pollution

sources - now carries a " body burden " of toxic organochlorines in his or her

tissues. At least 190 organochlorines, including dioxins, PCBs and DDT, have

been identified in the tissues and fluids of the general population of the

U.S. and Canada. Hundreds more are present, but have not been chemically

characterized.

Organochlorines have been linked to immune system suppression, falling sperm

counts and infertility, as well as learning disabilities in children. More

than 100 organochlorines cause cancer in laboratory animals or humans. The

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will officially release a report Friday

finding that dioxin - the most toxic of the organochlorines - is a human

carcinogen.

These chemicals are present throughout the environment, but particularly in

animal tissues. Because they build up in fatty tissues, and are not

destroyed by digestive processes, the more you eat, the more you carry.

Animals higher up the food chain, such as eagles, wolves and humans, carry

the burden of all the organochlorines from the meat they have eaten.

In the Great Lakes region of the U.S., dioxin and related compounds have

caused epidemic reproductive, developmental and immune system damage in

fish, birds and mammals, " Pandora's Poison " reports.

Polar bears have some of the highest body burdens of organochlorines of any

species (Photo courtesy Greenpeace)

Polar bears, which eat fish, seals and other heavily contaminated animals,

carry some of the world's highest levels of organochlorines in their

tissues. " Contamination of polar bear tissues with dioxins and PCBs is so

severe, in fact, that the bears' body burdens exceed by a substantial margin

the levels that are known to cause reproductive failure, immune suppression

and altered brain development in other kinds of mammals, " Thornton writes.

Humans are not immune. Dioxin exposure is particularly severe for Arctic

peoples, who eat a diet similar to the polar bears'. Dioxin levels in the

milk of Inuit mothers are two to 10 times higher than in the rest of the

U.S. and Canadian populations

" Organochlorines interfere with the basic machinery . with which the body

regulates itself, " said Thornton. " They are incompatible with basic

physiological functions. "

Because organochlorines are so stable in the environment, even banned

substances like the pesticide DDT continue to poison the ground and water.

Related chemicals, including Dursban, the most widely used pesticide in the

U.S., are only now coming under restrictions. The EPA will announce today

new limits on the amount of Dursban that can be used on crops and in or

around buildings.

Thornton says these piecemeal measures are not enough to counter the larger

problem of organochlorines in the environment.

Joe Thornton, author of " Pandora's Poison: Chlorine, Health and a New

Environmental Strategy " (Photo courtesy Columbia University)

" Organochlorines can't be reduced to a handful of bad actor compounds like

DDT, " he said Wednesday at a press conference marking the release of

" Pandora's Poison. " " Virtually all organochlorines tested have one or more

toxic effects. "

The growing body of evidence on the health and environmental risks posed by

these chemicals points to one conclusion, Thornton holds: they are all

unsafe. In his book, Thornton argues that regulators and legislators should

begin treating organochlorines not as individual substances but as single

entity.

" The current effort to regulate individual substances is doomed to fail, "

writes Thornton. " Of the thousands of organochlorines in production, only a

small fraction has been subject to basic toxicity testing, and complete

health hazard information is available for none. Developing the information

base to predict the health impacts of each chemical would take centuries,

and in the meantime, the public is exposed to a cocktail on untested

substances. "

Current regulations, like the new restrictions on Dursban, attempt to set

acceptable discharge levels for individual chemicals, and to control

individual sources. This strategy " has failed miserably to prevent global

contamination, " said Thornton. " Even acceptable discharges build up to

unacceptable levels. "

Already, the average body burden of dioxin alone in the U.S. is at or near

the range where reproductive, developmental and immunological effects occur

in laboratory animals. This newly named carcinogen is produced at some point

during the lifecycle of all chlorine based chemicals - in the production of

chlorine gas, the synthesis of all organochlorines, and the combustion of

any organochlorine product or waste.

Huge amounts of plastic waste are produced each year. Disposing of these

wastes without releasing organochlorines into the environment may be nearly

impossible (Photo Humber courtesy National Renewable Energy Lab)

The levels of dioxin in the environment can only increase, as long as

organochlorines are produced, Thornton warns. " Once we've got them, we've

got them, and there's no safe way of disposing of them, " said Thorton. " Once

they're in you, there's no way to get them out. "

Thornton suggests that governments worldwide plan a " chlorine sunset " : a

gradual phase out of the major applications of chlorine and organochlorines

in favor of safer alternatives.

That means replacing latex medical tubing and PVC pipes with non-chlorine

containing plastics; vinyl siding with wood or metal; chlorinated bleach

with oxygen based bleaches; organochlorine pesticides with safer versions;

and so on, in list of applications that spans nearly every human endeavor.

" Society does not try to address insect infestations by targeting individual

bugs or traffic problems by regulating individual cars, " writes Thornton.

" In these cases, society has decided that it is more effective to focus on

the systemic causes of problems rather than their manifestations at [the

individual level], which are too numerous and uncontrollable to be

micromanaged. "

" Pandora's Poison " lists reasons why a " chlorine sunset " is technologically

and economically feasible. " Safer, affordable alternatives are available now

for the vast majority of chlorine uses, " Thornton said. " With better

processes at hand, there can be no excuse - political, economic or ethical -

for not making the changes necessary to protect the health of our children

and grandchildren from the global hazards of organochlorines. "

A substantial proportion of the organochlorines which have accumulated in a

woman's body during her whole lifetime are passed to her child during

development in the womb and through breast feeding (Photo courtesy

Greenpeace)

Within the next month, Thornton and his wife Margie will have their first

child, a baby boy. On Wednesday, Thornton talked about his fears that his

new son could suffer health problems due to exposure to organochlorines in

the womb, and after he is born.

" That baby is awash in industrial chemicals, " said Thornton, holding up an

ultrasound image of his unborn child. " My wife, Margie, has accumulated

hundreds of industrial compounds in her tissues, and these substances have

crossed the placenta and entered the baby's bloodstream. My semen contains

scores of pollutants that may have damaged the DNA I contributed to the

baby. "

" Some of these chemicals are flushed out of the body by breast feeding, so

the baby will get even higher doses after he is born, " Thornton continued.

" No mother should have to worry that doing the most natural, nurturing thing

in the world may be putting her child at risk. "