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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works dot com

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Speaker 1: where smart Happens. I am Marshall Brain with today's question,

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Speaker 1: what is dioxin and why is it bad for you?

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Speaker 1: Dioxin is an organic chemical that consists of a pair

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Speaker 1: of benzene rings, two oxygen atoms, and four chlorine atoms.

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Speaker 1: The chemical d DT is similar, so d d T

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Speaker 1: and di ox and share several characteristics. First, both d

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Speaker 1: d T and di ox and are toxic and small quantities. Second,

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Speaker 1: neither of them degrades in the environment, both of them

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Speaker 1: exists for an indefinite period of time, and third, both

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Speaker 1: dissolve and accumulate in fat. You may recall that d

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Speaker 1: d T, which was sprayed liberally starting in the nineteen

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Speaker 1: forties to control agricultural insects and mosquitoes, was banned in

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Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties because it accumulated in the fat of

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Speaker 1: animals and destroyed their ability to reproduce. Dioxin suffers from

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Speaker 1: the same problem. Dioxin enters the environment in several different ways,

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Speaker 1: for example, through the manufacture of certain herbicides, through the

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Speaker 1: manufacture of bleach paper, and through the burning of PVC plastics.

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Speaker 1: The toxicity of dioxin is something that the scientific community

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Speaker 1: doesn't seem to agree upon. Dioxin became notorious in the

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Speaker 1: nineteen eighties because of agent orange and several dioxin dumps

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Speaker 1: like love Canal discovered in the United States. You will

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Speaker 1: see many, many pages on the web that describe dioxin

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Speaker 1: as the most toxic substance on the planet. Then you'll

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Speaker 1: see other references like this one. In the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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Speaker 1: Toxicologists mistakenly concluded from studies on lab animals that die

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Speaker 1: oxen was one of the most toxic of all manmade substances.

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Speaker 1: Subsequent research, however, discounted most of these inferences. Nonetheless, it's

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Speaker 1: certain that dioxin is not good, does persist in the

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Speaker 1: environment and accumulates in the fat like d DT For

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Speaker 1: certain animals, dioxide is an acutely toxic substance. Do you

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Speaker 1: have any ideas or suggestions for this podcast? If so,

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Speaker 1: please send me an email at podcast at how stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot com. For more on this and thousands of

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Speaker 1: other topics, go to how stuff works dot com.