Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works dot com
Speaker 1: where smart Happens. I am Marshall Brain with today's question,
Speaker 1: what is dioxin and why is it bad for you?
Speaker 1: Dioxin is an organic chemical that consists of a pair
Speaker 1: of benzene rings, two oxygen atoms, and four chlorine atoms.
Speaker 1: The chemical d DT is similar, so d d T
Speaker 1: and di ox and share several characteristics. First, both d
Speaker 1: d T and di ox and are toxic and small quantities. Second,
Speaker 1: neither of them degrades in the environment, both of them
Speaker 1: exists for an indefinite period of time, and third, both
Speaker 1: dissolve and accumulate in fat. You may recall that d
Speaker 1: d T, which was sprayed liberally starting in the nineteen
Speaker 1: forties to control agricultural insects and mosquitoes, was banned in
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties because it accumulated in the fat of
Speaker 1: animals and destroyed their ability to reproduce. Dioxin suffers from
Speaker 1: the same problem. Dioxin enters the environment in several different ways,
Speaker 1: for example, through the manufacture of certain herbicides, through the
Speaker 1: manufacture of bleach paper, and through the burning of PVC plastics.
Speaker 1: The toxicity of dioxin is something that the scientific community
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to agree upon. Dioxin became notorious in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties because of agent orange and several dioxin dumps
Speaker 1: like love Canal discovered in the United States. You will
Speaker 1: see many, many pages on the web that describe dioxin
Speaker 1: as the most toxic substance on the planet. Then you'll
Speaker 1: see other references like this one. In the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Speaker 1: Toxicologists mistakenly concluded from studies on lab animals that die
Speaker 1: oxen was one of the most toxic of all manmade substances.
Speaker 1: Subsequent research, however, discounted most of these inferences. Nonetheless, it's
Speaker 1: certain that dioxin is not good, does persist in the
Speaker 1: environment and accumulates in the fat like d DT For
Speaker 1: certain animals, dioxide is an acutely toxic substance. Do you
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