Dioxin

Environmentalists and fishermen today filed a lawsuit challenging the federal government's approval of Maryland's water pollution standard for dioxin, charging that the state's limit on the toxic chemical is so weak that human health and fish are endangered.The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Richmond, Va., contends that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last year approved Maryland's water-quality standard for dioxin, even though the standard permits 100 times more of the toxic chemical into state streams and rivers than EPA recommends is safe.

Priscilla Ellis, 61, a Boston psychologist and mediator, was suspicious the minute she opened the mass e-mail. And with good reason. It was an old e-rumor that has picked up steam recently, alleging that microwaving food in plastic containers releases dioxin, a carcinogen, or cancer-causing agent. The e-mail noted that the warning about dioxin had been sent out in a newsletter from Johns Hopkins, the esteemed medical institution in Baltimore, and that similar information was "being circulated" at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

Recently in Washington, the Environmental Protection Agency released a 2,000-page draft report on the chemical compound dioxin. The report concludes that exposure to dioxin may be dangerous, and could cause cancer in humans.But does dioxin pose a significant threat to most people? How are we exposed to the chemical? What other risks does it represent? Is it possible to limit our exposure to dioxin? For the answers to these questions, I consulted with my colleague, Dr. Thomas Sutter, an assistant professor in the department of environmental health sciences at the Johns Hopkins School of ++ Public Health.

JUST WHEN medical waste incinerators are going the way of dinosaurs, Baltimore is being stalked by the Tyrannosaurus rex of polluting technologies. The unusual saga of Baltimore's Phoenix Services incinerator - the largest medical waste incinerator in the country - is about to reach a new level of public scrutiny, and the stakes are high for the health of local families. City Councilman Edward L. Reisinger has introduced an ordinance to reduce the geographic area served by Phoenix from the current 250-mile radius - which includes New York City and other major metropolitan areas along the Eastern seaboard - to eight counties within Maryland.

Four years after acknowledging doubts about the dangers of dioxin, the Environmental Protection Agency is poised to confirm its original finding that the chemical compound is a potent poison, one that may cause cancer and other serious health problems even at the extremely low levels to which people are now exposed.In a 2,000-page draft report to be released today in Washington, the EPA is expected to conclude, after reviewing both animal and human studies, that dioxin is a probable cause of cancer.

ANNAPOLIS -- A House committee overwhelmingly defeated legislation yesterday that would have cut the amount of the toxic chemical dioxin that is allowed into rivers -- a change that could have cost a Western Maryland paper mill as much as $100 million.Delegate Ronald A. Guns, D-Cecil, chairman of the Environmental Matters Committee, said after the 19-3 vote that a pending lawsuit by environmental groups challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's approval of Maryland's standard for dioxin levels had left the issue "up in the air."

Maryland lets too much cancer-causing dioxin find its way into the state's rivers, environmental groups charged in a suit yesterday, and they say the fault lies with the federal government for allowing the state to get away with it.That is the gist of the suit challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's approval last fall of a Maryland standard for dioxin that was 100 times less stringent than EPA's standard. The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Virginia by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Maryland Conservation Council and three other environmental groups.

To reduce the estimated risk of extra cancer deaths in Maryland fromone in 100,000 to one in 1 million, a Carroll delegate argued Thursday for raising the state water standard for the toxic chemical dioxinto the federally recommended level.Environmentalists supported the bill introduced by Delegate Lawrence A. LaMotte, D-Carroll, Baltimore, saying Maryland's current water quality standard is one of the most lenient in the nation, underestimates the degree to which minute levels of the chemical accumulate in fish and poses an unacceptably high human health risk.

If you believe Westvaco Corp. officials, the small quantities o dioxin their paper mill discharges into the Potomac River will have little or no effect on the fish that live there.But if you believe most environmentalists, you would be foolhardy to fry up a bit of freshly caught trout and pop a morsel in your mouth.Whom do you believe? Both sides can cite scientific evidence to support their positions.Such is the confusion that now surrounds dioxin. Once thought to be the most potent cancer-causing chemical, dioxin has come under scrutiny recently as new evidence suggests it may not be as dangerous as was first believed.

ANNAPOLIS -- A bill to raise Maryland's standards for the emission of dioxin, a toxic chemical, would cost more than $100 million to meet, according to Westvaco Corp., one of Western Maryland's largest employers and practically the only company affected by the bill.But the higher standard would lower Marylanders' risk of developing cancer to one case per 1 million people, down from one case per 100,000 people, according to environmentalists.The bill, heard by the House Environmental Matters Committee, would raise the allowed level of dioxin in Maryland rivers from 1.2 parts per quadrillion to the 0.013 parts per quadrillion standard recommended by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

Power struggles, political intrigue and the street mettle of the Ukrainian people have kept that faraway country's election drama in the news for weeks. But it's the poisoning that most people are talking about. Last weekend, an Austrian clinic confirmed what Viktor Yushchenko's grotesque features had long suggested: The presidential candidate had been sickened and disfigured by a toxin called dioxin. To Western readers, especially, the poisoning may seem like an outlandish plot twist ripped off from Renaissance history.

KIEV, Ukraine - The Ukrainian prosecutor-general's office announced yesterday that it had reopened an investigation into allegations that presidential candidate Viktor A. Yushchenko was poisoned, after doctors in Austria confirmed he had ingested dioxin. Returning to Kiev after checking out of a clinic in Vienna, Austria, Yushchenko said he was sure that authorities were responsible for the dioxin poisoning that had disfigured his face and caused other symptoms. "I am convinced that this is the work of the authorities, absolutely convinced," Yushchenko told reporters at a Kiev airport.

VIENNA, Austria -- Ukrainian presidential hopeful Viktor A. Yushchenko was poisoned with dioxin, most likely intentionally, doctors in Vienna who have been struggling to diagnose his mystery illness confirmed yesterday. Yushchenko, a pro-Western opposition leader engaged in a bitter presidential contest, has alleged since suddenly falling ill in September that he was poisoned in an assassination attempt intended to eliminate a key critic of Ukraine's government. Authorities have denied the charge, and some government supporters have ridiculed it. Michael Zimpfer, director of the private Rudolfinerhaus clinic, which has been treating Yushchenko, said tests concluded in the past 24 hours prove that dioxin caused the illness that has disfigured the Ukrainian candidate's face.

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Sometime in mid-January, a farmer in West Flanders noticed that some of his chicken eggs had failed to hatch.From the ones that did hatch emerged deformed chicks. He called a veterinary inspector, who had the eggs and chicks tested.To the inspector's shock, the tests revealed dioxin -- a notorious carcinogen -- in concentrations several hundred times greater than accepted levels.Thus began what some Belgians call "Chicken-Gate," a complex affair that helped bring down a government and ended the career of a veteran prime minister.

PHILADELPHIA -- It was 1951 when the father of Retin-A first came to Holmesburg Prison.The 1,200 inmates of Philadelphia's gloomiest jail were plagued by an outbreak of athlete's foot, and the prison pharamacist had asked Dr. Albert M. Kligman, a University of Pennsylvania dermatologist, to take a look.Imagine the researcher's thrill as he stepped into the aging prison, hundreds of men milling around."All I saw before me were acres of skin," Kligman told a newspaper reporter in 1966. "It was like a farmer seeing a field for the first time."

Contending that their neighborhood would become the East Coast's trash bag, residents of Curtis Bay and Brooklyn came to a City Council committee hearing yesterday to fight a bill that would allow the Hawkins Point incinerator to burn waste from a wider area.But by the time the opponents got their chance to speak -- nearly four hours after the hearing began -- most had left."We fizzled out, but the hard core are here," said Sierra Club environmentalist Terry Harris.At stake is whether the council should back a bill that would roll back statutes limiting the incinerator to receiving medical waste from a handful of Maryland counties as long as it stays within a daily 150-ton limit.

Maryland has received federal approval of a new standard that allows 100 times more of the toxic chemical dioxin in its streams and rivers than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommends.Environmental groups blasted the new state water quality standard yesterday, saying it would lead to consumption of contaminated fish and a relaxation of standards nationwide as states try to keep their industries from moving to less stringent areas. Regional administrator Edwin P. Erickson announced EPA's approval of Maryland's standard on Friday.

Power struggles, political intrigue and the street mettle of the Ukrainian people have kept that faraway country's election drama in the news for weeks. But it's the poisoning that most people are talking about. Last weekend, an Austrian clinic confirmed what Viktor Yushchenko's grotesque features had long suggested: The presidential candidate had been sickened and disfigured by a toxin called dioxin. To Western readers, especially, the poisoning may seem like an outlandish plot twist ripped off from Renaissance history.

The operators of the Hawkins Point Medical Waste Incinerator -- which has come under fierce criticism from local environmentalists and neighborhood leaders -- have reduced emissions of pollutants by about half over the past two years, according to public records and interviews.Since new operators, under the name Phoenix Services Inc., took charge of the facility two years ago, there have been no violations or warnings issued against the incinerator, according to state environmental officials.

ST. LOUIS -- Nature is reclaiming Times Beach.Fourteen years after one of the nation's worst chemical nightmares, the 801 families of the Missouri river-front town have scattered. Their houses and belongings have been bulldozed. Even the town's name has been erased from Missouri highway maps."It doesn't look like home," says Marilyn Leistner, the town's last mayor, revisiting the area. Now living in nearby Eureka, she had trouble finding the unmarked street where she had lived for 26 years.