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