Dioxin Exposure Incidents

Large amounts of dioxin were released in an industrial accident at Seveso in 1976, although no human fatalities or birth defects occurred. In 1978, dioxin was one of the contaminants that forced the evacuation of the Love Canal neighborhood of Niagara Falls, New York. Dioxin also caused the 1983 evacuation of Times Beach, Missouri.

Parts of the Spolana chemical plant in Neratovice, Czechoslovakia, were heavily contaminated by dioxins in the 1960s, when the herbicide 2,4,5-T (also a component of Agent Orange) was produced there. Workers in this factory were exposed to high concentrations of dioxins at that time. Dozens of them fell seriously ill. A possibly large amount of dioxins was flushed from the factory into the Labe river during the 2002 European flood. No direct consequences of this incident have thus far been recorded.

In May 1999, there was a dioxin crisis in Belgium: quantities of dioxin had entered the food chain through contaminated animal feed. 7,000,000 chickens and 60,000 pigs had to be slaughtered. The scandal that followed caused a landslide in the elections one month later.

In a 2001 case study [10], physicians reported clinical changes in a 30 year old woman who had been exposed to a massive dosage (144,000 pg/g blood fat) of dioxin equal to 16,000 times the normal body level; the highest dose of dioxin ever recorded in a human. She suffered from chloracne, nausea, vomiting, epigastric pain, loss of appetite, leukocytosis, anemia, amenorrhoea and thrombocytopenia. However, other notable laboratory tests, such as immune function tests, were relatively normal. The same study also covered a second subject who had received a dosage equivalent to 2,900 times the normal level, who apparently suffered no notable negative effects other than chloracne. These patients were provided with olestra to accelerate dioxin elimination.

A notable individual case of dioxin poisoning, Ukrainian politician Viktor Yushchenko was exposed to the second-largest measured dose of dioxins in 2004, according to the reports of the physicians responsible for diagnosing him. This is the first known case of a single high dose of TCDD dioxin poisoning. Experts say that it could take two to three years for the disfigurement of his face to clear up. But later an Austrian doctor who treated him withdrew his statement saying he had been threatened with death then to announce that Yushchenko was poisoned. The case is still far from being clear.

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see also:

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