The image above shows a simplified version of how humans are exposed to dioxins, furans and hundreds of other poisonous heavy metals that are a by-product of garbage incinerators. Toxic incinerator emissions, like dioxin the most deadly chemical known to science, accumulate in humans through the food chain. In fact 90% of human exposure to dioxin comes via the food chain. In other words, dioxin from the smokestack of a garbage incinerator falls onto the grass and soil surrounding the incinerator. When a cow, for instance, grazing eats the grass the dioxin accumulates in the cow's fatty tissues and milk. Humans drinking the cow's milk or eating its beef are then exposed to dioxin...and the same occurs when we eat fish, poultry, and other foods including our 'organic' backyard garden produce. The dioxin then accumulates in our bodies' tissues.
The populations most vulnerable to dioxin are infants. Dioxin can pass through the placenta directly to the fetus, and can cause developmental problems. Breastfeeding infants get dioxin from their mother's breast-milk. A breastfeeding infant gets up to 14% of her lifetime exposure to dioxin from breast-milk.
Dioxin is a family of chemicals produced during industrial processes that involve chlorine, or processes that burn chlorine with material that contains benzene rings - including all material that's derived from oil, like all plastics among millions of other things. Corporations like Wheelabrator and Waste Management Inc. always say as part of their propaganda campaigns that 99% of the pollutants are filtered out of a 'modern' garbage incinerator, and they have made strides in through the years to reduce their emissions through technological change, but what they don't say is that the particles that do still escape are the most dangerous and deadliest produced by their incinerators.
The particles that do escape are the tiniest [nano-particles] and that they travel the furthest. Our and other species natural filters - lungs, liver, kidneys, etc. - aren't built to stop such tiny particles so they go directly into our and other species cells where they endlessly accumulate.
Yesterday i mentioned that if the proposed garbage incinerator is allowed to go ahead in Powell River that folks who are into backyard gardening, fishing, hunting, having chickens, eating crabs and oysters, etc. or buying stuff at your local farmers market anywhere in the Georgia Basin from north of Campbell River to south of Nanaimo, from Gibsons to Lund are screwed. But after today's research i've learned that the 50km-80km food harvesting exclusion zone is only part of a much larger problem.
Though it is true that the closer you live to a garbage incinerator the higher the concentration of deadly fallout you and yours receives directly. The fact is that the dioxin nano-particles are distributed by the earth's air currents everywhere and that because dioxin-contaminated beef, milk, fish and vegetables are shipped all over the country and imported/exported worldwide, incineration is every one's problem -- no matter where you live. Dioxin-laden food grown and processed anywhere on earth can end up on your dinner plate at a restaurant or at home.
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Here's a few links that lead to more information on the issue. Some of the 'in-depth' articles they lead to are fairly technical but all of them agree - garbage incineration is short-sighted stupidity. Health effects of exposure to waste incinerator emissions: a review of epidemiological studies
Incineration - How it effects food producers
In-Depth Info
Welcome to The Farmers Campaign
INCINERATION AND HUMAN HEALTH
