October 24, 2006

"A whirling dust plume filled with asbestos, benzene, dioxin and other hazards."

The dust from the falling World Trade Center towers: What damage did it inflict?
Posted by Ann Althouse at 6:27 AM

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

These things are always overstated...or understated. Chernobyl is a good example--the cancers have been successful treated, and the flora and fauna is regenerating.

It must be a human failing that we spend so much time and energy going after false enemies (the neglectful agencies!) instead of concentrating on the real one. It makes life less scary, I guess.

10/24/06, 10:16 AM
Harry Eagar said...

Dioxin isn't a hazard, so no need to worry about that.

10/24/06, 11:56 AM
Sigivald said...

Halo: As I understand it, some dioxins (the family is fairly large) are, as near as can be established, harmless in humans, or so mildly harmful as to be not worthy of notice.

Some others are significantly toxic, but none of them seem to be as bad as the worst of the hype about them suggested.

The only significant effect of acute exposure appears to be chloracne.

(Some dioxins (PDF) do appear to increase cancer rates, but the numbers on how much of an increase are difficult to find, described as "generally low", and overall a relative risk of 1.4 after heavy industrial-accident-level exposure.

Nothing to lose sleep over unless you live next to a particularly lax dioxin plant ... and none of those exist in the first world anymore.

And no worry at all on the dioxin front for WTC responders and cleanup workers.)

10/24/06, 4:38 PM
JorgXMcKie said...

Since most large doses of dioxin in the US came from combining 2,4D with 2,4,5T (both herbicides) and these were EXTREMELY commonly used by just about every farmer in the US between the early 1950s and the late 1860s/early 1970s, ordinarily with no protection whatsoever, it would seem that any deleterious effects would show up among farmers.

I have seen zero evidence that this is the case.

Personally, I don't think that anything with 'cide' in its descriptives is something to use casually, but the dioxin thing is waaaaay overblown.

For instance, the last time I looked, the Viet Vets with the most 'symptoms' of dioxin exposure were shipboard sailors who never got within 5 miles of the coast and were never exposed directly to dioxin at all.

Crappy epidemiology is not limited to Lancet reports of Iraqi deaths.

10/24/06, 9:35 PM

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