Every morning we get the coffee pot a going..bless those beans..I can’t help myself but ponder the horrific nature of a chemical commonly used in the bleaching process- Dioxin. Then I stop to thank my reusable coffee filter for preventing my exposure..or at least so early in the morning.
Dioxin? Never heard of it right? We most often think of chlorine in the context of bleach. Well..let me shine a light my friends.
Dioxin is generally referred to in the science & health communities as the most dangerous, most toxic, chemical on earth. No joke. So toxic, much like chlorine which was used as a poison in WWII, dioxin is the main component of Agent Orange. Whoa..AGENT ORANGE. The stuff that decimated Vietnam’s jungle and continues to harm the health of anyone exposed to it. Birth defects continue to be a consequence of its use both in Vietnam and here in the US.
So if this chemical is so dangerous, why do we use it to bleach paper? Your answer is as good as mine. But that is not even the worst part. Dioxin is in all of us, bleached coffee filters or not. Further, it is believed that dioxin is at or near adverse levels in the population. How? We are eating it.
According to ejnet.org, a site for environmental activists, The major sources of dioxin are in our diet. Since dioxin is fat-soluble, it bioaccumulates, climbing up the food chain. A North American eating a typical North American diet will receive 93% of their dioxin exposure from meat and dairy products (23% is from milk and dairy alone; the other large sources of exposure are beef, fish, pork, poultry and eggs). In fish, these toxins bioaccumulate up the food chain so that dioxin levels in fish are 100,000 times that of the surrounding environment.
A new, and even better, reason to be vegan I guess.
For more information on Dioxin, what to do about it, and how to avoid it, check out these resources:
Jonathan Campell, Health Consultant: http://www.cqs.com/edioxin.htm
The Center for Health and Environmental Justice: http://www.chej.org/index.htm
The Zero Dioxin Campaign: http://www.greenaction.org/zerodioxin/index.shtml