Revealing truth about dioxin exposure

"Disinformation Cancer Epidemic" is now available to anyone who wants to read a well-set-forth indictment of the federal government of the United States describing the creation of a cancer epidemic by government health and environment agencies. The agencies were controlled by corporate interests to the extent that they were caused to deliberately deceive Americans about dioxin exposure cancer outcome.

Cancer Action NY produced this report for the purpose of educating the American public.

Causing Americans to believe that dioxin does not impose a significant amount of cancer risk is in the best interests of the chemical corporations due to the dioxin cleanup problems that these corporations face. Lack of public concern for dioxin exposure cancer outcome makes it possible for the chemical industry to further delay finalization of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's dioxin reassessment, and thereby establish less-than-cancer-protective soil remediation standards. This will save the responsible parties billions in cleanup costs.

Those corporations that engaged in the production of paper have major dioxin cleanup problems. Other industries that benefit from delaying finalization of the dioxin reassessment include the incineration industry and the food industry. By derailing the use of science to prevent cancer, the incineration corporations seek to continue creating dioxins by burning solid waste. The food industry will be able to maintain relatively stable sales of animal fat containing foods as long as Americans remain in the dark about how much cancer is caused by eating these contaminated foods.

The National Cancer Institute document titled "Cancer Trends Progress Report-2009/2010," a public health educational piece, contains a dioxin chapter that is designed to deceive the reader. The average person reading this chapter would conclude that dioxin exposure poses no significant cancer risk for Americans at this time. This NCI document and several other federal government documents addressing dioxin exposure cancer risk are reviewed in our report.

The American public needs to learn about the undue amount of influence that the chemical industry and other industries exert over the federal government. This will help motivate increased public participation in government that is needed to resolve environmental problems. For as long as the federal government is able to continue deceiving the public about dioxin and cancer, many members of the public will be denied the cancer preventive benefits of scientific knowledge.

Donald L. Hassig

Colton

The writer is director of Cancer Action NY.