Milk Cartons to Be Studied for Any Dioxin Traces
The Food and Drug Administration will conduct a special study of milk cartons to search for contamination by dioxin, a potent cancer-causing chemical, officials said Thursday.
Dioxin also is a potential threat to consumers of other paper products, including disposable diapers, tampons, coffee filters and TV dinners, according to testimony before the health subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
There is no immediate cause for alarm by consumers, because the traces of dioxin are barely measurable, Richard Ronk, director of the FDA’s Bureau of Food Safety told the subcommittee.
However, the agency decided to speed up a test originally scheduled for next summer and instead begin immediate sampling of milk. The new sense of urgency was prompted by a Canadian study of milk samples that disclosed disturbingly high levels of dioxin. Scientists fear that the dioxin may have moved from the paper cartons into the milk itself.
The dioxin is produced when chlorine is used to bleach wood pulp to make paper products white.
Because dioxin is hard to detect and difficult to measure, “there are uncertainties about the extent of contamination of milk and whether the dioxin source is solely the milk cartons,” Ronk said. “Despite the limitations of the Canadian data, their findings have served to signal us to look more closely at milk in this country,” he said.
If the Canadian results are duplicated on a wide scale in American milk supplies, the lifetime risk of cancer would be 1 in 10,000, a disturbingly high rate. The government normally regulates and prohibits compounds when the risk is greater than 1 in 1 million, according to subcommittee staff.
The FDA has not previously found any detectable levels of dioxin in its routine testing of milk. Dioxins have not been detected in diapers, but tests have disclosed the presence of furans, another group of compounds often found in association with dioxins.
Because toxins are formed during pulp production and the bleaching of paper, officials fear potential contamination of “white paper products of all designs and purposes,” said the subcommittee chairman, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles.)
“Now we learn that the dread chemical of Agent Orange and the chemical that forced the abandonment of Times Beach, Mo., is in baby diapers and milk cartons,” Waxman said. “The reaction I have gotten when I have described the subject of this hearing is disbelief.”
However, he offered a note of caution. “It is essential that the public not overreact to news of dioxin contamination of the paper in many consumer products and food packaging materials. The image of Vietnam veterans with chronic disorders and a desolate Missouri town are not applicable.”
The threat to food should be solved quickly, Ronk of the FDA said during an interview after the hearing. Either the paper industry will change its manufacturing processes, or milk cartons will be designed with some sort of shield to prevent the dioxin from entering the milk. The problem can be solved in a year, he said.
The Environmental Protection Agency and the paper industry are studying dioxin formation in the activities of the nation’s 104 paper mills. The industry “is committed to utilizing a variety of commercially available manufacturing process options which will lead to a fundamental overall reduction in dioxin formation associated with bleached pulp and paper-making,” according to Red Cavaney, president of the American Paper Institute.
Another witness, Janet E. Hieber, the Washington representative of Greenpeace USA, an environmental group, said her organization “is calling for all food packaging and all personal care products to be manufactured with unbleached paper.”
