DANGERS OF DIOXANE

1,4-dioxane is a very useful organic solvent. We used it by the gallon in our laboratory at the University of California at San Diego with no special precautions and no apparent health effects. Since then, half of all chemicals tested by massive animal exposure experiments have been classified as "carcinogenic'' and dioxane is apparently in that unfortunate half. These experiments are interpreted by a measure called the HERP value which supposedly quantifies the relative risks of exposure to various chemicals. High exposure animal tests exaggerate risk, and HERP is probably a poor measure of relative risk. Nevertheless HERP is currently part of the basis of government policy.

We do not use dioxane at OISM, but we do use a pair of LI-COR carbon dioxide and water vapor analyzers for the computer-control system of CO 2 chambers used in our rodent experiments. This pair of LI-COR analyzers has worked with 100% reliability for almost two years of 24 hour per day continuous operation. Helping to ensure that reliability have been the Gelman Sciences, Inc. filters that protect the analyzers from contamination.

Gelman uses 1,4-dioxane in the manufacture of its filters and has been disposing of it by various ground treatment methods for 25 years in accordance with Department of Natural Resources, DNR, specifications and approval. Now, since the animal tests giving dioxane a high HERP value, DNR has attacked Gelman demanding enormously expensive ground cleanup. So far, legal and other defensive costs have consumed more than 15% of the company's assets and endangered its existence. (See, for example the article by John E. Kinney in The Ann Arbor News for September 7, 1994 or write to Gelman Sciences, 600 South Wagner Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106.) In The Ann Arbor News of October 29, 1992, Kirk M. Maxey calculated that, according to the HERP standards, the chloroform in Ann Arbor, Michigan municipal tap water was 10-50 times more carcinogenic than ground water at the Gelman sites.

Dioxane is not to be confused with "dioxins,'' the chemicals featured by Greenpeace in their July 1994 publication entitled "Achieving Zero Dioxin - An Emergency Strategy for Dioxin Elimination.'' Dioxins are central demons in the Greenpeace world-wide campaign against the element chlorine. (Does world elimination of an element qualify the eliminator to name the hole created in the periodic table?) Dioxins are, according to Greenpeace's citation of the Environmental Protection Agency, emitted into the environment in a total amount from all man-made and natural sources of 25 kg/year. That is 55 pounds per year - diluted over the entire planet. Except for the miracles of modern analytical chemistry, this amount would already be "zero.'' Dioxane and dioxins are definitely dangerous - but not for chemical or biological reasons. They are dangerous because an enviro-government-industrial complex has turned them into reciprocal spotted owls and is using them as surrogates to attack productive enterprises.