Little know outside the scientific fraternity, dioxin is making headlines due to its recent innovative use
POISONING has always been one of the most lethal ways of getting rid off a person. History of the world is full of stories that tell us about use of various forms of chemicals by man to kill his fellow man. Many means have been used to kill people; arrows, daggers and swords dipped in poison. Simply poisoning one’s food is also a time tested way. However, news of poisoning of the Ukrainian opposition leader, Viktor Yuschenko had a different twist to it. For it was the first time in recorded history, that an attempt has been made on someone using dioxin as poison (see box).
Mr Yuschenko fell ill on September 5th and has since been treated thrice in Vienna. It was the third time that a blood test conclusively diagnosed that Mr Yuschenko was suffering from a case of dioxin poisoning.
A normal level of dioxin is between 15 and 45 units. Yuschenko’s concentration is about 100,000 units per gram of blood fat which is the second highest ever recorded. The highest dioxin dose recorded so far was in a woman, ironically in Vienna. Though it has yet to be confirmed if these tests were carried out at any of the 40 odd WHO certified laboratories for dioxin blood testing, but nevertheless, the results are definitely scary, to say the least. Perhaps the names of the laboratories are being withheld due to political nature of the whole scenario.
Mr Yuschenko is the opposition leader who claims to be the winner of Ukraine’s disputed presidential elections. However, he is also perceived to be pro-West, a stance that is definitely much much different from his country’s previous stance where it has always been seen as an ally of Russia. And this is what is adding more fuel to this seemingly never-ending crime saga.
Dioxin is not a single compound, but generally is referred to a group of about 210 chlorinated compounds. Some times, TCDD or 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin, is commonly accepted as dioxin. Out of the 210 compounds, seventeen are said to be very toxic.
Dioxins are manmade, unintentional byproducts that are emitted from various industries that employ chlorine in their manufacturing processes. These include pesticides, herbicides and the plastic industry. It is during the manufacturing process that dioxin is produced, rather emited from here. Other sources of dioxin are incomplete combustion of municipal, domestic waste; fuel burning like that of oil, coal, wood, forest fires; incineration of chloro/chlorinated products — plastics, all hospital waste, bleached paper and even volcano eruptions.
Smoke from vehicles, home heating and even cigarettes release dioxin. Chlorinated plastics, principally PVS (Polyvinyl Chloride), especially its recycling in Pakistan without appropriate precautions are a major source of dioxin emissions. Unhygienic and open burning of hospital waste is one of the major and most hazardous contributor of dioxin in the country.
Since dioxin is insoluble in water and less volatile, therefore it remains in the atmosphere for a longer time, binding itself to dust particles and organic matter in the atmosphere. It is soluble in body fat and remains accumulated there for a long time in the process playing its severely negative role. That is why dioxins are particularly concentrated in meat, fish and dairy products because the chemicals dissolve well in fat. Dust particles or soil, with which dioxin attaches strongly do not contaminate ground water. Since dioxins remain in the human body for a relatively long time, higher intakes for a short period will not result in significant changes to the long-term.
Also, dioxin is fat-soluble which is why it accumulates in meat, particularly beef, and dairy products. Other places of its liking include chicken, egg, milk, dairy products and fish. Thus dioxin, the tricyclics chlorinated compounds are therefore the jinn that follows us in our everyday lives. Dioxin is also more abundant in developed countries and industrial areas. At the same time, it is necessary to add here that all chlorinated compounds are not bad for mankind. Chlorine is one of the most economical, powerful disinfectant, germ-killer and is comfortably used in houses, hospitals, hotels, restaurants, lavatories etc. In fact it is legal requirement to rinse/bleach plants that process meat, poultry, fish and its cutting equipment with chlorine or chlorine based compounds. Detol and some phenyls commonly used in our houses are chloro compounds. Many insecticides, pesticides are chloro-compounds. Phenaramine is frequently used as anti-allergic. Chemists have carefully modified its structure for medicinal purposes resulting in chlorophenaramine, which is thirty times more potent that the parent compound.
Drinking water is made safer by using chlorine. Many life saving drugs, medical equipment contain chlorine in their composition. Thus chlorine is one of the more important 90 elements that are the building blocks of the universe.
Dioxin on the other hand belongs to health-hazardous producing family of compounds. Chloracne (skin rash-disfiguring) is a skin condition, distinctly visible in case of Ukrainian political leader Viktor Yuschenko, that is the most conspicuous symptom of higher dose of exposure to dioxin.
Effects on liver, gastrointestinal system, increase in the fats are some of the reported adverse effects. Prolonged exposure can lead to several cancers, even result in the malfunctioning of the immune system.
PRECAUTIONS: The air we inhale near the dioxin producing factories is not toxic (prima facie). But the major cause of dioxin poisoning, according to health experts and WHO is the oral intake or digestion of highly dioxin contaminated meat, beef, poultry, fish and dairy products. Fresh water fish collected from the ponds near dioxin emitting factories and also the meat, beef from cattle farms and poultry farms near dioxin emitting industry should be screened for dioxin contamination before being consumed. European countries, especially The Netherlands, strictly monitor the levels in the dairy, poultry, fish products for any such contamination.
The World Health Organization has set at 1 to 4 pg/kg-bw/day (picograms per kilogramme of body weight per day) for adults, the tolerable daily intake (TDI) of dioxin. A picogram is one-trillionth of a gram. However, from the data available, from outside sources, the average adult intake of dioxin in Pakistan is about 0.4 to 1 pg/kg-bw/day. This is definitely within or below the WHO limits. WHO and the environmentalists are of the opinion that the amount of dioxin normally emitted is tolerable, has no adverse effect on the health of the people, unless ingested in higher than prescribed doses which was certainly not the case with Mr Yuschenko.
Why poison someone with dioxin?
By David Adam
IT does seem a strange choice. Unprecedented, even — the recent confirmed poisoning of Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko with dioxin appears to be the first recorded case of a human being deliberately targeted in this way.
“The lethal dose of dioxin in humans isn’t known because there has been no previous case I am aware of,” says Alastair Hay, a toxicologist and chemical weapons expert at Leeds University. “Most other examples of dioxin poisoning come from skin contact through industrial accidents or occupational exposure.”
Doctors at a Vienna hospital confirmed last month what many experts suspected and what Yushchenko had long claimed: that his pockmarked and bloated face was the result of a deliberate attempt to nobble him.
Nobble, but not necessarily kill. “There are loads more things that you could use if you wanted to do that,” Hay says. Some botulinum toxin or just a few grams of ricin would probably do the trick, and would have been harder to detect. Dioxin describes a broad class of some 75 different chemicals, with wildly varying toxicity to different species. Differences in metabolism mean it takes up to 5,000 times more to kill a hamster than a guinea pig.
The one thing dioxins have in common is their ability to produce the disfiguring and irritating skin complaint chloracne.
This may be what his attackers were aiming for. “If you were trying to make someone look ill and reduce their ability to politic because of the changes and question marks over them and their health, then this would be an ideal compound. It’s pretty Machiavellian,” Hay says.
But if that was the plot, then it could easily have gone wrong. Hay estimates just six drops of pure dioxin in Yushchenko’s soup could have been enough to produce his symptoms - just a couple more would have killed him. The poison was more likely to have been a powder contaminated with trichlorophenate, from which it is produced. That would account for the medicinal smell Yushchenko’s wife smelt on his breath as well as the intense stomach irritation he suffered. — Dawn/The Guardian News Service
Little know outside the scientific fraternity, dioxin is making headlines due to its recent innovative use
