But the truth is we have blackened the river and devalued human life. The almighty buck rules. There's something terribly wrong with that. Dioxin, as Hartford came to learn, is one of the world's most dangerous environmental poisons, an unintentional waste by-product of commercial chlorine industrial processes that include the chlorine bleaching of paper, manufacture of plastics and municipal waste incineration. The pulp and paper industry is the third-largest source of dioxin emissions.
Dioxins resist natural breakdown, persist for decades, and accumulate in the human body.
High concentrations of dioxin, for example, form in fatty tissue and can be passed up the food chain from one generation to the next through the placenta and through breast milk. Chlorine, once manufactured during World War I for chemical weapons, is the common denominator in dioxin, DDT, Agent Orange, PCBs and ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons. Even ECF is considered a big step for U.S. paper mills accustomed to working with no restrictions. Currently, only four TCF pulp mills operate in the U.S., versus seven in Canada and 44 in Europe. And what we have is a brand new set of communities that are downwind from those smokestacks that are at risk.