Dioxins are chemical contaminants that have no commercial usefulness by themselves.
They are formed during combustion processes, such as forest fires and backyard trash burning, and during manufacturing processes such as herbicide manufacture and paper manufacture. People are constantly exposed to dioxins through ingestion of dioxins that are present at low levels as environmental contaminants in food. Although they are at low levels in food , some dioxins are very slowly removed from the body and therefore they accumulate in our fat tissue. In laboratory animals, dioxins are highly toxic, cause cancer, and alter reproductive, developmental and immune function. Studies have shown that dioxin exposure at high levels in exposed chemical workers leads to an increase in cancer.