Minnesota Department of Health

News Release

March 15, 2002

Contact information

Dioxin in animal feed supplements seen as cause for concern - but not a public health crisis

Efforts to address issue are part of long-term effort to reduce background levels of dioxin in the environment

State health officials say they are concerned about the recent discovery of dioxin in animal feed supplements produced at a plant in Chaska - but the contamination isn't an emergency, and it doesn't pose an immediate public health threat.

However, they also say the contamination represents one more way that people can be exposed to dioxin - adding to the background levels of dioxin that are already present in the human environment. That makes it important to address the problem quickly, officials say.

The operator of the plant has voluntarily recalled some of the products produced at the plant, after testing revealed that those products contained dioxin.

The action was taken in response to a joint investigation conducted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA), the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA). Operators of the facility have been cooperating fully in the investigation, according to state and federal officials.

Many people lack a clear understanding of what dioxin is, and how it affects human health, state officials believe.

"Partly because of the way dioxin has been depicted in the media, people may tend to associate it with some sort of environmental crisis or emergency," said Dr. Hillary Carpenter, who is a toxicologist at MDH. "But in fact, dioxin is part of our environment, day in and day out.

"We're all exposed to low levels of dioxin, on a regular basis, and we all typically have some level of dioxin in our bodies," Dr. Carpenter said. "The goal of public health is to minimize that exposure, and work to reduce it over time."

Very high levels of dioxin exposure can cause short-term health effects, including skin problems and possibly liver damage, he said. Longer-term exposure, at lower levels, has been associated with an increased risk of cancer. However, officials say that any increase in exposure resulting from the contaminated animal feed is likely to be very slight, and may be difficult to detect or measure.

Dioxin is actually a broad family of chemical compounds, rather than an individual chemical, and it is produced by a broad range of common human activities. It is released into the environment through the burning of various materials - including municipal waste, household trash, and fuels like oil, coal or wood. The manufacture of paper and chemicals, as well as other industrial processes, can also produce dioxin.

Although some amount of dioxin is naturally present in the environment, these activities have caused background levels of dioxin to increase over time. More recently, the efforts of state and federal environmental agencies have served to reduce these non-natural sources of dioxin.

As a result, background levels of dioxin have begun to drop. However, dioxin breaks down slowly in the environment, so reducing dioxin levels has been a slow process.

Addressing the problem of dioxin in animal feed supplements from the Chaska facility is an important part of the overall effort to reduce dioxin levels, according to state health officials.

Dioxin compounds are commonly found - at very low levels - in food, Dr. Carpenter said. "Market basket" studies conducted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have found dioxin in a variety of commercially available foods - especially meat, and other foods containing animal fats.

Officials say it would be difficult to assess, with any precision, the impact of the dioxin contamination on meat and milk from animals that consumed the implicated feed supplements. However, the dioxin compounds would have been greatly diluted in the process of mixing the supplements with animal feed, and further diluted when the feed was metabolized by the animals.

For that reason, it may not be possible to tell if the supplements actually increased the level of dioxin that was already present in these food products. It's likely that any increase would have been extremely small.

Officials are also looking at the possible impact of dioxin emissions from the plant on people who worked there, or on the surrounding community. However, they stress that it would be premature to draw any conclusions right now about possible dioxin exposure from plant emissions - or whether any significant exposure even occurred.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) is looking at the possibility of doing sampling and monitoring inside the building. If it is determined that there was a possible release of dioxin emissions from the facility, MPCA will explore the possibility of collecting and analyzing environmental samples from the neighborhood around the plant, and checking the air filters in the ventilation systems of nearby buildings for possible dioxin contamination.

Production of the contaminated food supplements was discontinued on February 28, eliminating any possible risk of exposure from ongoing emission of dioxin.

The Minnesota Department of Agriculture news release on the
recall can be viewed at http://www.mda.state.mn.us/newsreleases/2002news/mar15_01.htm

-MDH-

Dioxin in Animal Feed Supplements fact sheet

For more information, contact:

Buddy Ferguson
MDH Communications
(651) 215-1306

Hillary Carpenter
Health Risk Assessment
(651) 215-0928

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