We must adopt a zero-tolerance approach to organic pollutants that don’t go away

THERE have been several references to “EU safe levels” of dioxins in the media recently. I wish to give you a different viewpoint regarding these “safe levels.”

To put it simply, dioxins are part of a group of chemicals known as persistent organic pollutants, or POPs. This means they stay very stable in the environment and don’t break down easily into safer substances.

Because of this, they ‘bio-accumulate’ - the higher up the food chain, the bigger dioxin load a creature will get, mostly through what it eats. To use humans as an example, every time you eat a steak you are getting a portion of the dioxins that the cow has accumulated in its lifetime.