“EPA rules would scare people from common foods” — like Ben & Jerry’s ice cream?
The Argus-Leader reports,
Farmers and the food industry are trying to kill a proposed safety standard for dioxins, chemicals that can cause cancer and are widely found in meat, seafood and dairy products.
Industry groups say a daily exposure limit for dioxin proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency isn’t justified and could unnecessarily scare consumers away from meat and milk products. An person could ingest more than the proposed daily limit of dioxin in a single meal, the groups say.
“The implications of this action are chilling,” they said in a recent letter to the White House. “EPA is proposing to create a situation in which most U.S. agricultural products could arbitrarily be classified as unfit for consumption.”
The proposed standard would not by itself trigger any regulations on farmers or food companies, but the government could later recommend measures, including restrictions on the content of livestock feed, to reduce the amount of dioxins that people could consume.
The dioxin limit is the latest health and environmental issue that has pitted the Obama administration against industries that claim they’re being subjected to unwarranted, job-stifling rules and regulations…
As an example of what the farm groups’ concern, we reported in that a single-serving of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream contained 200 times the amount of dioxin that the EPA said was safe.
Sorry, misdid math in middle of righteous fury. Whatever, 1 part per quadrillion is still far below any reliable test method. That’s so far beyond ridiculous that it’s insane.
Are they seriously proposing a 20 parts per quintillion limit? 1 trillionth of a gram per kg in a 50 kg person leads to a body concentration of 20 parts per quintillion.
We can only detect arsenic in water down to 3 ppt, and that’s considered a major feat. Most EPA methods don’t go below a tenth of a part per million, and many have limits in the part per million range.
That’s the very definition of insanity. To have a limit orders of magnitude below what can be reliably measured.