Dioxin Poisoning of Victor Yushchenko

From the perspective of this blog, there wasn’t a lot to be gained from the news coverage confirming that someone had tried to poison Ukrainian opposition presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko by putting dioxin in his food. It says something about the priorities of new organizations when the story of one man poisoned with dioxin is given equal weight to the story of 300,000 kids per year potentially losing cognitive function from mercury exposure. The lesson here is that it takes a little drama to get a story related to environmental health intensely into the news. Or into the political blogs, for that matter.

We’ll see if this news can turn into a teachable moment about dioxin. At least people got an opportunity to see what chloracne looks like. Arnold Schechter was interviewed by NPR. Maybe there will even be a story about brominated fire retardants some day.