Environmental Toxins: County with DuPont Plant Has High Cancer Rate

Tennessee's Humphreys County, home of a DuPont plant, has some of the state's highest rates of lung and breast cancers. However, it is now known whether Dioxins are to blame for the increased cancer rates.
"If I were a health official in Tennessee and this was a concern to me, one of the first things I would do is a little bit of bio-monitoring,'' said Christopher Portier, who is the director of the Office of Risk Assessment Research at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

County with DuPont plant has one of the highest cancer rates in state

All people have some dioxins present in their bodies. The chemicals are both natural and man-made and exposure can come from food sources. Dioxins have been linked to a wide range of health problems, from cancer to diabetes, to birth defects. Portier says that the possibility of dioxin exposure shouldn't be of immediate concern to anyone: "If it's a problem now, it's been a problem for a long time," he said.