On Mon, 7 Jan 2002, Anonymous wrote:

Total bullshit there crock dog. TCDD is also a breakdown product of both poly-chlorinated phenols like 2,4,D and 2,4,5-T and poly-chlorinated bi-phenols (PCBs). It really doesn't matter what level tcdd (dioxin) is at time of manufacture, even boiling coffee watere with 245T in it can give you a load of dioxin.

Dunno, maybe you're right, I couldn't get it to happen in the lab with phenols when I was a chem student without actually burning it. I tried. (wasn't supposed to but I was curious). Biphenols, yes. Or something close enough to TCDD that I didn't care. Actually burning 245T, and 24D for that matter will indeed produce TCDD. As to whether or not overcooking these phenols produces it, well, I wouldn't doubt it. But overcooking would still be a faulty process. BTW, burning just about ANYTHING with chlorine in it will produce dioxin. I don't know there brother nobody, I just keep reading over and over again, folks using 245T, 24D and TCDD practically interchangably. They are not the same chemicals, not at all. I read things like "245T, a form of dioxin" and "Agent Orange, a strong dioxin". You say TCDD is a breakdown product of 245T, others say it is a manufacturing byproduct, others say it is the same thing.

The agit/prop that we *need* herbicides to produce enough food is patently absurd. They didn't even exiest 50 years ago, and most farmers in the world still don't use them.

Well, most farmers in the world still don't have nearly the output that the "chemically dependant brainwashed, braindead amerikan farmer" does, except perhaps those other hi output ag industries from Germany, the netherlands and such. All of which are of course, heavily chem dependent. Herbicides have existed a hell of a lot longer than 50 years, even so-called modern chlorinated herbicides have been around since the late 1800s.

Only the chemically dependant brainwashed, braindead amerikan farmer does, which is why he's quickly becoming extinct.

The reasons the "chemically dependant brainwashed, braindead amerikan farmer" is becomming exinct has a lot more to do with international corporate farming and economics of multinational monopolies like Archer Daniels Midland, the darling of the NPR crowd, than it does the use of herbicides, pesticides and fertilzers. Perhaps you are right on all cases, that agent orange and all phenoxyl herbicides are the devils spawn and the true root of all evil. My imagination balks at it, perhaps because I don't share your clarity of vision. However, I do know some of the chemists at Dow Midland who were directly involved in Dows work with 245T, and to follow your line of thinking is to say that these folks are the fine agents of the great satan himself, heirs to those nice folks who stirred the pot so vigorously in europe back in the 40s. My imagination balks at it, perhaps because these folks simply are not like that, and I have read a lot of the papers, I have done some of the chemistry and have learned in an empirical way that these questions are all a great deal more complicated than these flat statements like "Agent Orange is the blame for all the ''bad things''" suggest. This is all real touchy stuff, I have been around pretty much half a century and have been litterally up to my neck in this stuff. (Yes, this *STUFF*). I don't take it lightly, and I don't buy into any corporate line, as a corporation is almost by definition incapable of telling any truth when there is any bad news. But little snippits that say ag/chem is evil, and we are good because we say it is evil are pretty much a waste of everyones time.