Talk:1,4-Dioxin

Rename

I wonder, whether [the article entitled "Dioxin" as of Oct. 16, 2007] should be renamed to Polychlorinated dibenzodioxin, and a disambiguation page be created under its current [as of Oct. 16, 2007] name Dioxin, with the following contents:

The name Dioxin can describe several diferent chemical substances:

• Polychlorinated dibenzodioxin (in short PCDD)
• Polybrominated dibenzodioxin
• 1,2-Dioxin
• 1,4-Dioxin
• Dibenzodioxin
• 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlordibenzodioxin (also known as Sevesodioxin)

What do you think?--77.234.80.83 13:37, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Maybe, but I'm not sure that we need a disambiguation page when only one of the possible substances has an existing article. --Itub 09:26, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

As there is no particular enthusiasm for a disambiguation page I have edited Description, and Chemical structure to include 1,4-Dioxin. Pages will be created for this and for Dibenzodioxin, which is currently redirected to Dioxin without any information of its properties on that page. The redirection will have to be removed. LouisBB 03:56, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Maybe change the article name to Polyhalogenated dibenzodioxin with Polychlorinated dibenzodioxin and Polybrominated dibenzodioxin as REDIRECTS going to this article. H Padleckas 21:13, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

I do not currently see anything in this article about polybrominated dibenzodioxins, and I doubt they are discussed anywhere else in Wikipedia. Therefore, I think we need not bother making a Polyhalogenated dibenzodioxin article or a Polybrominated dibenzodioxin REDIRECT. Moving this article to Polychlorinated dibenzodioxin would be good enough. H Padleckas 06:57, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Both LouisBB and I (H Padleckas) have been working on the introductory section of this article to inform the Wikipedia-reading public that dioxins originally and most correctly still refer to the two compounds with the following structures:

Dioxin isomers

and that most if not all "popular" mentions of dioxins are simplifications that should more correctly say polychlorinated dibenzodioxins or something similar. My recommendation is as follows: (1) Move this current article to Polychlorinated dibenzodioxins with appropriate simplification of the introductory section. (2) Recreate the "Dioxin" article with the current introductory section and a link to the Polychlorinated dibenzodioxins article. If nobody does this or objects, I might just do this myself in a few days. H Padleckas 07:18, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

I support your proposal, good idea.

Ben 15:11, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Happy to agree LouisBB 15:17, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

I started working offline on the above-proposed Polychlorinated dibenzodioxins intro section. H Padleckas 21:46, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

I just made the move I proposed based on the concurrence of User:Benjah-bmm27 and User:LouisBB. Also as I proposed, I re-created this short Dioxin article from the previous intro section of the former unmoved "Dioxin" article. The Talk page has been moved too, and this Talk page will be has been simplified to include only this Section relevant to the re-creation of this Dioxin article. H Padleckas 01:31, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Added Infobox with info gathered from the German WP on 1,4-dioxin. Needs checking and expanding, eg by hazard signs. LouisBB 05:00, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

I have added the disambig alert as an early warning for the reader, but admit that the article could now be better structured. LouisBB 05:23, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

I am currently working on this article offline, trying to restructure it.
H Padleckas 17:50, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

"2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-1,4-dioxin (pictured here as well)." not pictured, is the picture missing or is the sentence out of place? Whmice (talk) 18:32, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm new to Wikipedia so I'm not sure exactly how to proceed. There is a lot of incorrect information on this page. I am a chemist. The structure is actually dioxane, not dioxin. Since dioxin is a controversial topic it is important to get this right. The structure shown is that of dioxane but much of the text is about dioxin. It will take a lot of work to sort this out.Falexdchema (talk) 15:37, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Please ignore the previous comment. The structure is correct.Falexdchema (talk) 15:43, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Reorganization needed

This page is quite confusing, since it purports to be about C4H4O2 dioxin, but most of the material on the page refers to "dioxin" meaning TCDD and related polychlorinated dibenzodioxins. I am removing the sections which refer to dioxin as an environmental pollutant, since all those references (e.g. reference 2) clearly mean TCDD/PCDD and not the relatively unimportant C4H4O2 dioxin this page describes. I am also changing the TCDD disambig entry to point to Polychlorinated dibenzodioxins and not to this page, which is largely inappropriate. Finally, I would strongly recommend pointing dioxin to that page as well, since the word almost exclusively refers to TCDD and not to C4H4O2. I won't do that now, but I would ask you to consider it. 76.19.197.209 (talk) 03:07, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

My edits were predictably reverted, but I am adding {{disputed}} for now. Once more: This article describes the little-known and extremely unimportant o-dioxin and p-dioxin, but attributes health and safety information which is relevant to the important environmental pollutants called polychlorinated dibenzodioxins, including 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin, and which are all generally referred to as "dioxin". The sections I removed are not remotely relevant to o-dioxin and p-dioxin. There's no point in my reverting until I can convince someone else to spend 2 minutes looking at the literature on "dioxin", which, you will notice, always refers specifically to TCDD or the PCDDs more generally, but never to o-dioxin or p-dioxin. This is a good place to start. As I suggested yesterday, a reorganization of these pages would help. 76.19.197.209 (talk) 23:34, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Since the December 08 Irish pork contamination incident...

I've had a look at various sources of information. There is information at the UK's HPA web site here; and at the Food Standards Agency of Ireland website.

It seems to me (as a public health/health protection consultant, but not one with great knowledge specifically about dioxins) that:

• Dioxin, above certain levels is toxic. As you drop below these levels the toxicity drops, and at low levels it is probably harmless (or, more technically, if it does any harm, it's such a small amount of harm that it's next to impossible to detect or measure it).
• Dioxins occur naturally as well as industrially.
• There is a certain level of dioxin in food.
• Your body can clear dioxin, but only slowly.
• As long as the amount of dioxin you consume, over a period of time, is less than the amount your body can clear during that period, it is unlikely to be harmful.
• If you consume more dioxin than your body can clear, and continue to do so, the level of dioxin will gradually build up in your body (at least until you stop consuming dioxin at a greater rate than you can clear it). If you continue to do this for long enough, dioxin levels could start to reach the levels at which it becomes significantly toxic.

For this reason, "safe" levels in food are very low indeed - otherwise people who consume a lot of a contaminated product could start to build up dioxin. But, as long as you don't continue to eat it over a long period of time, it is not dangerous to consume food with dioxin levels that exceed these safety levels by a considerable margin.

I'm not 100% certain that all of the facts above are correct, but I think they're about right. Thinking it through did raise some questions about the toxicodynamics (is that a word? - pharmacodynamics doesn't seem quite right when discussing a toxin) of dioxins. HPA guidance says it has a half-life of years (I don't have it in front of me, something like 4-7 years IIRC). Is it cleared by 1st order kinetics - at a rate proportionate to the concentration of dioxin in the body, as the statement about half life implies? Or is it more like zero-order kinetics, as is the case with alcohol (cleared at a constant rate, regardless of the blood alcohol concentration). Or does it approximate more to first-order dynamics at higher concentrations, and more to zero-order at very low concentrations? --peter_english (talk) 09:50, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Page move to Dioxin (chemical) - precision must yield to usefulness

The current title of this page "Dioxin" misleads and possibly confuses many readers. To laypeople, "dioxin" invariably refers to the class of environmental pollutants Polychlorinated dibenzodioxins, not this highly specific chemical compound. About 300 pages link to "dioxin" - the overwhelming majority of those refer to environmental pollutant, not this specific chemical compound. Narrowly, from a chemist's viewpoint, the title is perfectly valid. But from a pragmatic point of view, precision must yield to usefulness. I will move this page to "Dioxin (chemical)" and let "Dioxin" redirect to Polychlorinated dibenzodioxins (I also considered "Dioxin (compound)", but compound is a specific chemical term, possibly confusing laypeople). Power.corrupts (talk) 08:47, 12 December 2008 (UTC)