INFERTILITY. Cancer. Low IQ. You name it, dioxins have been blamed for it. But there's no quick way to find out if food is contaminated with these devastatingly toxic chemicals. That could soon change, however, if the first mass-screening test for dioxins in food works as planned.
Demand for a fast, cheap screening test has soared since 1999, when the Belgian dioxin scandal broke. Eggs, meat and dairy products from more than 400 farms were found to be contaminated with dioxins. The source was animal feed that had accidentally been mixed with dioxin-laden transformer oils. Only when chicks began dying did this come to light. It was not apparent earlier because there's no quick test for dioxin contamination. Today's tests rely on high-resolution mass spectrometers and analyses can take up to a month. The new test takes just a week.
A dozen labs across Europe are about to begin evaluating ...
To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.