Higher dioxin levels found in fish, shellfish

The amount of dioxin detected in fish and shellfish was the highest among foods that are most regularly consumed in Korea, a government report has shown. About 97 percent of ingested dioxin, an environmental hormone comes from food.

Mothers living in big cities have higher amounts of dioxin in their breast milk than those in small- and medium-sized cities, and 1.7 out of 100 newborns nationwide have dioxin-related congenital defects, according to the report.

The report, titled Research Materials Causing Internal Secretion Disorders in 2000, was released Friday by the National Toxicology Institute under the Korean Food and Drug Administration (KFDA).

The KFDA food assessment department team, led by Won Kyung-Pung, examined the amounts of dioxin in 13 different kinds of foods. The foods were organized into five major groups: grains (rice, bean), meats (beef, pork, chicken), eggs, fish (mackerel, croaker, hair-tail) and shellfish (oysters, clams, mussels, thin-shelled turf clam). The amount of dioxin in fish and shellfish was 0.416pgTEQ/g. A picogram is one one-trillionth of a gram, which means that 0.416pgTEQ of dioxin was detected per one gram of fat.

Research team head Won said, ``It is judged that there is no fear of dioxin contamination through food because the amount of dioxin detected was only about 7 percent of the permissible daily intake of 220pgTEQ/g, as set by the World Health Organization.``

Meanwhile, a research team led by Prof. Kim Myung-Soo of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology conducted a survey of dioxin content in breast milk taken from 31 pregnant women in Seoul and 35 others in North Cholla Province. The survey showed an average of 14.365pgTEQ/g of dioxin was detected in the milk of Seoul mothers, about 1.2 times the 11.254pgTEQ/g found in those living in North Cholla Province.