What is the extent of Maine’s paper mill dioxin problem?
In 1985, over 11 years ago, dioxins were first found in fish below Maine’s 7 “bleach kraft” paper mills that use chlorine compounds to bleach their paper. These 7 mills discharge over 100 million gallons of wastewater a day to the Penobscot, Kennebec, Androscoggin, Presumpscot and St. Croix rivers. Although the levels of dioxins in mill wastewaters are sometimes undetectable by conventional methods, they are nonetheless enough to contaminate the fish and shellfish because fish act like sponges for dioxins, accumulating them at 25,000-50,000 times the concentrations present in their environment. Today, women of childbearing age are still warned strictly limit their intake of fish caught from 250 miles of Maine’s rivers below paper mills and NO tomalley from lobsters caught along the entire coast. And the general public is advised to severely restrict their consumption of dioxin-contaminated fish and tomalley. Can Maine’s paper mill dioxin problem be solved? Yes! Papermaking technologies
