Questions About Health Risks

There are vital questions about health risks of foot and mouth. Many hundred pyres, each typically consuming several hundred carcasses over several days, built out of several hundred wooden railway sleepers, kindling and 50 tons of coal, produced huge plumes of acrid smoke whose stench could be detected several miles away.

Most concern has focussed on smoke particles known as PM-10 (because their size is below 10 microns), and organic compounds formed by burning known as dioxins. The particles are a health risk for anyone with respiratory problems - especially asthmatics - while dioxins have been linked to cancer and to reproductive disorders. There has also been concern over the levels of polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), compounds notorious for their cancer-causing role in cigarette smoking. Reports also emerged that wood burned on some pyres may have been treated with cancer-causing chemicals.

A typical pyre emits an estimated 3 tons of PM-10 particles, 90lb of PAHs and about 0.2 grams of dioxins.

Source: The Sunday Telegraph, 29 April 2001