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A pre-industrial source of dioxins and furans

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Domestic burning of coastal peat has produced these nasty pollutants for millennia.

Abstract

Dioxins and furans (together referred to as dioxins) are ubiquitous, toxic and environmentally persistent organochlorine compounds, which have until now been assumed to be by-products of the organochlorine-based industries that underwent rapid expansion during the 1950s1. Here we show, however, that the burning of coastal peat was a significant source of dioxins long before the industrial revolution. As coastal peats were burned extensively over several millennia in the British Isles and beyond, our discovery shows that it is not only modern society that is responsible for this widespread pollution.

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Figure 1: Proportion of dioxin and furan congeners in high-chloride peat (as well as in burned peat and peat smoke) from Gairloch, UK, and in peat, arable soil and peat ash from a black house floor on Hirta.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biological Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, AB24 3UU, UK

    Andrew A. Meharg & Kenneth Killham

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  1. Andrew A. Meharg
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  2. Kenneth Killham
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Correspondence to Andrew A. Meharg.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Meharg, A., Killham, K. A pre-industrial source of dioxins and furans. Nature 421, 909–910 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/421909a

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