Mosquito coil manufacturers will face fines of up to NT$300,000 if their products contain more than 20 picograms of international toxic equivalent per gram (pg I-TEQ/g) of dioxin, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said yesterday.
The new regulation came after the EPA found on July 25 that two types of Crocodile Coil brand mosquito coils contained dioxin concentrations 100 times above the industrial standard.
A secondary investigation on Aug. 5 found that all seven of the brand’s Vietnam-made products contained dioxin levels ranging from 163 pg I-TEQ/g to 624 pg I-TEQ/g. Meanwhile, one product passed the dioxin level test and contained less than 1 pg I-TEQ/g of the carcinogen.
Dioxin is listed by the WHO as a known carcinogen. If exposed to these burning coils in closed rooms for two or three months, a person’s risk of developing cancer could increase 3.7-fold, director-general of the Department of Environmental Sanitation and Toxic Substances Yuan Shao-ying (袁紹英) said.
“We promised to establish a safety level for dioxin concentrations in mosquito coils within a month on July 25 to protect public health,” Yuan said.
“We decided after an expert panel meeting that in the future, manufacturers with products that contain more than 20 pg I-TEQ/g of the toxin will face fines or be ordered to close down their factories,” he said.
Aside from inducing lung and liver cancer, excessive exposure to dioxins can cause low sperm count, liver dysfunction, miscarriages and birth defects, the chief of Chang Gung Medical Foundation Linkou Branch’s department of toxicology, Lin Jie-liang (林杰樑), said.
To prevent excessive inhalation of toxic gas emitted by mosquito coils — which include dioxins and octachlorodipropyl ether — Lin said people should leave the room when the coils are burning and fully ventilate the rooms before they go back in.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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