Impact sur la santé des hydrocarbures aromatiques polycycliques halogénés : état des connaissances

Choosing a threshold or alternatively a non-threshold approach for dioxin-associated cancer risk has tremendous consequences as regard public health impact: considering the current levels of population exposure, adopting a threshold approach, as WHO does, justifies the conclusion that no cancer case is attributable to dioxin exposure in the general population. Conversely, the non-threshold approach may yield an estimate of several thousands of cancer deaths annually due to dioxin exposure in France. Several cohort studies provide data allowing modelling the dose-response relationship for cancers. However, results remain debatable.