How much higher are the levels of dioxins in the Ranch Hand group than the control group?
DR. MICHALEK: The control group dioxin levels range from about zero to 10 parts per trillion. Parts per trillion is 10 to the minus 12. CDC actually measures to 10 to the minus 15, which is parts per quadrillion, and reports to a part per trillion. A part per trillion is approximately equivalent to one second in 32,000 years, or it’s equivalent of one dime in a stack of dimes from here to the sun. That’s one part per trillion. You and I in this room have between [zero and] 10 parts per trillion. Ranch Hand veterans have up to 600 parts per trillion today. We think that in Vietnam they had up to 3,000 parts per trillion when you extrapolate that, using our best estimate of the elimination rate. To give you a benchmark, if you look at the population exposed to dioxin in an industrial accident in Italy in 1974, in Seveso, where civilians were exposed to a factory explosion that occurred at a chemical plant, those exposures range up to 30 to 40 thousand parts per trillion. Q: Let me double
