<Your name>
<Address>
<City, state, zip>

<Date> 
<Recipients address>
<City, state, zip>

Dear <person to whom letter is written>,
	The chemical pentachlorophenol (penta), which is widely used as a wood preservative and in a lesser extent a pesticide, needs strict legislation. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry states Penta can cause death with large enough exposure. The EPA set the exposure standards at 1 mg/L per as acceptable for drinking water (EPA, 2001). However, penta can also be breathed in, or it can be absorbed through the skin. Even at low levels penta has been found to have adverse health effects over prolonged exposure periods.
	The chemical penta itself is damaging enough to the environment and human beings. Standards however have brought human exposure of penta to safe enough levels it seems. The larger and more pervasive problem is the other chemicals that are released by the manufacturing and use of penta. According to the EPA’s 1995 inventory of Dioxin release, penta treated wood was responsible for the release of 25,000 gm of dioxin into the environment. Both the creation of penta and the burning of products treated with create large amounts of dioxin (CEHJ, 2001). 
	Dioxins, according to EPA recent reassessment are one of the most toxic human made organic chemicals. As of right now the standard for dioxin exposure is set at 0.006 pictograms (EPA, 2001). Recent studies by the EPA have found that 40% of the American population already has high enough levels of dioxin in their blood to cause adverse health problems. Dioxins have been found to be carcinogenic at one part per billion and can cause reproductive issues at levels as low as one part per trillion. According to Enviroweb (2000) dioxins may be linked to the large rise in prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women over the last fifty years. 
	Considering that penta itself is a toxic chemical that has been known to cause death, and has taken strict regulation to ensure that direct human is limited, yet still this has done nothing to address the fact that penta is one of the leading sources of dioxin pollution. We can not clamp down on other sources of dioxin like waste combustion which releases into air and sources to water like runoff and discharge from paper mills, and yet ignore the contribution of the chemical penta. The widespread use of this chemical must stop. Though the chemical industry would like to down play the severity of the problem, as a culture we can not. As we are coming up at a point in legislation where new levels of dioxin exposure will be set. I urge that the current standards not be weakened any more. Also the time has come to not only control dioxin itself but to address the common sources of its pollution. Please write me back to tell me your opinion of the issues outlined.
								sincerly,

								<type your name>

EPA, Draft Dioxin Reassessment Retrieved on  February 5, 2001 from the World Wide Web: http://www.epa.gov/ncea/pdfs/dioxin/dioxreass.htm .
Eviroweb, Dioxin Home Page. Retrieved on January 24, 2001 from the World Wide Web: http://www.envirolink.org/issues/dioxin/ .
Center for Health Environment and Justice, The American People's Dioxin ReportRetrieved on February 18, 2001 from the World Wide Web: 	http://www.chej.org/policy.html