Dietary intake of dioxins and cancer - where do we stand?

In highly dioxin exposed populations, an elevated cancer risk and cancer mortality has been described. Environmental background exposure and cancer risk has not been analyzed systematically, so far. We conducted a structured review in order to identify relevant studies. Using the PECO scheme we included altogether 13 studies from initially 4,983 articles. Epidemiological data from the included studies did not indicate an increased risk of cancer or increased cancer mortality for all cancer, breast cancer, and sarcoma caused by dietary intake of dioxins. For Non-Hodgkin`s lymphoma, the study situation was in parts inconsistent showing for example an increased risk for DL-PCBs in one study and for furans in another study. Several studies evaluating the effect of dietary dioxin exposure and elevated cancer risk or cancer mortality did not observe a clear association. For Non-Hodgkin`s lymphoma further investigations are needed due to inconsistent results among the studies.