Last wednesday I had my first job interview (for some telemarketing job), and I gotta say I was not impressed. The girl wanted to see my "selling skills" and asked me to sell her "something" and let me choose what. I was inspired by all the mineral water ads that were hanging all over the place and decided to sell her that. As soon as she heard "cheaper" and "highest quality" she was satisfied, I didn't even get to tell her about the exclusive food additives and the compact container!

I just recently heard about Victor Yushchenko, the "runner-up" to the Ukraine presidency who got poisoned with dioxin (actually it was the most hazardous type, tetrachlorodibenzoparadioxin or TCDD) by his opponents. He's supposed to come to Israel for skin treatment (one of the results of the poisoning was the destruction of his facial skin) The pictures of him before and after the poisoning are just unbelievable:



(for another picture, hover over this one)

It's just imposible to get that it's the same man after only 3 months! It looks like 30 years. It's even crueler because he was a handsome man.
I feel so sorry for him, especially as a person who knows facial suffering.

-The full article in hebrew
-Articles in english

Anyhow, after I got over the shock... I was thinking to myself "what the fuck is dioxin?!", so here's what I found:
poisonous substance which is used in the manufacture of various chemical products. A normal level of dioxin is between 15 and 45 units per gram of blood fat. Almost everyone has some dioxins in their body because the toxic chemical is so widespread in the environment (mainly from its industrial usages) and accumulates in the food chain.
In Victor Yushchenko's case, the concentration was about 100,000 units per gram of blood fat, and it's also the second highest concentration ever recorded.

Dioxin links:

• http://www.greenpeace.org/israel_he/features/details?item_id=448634&campaign_id= (hebrew)



• http://www.hasviva.org.il/iblin/how_many_dioxins.htm (hebrew)



• http://www.beofen-tv.co.il/cgi-bin/chiq.pl?%D7%90%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%94_%D7%99%D7%A9_%D7%93%D7%99%D7%95%D7%A7%D7%A1%D7%99%D7%9F (hebrew)



• http://www.ejnet.org/dioxin/ (english)