Summary: conference on dibenzodioxins and dibenzofurans, National Institute of Environmental Health Services, April 2-3, 1973.

To attempt to summarize the proceedings of a meeting such as this one in any rigorous sense is clearly an unreasonably ambitious task. It is made more challenging because of the tentative character of much of the work commented upon here. This meeting, one of a series (and I hope a growing series) for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, represents an extraordinarily useful concept. It is designed to bring together a variety of scientific bedfellows who have contemplated (and indeed investigated) a subject for its academic interest and for its very timely topical interest. These same scientists would have learned about each other eventually but, in the best tradition of science, it would have taken a long time. By design, we are witnessing the cutting edge of scientific research for this area. This meeting has, as its avowed and very virtuous purpose, the calling out of the walls a good deal of unmatured and not totally interpreted or confirmed research. It is important to keep this tentative and unconfirmed character in mind. One is struck, too, by the character of the research which has been reported at this meeting. There are still many gaps in our knowledge about dibenzofurans and dioxins.