[CPEO-MEF] GLOBAL: Agent Orange in Vietnam - new report

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Toxin in Agent Orange still polluting South Vietnam, study says

By Jason Grotto
Chicago Tribune
September 13, 2009

HANOI, Vietnam

-- Results from a new study show that herbicides used by U.S. forces 
during the Vietnam War continue to pollute the environment and pose a 
health threat more than three decades after the last shots were fired.

Between 1961 and 1971, the U.S. military released more than 19 million 
gallons of herbicides in South Vietnam to destroy enemy crops and deny 
an elusive adversary cover by defoliating dense mangrove forests and 
triple canopy jungles.

What few knew at the time was that some of the herbicides contained a 
highly toxic form of dioxin, known as TCDD. The toxin was an unintended 
byproduct created while manufacturing mixtures such as Agent Orange, the 
most widely used of a handful of herbicides contaminated with TCDD.

Environmental scientists from a Canadian firm last week presented the 
findings from the study, which documents that high levels of TCDD from 
the herbicides still contaminate soil inside a former U.S. airbase in Da 
Nang as well as sediment from a lake that abuts it.


....

For the entire article, see
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-tc-nw-vietnam-0912-0913sep13,0,7307758.story

--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org




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