[CPEO-MEF] GLOBAL, HEALTH: Agent Orange more dangerous than "had to be"

[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

Agent Orange's lethal legacy: Defoliants more dangerous than they had to be
Papers show firms didn't act on data to reduce toxicity

By Jason Grotto and Tim Jones
Chicago Tribune
December 17, 2009

Part 5 of a Tribune investigation unearths documents showing that 
decisions by the U.S. military and chemical companies that manufactured 
the defoliants used in Vietnam made the spraying more dangerous than it 
had to be.



As the U.S. military aggressively ratcheted up its spraying of Agent 
Orange over South Vietnam in 1965, the government and the chemical 
companies that produced the defoliant knew it posed health risks to 
soldiers and others who were exposed.

That year, a Dow Chemical Company memo called a contaminant in Agent 
Orange "one of the most toxic materials known causing not only skin 
lesions, but also liver damage."

Yet despite the mounting evidence of the chemical's health threat, the 
risks of exposure were downplayed, a Tribune review of court documents 
and records from the National Archives has found. The spraying campaign 
would continue for six more years.


...

For the entire article, see
http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/agentorange/chi-agent-orange-dioxindec17,0,674174.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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