[CPEO-MEF] HERBICIDES: Agent Orange in Vietnam

[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

War and the Tragedy of the Commons (Part 3)

by H. Patricia Hynes
Truthout
August 11, 2011

As long as Agent Orange is not addressed, along with the reparations  
that the US agreed to offer the Vietnamese, the Indochina War cannot  
be considered over. Rather, it entered a different phase, a phase  
without artillery and gunshots, but a phase in which millions  
continue to suffer and die in agony.

During the ten years (1961-1971) of aerial chemical warfare in  
Vietnam, US warplanes sprayed more than 20 million gallons of  
herbicide defoliants in an operation code-named Ranch Hand. Agent  
Orange, the dioxin-contaminated and exceedingly toxic herbicide  
manufactured by a handful of chemical companies for the US Department  
of Defense, constituted about 61 percent of the total herbicides  
sprayed in the war.(1) The particular dioxin found in Agent Orange  
(TCDD) is the one of the most toxic environmental contaminants, found  
to cause cancer, birth defects and disruptions to the immune and  
endocrine systems.

A late 1980s investigation by Adm. Elmo Zumwait, former commander of  
the US Navy in Vietnam and father of a naval officer who died  
following exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam, unearthed evidence  
that the US military had knowingly augmented the defoliant's toxicity  
by spraying "Agent Orange in concentrations six to 25 times the  
suggested rate." Other investigations of court and National Archives  
documents have uncovered that the Agent Orange manufacturer Dow  
Chemical Company knew as early as 1965 that the dioxin contaminant in  
the defoliant was "one of the most toxic materials known ..." and  
that, as early as 1957, the company knew that dioxin could be  
eliminated by lowering the temperature and slowing the manufacturing  
process. But eliminating dioxin would delay production and reduce  
company profits when wartime production called for rapid, high- 
quantity manufacture.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.truth-out.org/war-and-tragedy-commons-part-3/1312921264

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope Street, 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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