[CPEO-MEF] HERBICIDES, GLOBAL: Vietnam Agent Orange cleanup

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Agent Orange Vietnam Cleanup Started By U.S.

By MIKE IVES
Associated Press
August 9, 2012

DANANG, Vietnam -- The United States began a landmark project  
Thursday to clean up a dangerous chemical left from the defoliant  
Agent Orange – 50 years after American planes first sprayed it on  
Vietnam's jungles to destroy enemy cover.

Dioxin, which has been linked to cancer, birth defects and other  
disabilities, will be removed from the site of a former U.S. air base  
in Danang in central Vietnam. The effort is seen as a long-overdue  
step toward removing a thorn in relations between the former foes  
nearly four decades after the Vietnam War ended.

"We are both moving earth and taking the first steps to bury the  
legacies of our past," U.S. Ambassador David Shear said during the  
groundbreaking ceremony near where a rusty barbed wire fence marks  
the site's boundary. "I look forward to even more success to follow."


...

For the entire article, see
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/09/agent-orange-vietnam- 
cleanup_n_1759641.html

See also http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/10/world/asia/us-moves-to- 
address-agent-orange-contamination-in-vietnam.html
and
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marjorie-cohn/51-years-after-us-began- 
c_b_1745567.html

--

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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