[CPEO-MEF] HERBICIDES: Agent Blue in Indochina

[Lenny Siegel <LSiegel@cpeo.org>]

The toxic legacy of Agent Blue

BY REBECCA TRAGER
Chemistry World
JANUARY 8, 2025
 

Agent Orange’s use during the Vietnam War is well known. But the use of another herbicide during the war, known as Agent Blue, has remained largely unexplored. But one US researcher, who is a Vietnam Era veteran, is on a mission to raise awareness of this other so-called ‘rainbow’ arsenic-based herbicide that was used by the US military and its allies during the Vietnam War and the Second Indochina War.

Recently published research by Ken Olson, a soil scientist at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, reports that arsenic’s present-day persistence in the Vietnam Mekong Delta groundwater is in part due to the spraying of Agent Blue more than five decades ago.

Agent Blue was a mixture of the organoarsenic compounds cacodylic acid (pictured) and sodium cacodylate. When it biodegrades arsenic is released. In contrast, Agent Orange was made up of equal amounts of two common agricultural herbicides – 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D), which is still used today, and 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T), which contained the contaminant 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD).

…

For the entire article, see
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/the-toxic-legacy-of-agent-blue/4020687.article


—

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)

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