Deadly Chemicals Decades After War

Vietnamese Still Exposed to Deadly Chemicals Decades After War
By Jim Stevenson
September 04, 2010

* Dioxin in a Drum (2,4,5 T + 2,4 D) = AO

The United States ended its involvement in the Vietnam War 35 years ago, and established diplomatic relations with Hanoi 15 years ago.  But a recent visit to Vietnam by members of the U.S.-Vietnam Dialogue Group on Agent Orange and Dioxin saw the lingering effects of highly toxic chemicals used by U.S. forces to remove dense vegetation in a bid to flush out enemy combatants.

Agent Orange is the code name for one of the chemicals used by the U.S. Military during the Vietnam War.   Agent Orange was given its name from the color of the large orange-striped barrels in which it was shipped.  An estimated 45 million liters of Agent Orange were sprayed over parts of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

Among the U.S. inter-faith delegation which recently returned from Vietnam was Rabbi Steve Gutow, the president and CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.  "The damage from Agent Orange (and) dioxin was difficult to look at, to feel," he said.  "And to know that we in some way contributed to this was very hard to take away.  As a person who thinks America is as great a country as we have in the world, it just really upset me."

The U.S. Congress appropriated $3 million for fiscal 2007 and again for fiscal 2009 and 2010 for Agent Orange/dioxin work in Vietnam.  Financial support is also coming from the Ford and other U.S. foundations, UN agencies and other governments. Some $30 million has been mobilized so far.

But Reverend Caroll Baltimore Sr., president of the progressive National Baptist Convention Inc., said more needs to done.  "The damage is long term.  And the hot spots are overwhelming even to the point in Da Nang for example where the land is still bare and baron, where no vegetation grows."

Sister Maureen Fielder also found the situation to be surprisingly bad after more than three decades.  "The most poignant place was Da Nang, the Air Force base in Da Nang where we had stored and spilled so much of this poison," she said.  "And what amazed me was that after 35 years you could still smell the stuff.  It was so strong and so toxic."

The Vietnamese government and an independent expert firm, Hatfield Consulting of North Vancouver, Canada, conducted a series of independent assessments of dioxin residues in the environment around the Da Nang airport and in the blood and breast milk of current area residents. The results provided a clearer understanding of the problem in Da Nang, where the feasibility of bio-remediation efforts is being tested.

Rabbi Gutow did not need a study to realize the scope of the issue.  "There was nothing harsher than Da Nang airport.  We had to buy those shoes.  We tried to make a joke of it where you buy these shoes you had to throw away.  Because when you walked there you knew what we had left there under this concrete slab still had the capacity to hurt people and kill people.  And we as a country have not stepped up to the plate and taken care of it."

Findings in of follow-up studies in 2009 indicated that the 2007 interim mitigation measures had succeeded in reducing dioxin exposure of people in the area.  But the damage was evident to members of the inter-faith delegation as they saw Vietnamese children coping with physical hardships and deformities.

"This is one of the truly insidious effects of Agent Orange and dioxin.  It gets passed on in the genetics of reproduction.  And we have no idea how many generations might be affected by this," said Sister Maureen Fielder.

"In no individual case can anyone definitively connect Agent Orange with a specific disability," she said  "None the less the connection is there certainly by correlation.  Because the children that are disabled are overwhelmingly in the areas sprayed by Agent Orange and dioxin."

The idea for a citizen-to-citizen dialogue on Agent Orange was first explored in 2006 by the Ford

Foundation.  The dialogue, which is not an implementing agency or a fundraising organization, was formally established in February 2007 as an initiative of prominent private citizens, scientists and policy-makers on both sides, working on issues that the two countries' governments have found.

Key: 
* indicates comments made by Dioxinnz blog editor

Original Source

Agent Orange Ailments

VA Expands List Of Agent Orange Ailments
by ROSE HOBAN
September 16, 2010

In this May 1966 file photo, U.S. Air Force planes spray 

the defoliant chemical Agent Orange over dense vege-

tation in South Vietnam. The Department of Veterans 

Affairs recently announced new guidelines  that would 

cover exposed veterans for additional diseases, including 

Parkinson's, ischemic heart disease and a form of leukemia.

Thirty-five years after the end of the Vietnam War, many veterans of that conflict are still battling for compensation for diseases they believe are related to Agent Orange, a defoliant that includes several kinds of dioxins.

The Department of Veterans Affairs recently announced new guidelines that would cover exposed veterans for some additional diseases. But the announcement has drawn criticism.

Vietnam veteran Don Wade used to spend his free time building electronics equipment. The results of his hobby line the walls of the den of his home in Raleigh, N.C. But about a decade ago, Wade, who still looks fit and trim at 61, noticed he had more trouble soldering the tiny electronics. His hand had developed a minor tremor, which has only become worse.

"If I take my medication, I'm good for about a half-hour," he says. "My rigidity is, you know, it's like a glove on your hand. And when I walk, it's like somebody walking in 3 feet of water, 2 feet of sand."

Wade was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2003. He is being treated at the VA Hospital in Durham, N.C., and is happy with the care. But he has never been happy that the VA denied his claim that the Parkinson's resulted from Agent Orange exposure while he was a Marine in Vietnam.

"Basically our job was to unload stuff. One of the items was the 55-gallon drums of Agent Orange," he says. "At that time, I had no inclination that what was being spilled was to some degree toxic."

So Wade welcomed the VA's announcement that it would begin approving compensation claims for Parkinson's disease, ischemic heart disease and a form of leukemia. Under an existing 1991 federal law, the VA already compensates for treatment for many diseases, including type-2 diabetes.

Wade says the hospital was abuzz with the news.

"There were about five people that came up: 'Did you hear about the VA?' "

Wade knows he came into contact with Agent Orange, but for many vets the connection isn't as clear.

"There is no possibility of proving on an individual basis what the exposure was," says Trude Bennett, a public health researcher at the University of North Carolina who studies dioxin exposure. "Even if you could measure the body burden of the chemicals in someone's body now, it would have dissipated from the time of the original exposure.

"So there's also no way to prove with absolute certainty a causal effect between the exposure and the medical condition."

The VA estimates the tab for treating these newly added diseases at about $40 billion over the next decade.

"We are in a very bad time economically, so suddenly there's been tremendous resistance to implementing this process," he says.

The new VA rules need congressional approval, but some members of Congress have balked at the price and the spiraling costs of disability claims stemming from Agent Orange. Many vets and their advocates, though, see paying for their health care as part of the cost of war.

Congress has until the end of October to decide whether the new rules will stand and whether Wade and thousands of other veterans will have their treatment covered by the VA.

Original Source