Agent Orange Still Haunts Vietnam, U.S. (Scientist: "...highest levels I've ever seen in my life")

[Hissyspit]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070614/ap_on_re_as/vietnam_agent_orange

Agent Orange still haunts Vietnam, US
By BEN STOCKING, Associated Press Writer

DANANG, Vietnam - More than 30 years after the Vietnam War ended, the poisonous legacy of Agent Orange has emerged anew with a scientific study that has found extraordinarily high levels of health-threatening contamination at the former U.S. air base at Danang.

"They're the highest levels I've ever seen in my life," said Thomas Boivin, the scientist who conducted the tests this spring. "If this site were in the U.S. or Canada, it would require significant studies and immediate cleanup."

Soil tests by his firm, Hatfield Consultants of Canada, found levels of dioxin, the highly toxic chemical compound in Agent Orange, that were 300 to 400 times higher than internationally accepted limits. The report has not yet been released, but Boivin and Vietnamese officials summarized its central findings for The Associated Press.

Earlier tests by Hatfield, which has been working in Vietnam since 1994, showed that dioxin levels were safe across most of Vietnam. But until the study of the old air base at Danang, the consulting firm had never had access to some half-dozen "hotspots" where Agent Orange, a defoliant designed to deny Vietnamese jungle cover, was stored and mixed before being loaded onto planes.

[IndyOp]

1. Children with birth defects from Agent Orange are STILL being born today -

Dr. Nuygen Thi Ngoc Phuong is head of Ho Chi Minh city's biggest maternity hospital. She has been here for more than 30 years and has studied the impact of Agent Orange. She is certain it's still causing birth defects. She says more than two-thirds of the patients are affected by Agent Orange.

Dr. Phuong says statistics show an unmistakable pattern: the rate of child deformities among mothers who were exposed to Agent Orange is much higher than among mothers living close by who were not exposed to the defoliant.

"There is a linkage between dioxin exposure and birth defects — the increased rate of birth defects in my hospital in South Vietnam," she says.

No one questions that dioxin can be deadly, and that there is an alarming number of birth defects in this region. The problem, until now though, has been a lack of independently verifiable scientific evidence. That is, until a team of Canadian scientists and doctors entered the picture.

Agent Orange: Grim Legacy
CBC News Online | June 14, 2005
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/agentorange/agentorange_grimlegacy.html

[slipslidingaway]

2. K&R n/t

[mohinoaklawnillinois]

3. My eldest brother died of colon cancer in April, 2003 at the age of

56. He spent Oct. 1967 - Nov. 1968 at Danang. My sister-in-law, sister and myself are convinced he developed cancer because of his exposure to Agent Orange during his time in Nam.

[blm]

5. During the campaign I remember some media speculating that Kerry's cancer was

from Agent Orange because he had testified that they saw the spraying from their swiftboats.

They were only trying to use that against Kerry - the newsmedia didn't give a fig about the real life/death issues regarding Agent Orange.

[BeHereNow]

4. And just wait for the results of Depleted Uranium in thirty years to surface.

GOD DAMN the MIC.
BHN

[Hissyspit]

6. .

[lpbk2713]

7. *Better Living Through Chemistry* ..... Perhaps the most insidious slogan ever.

DuPont Chemical used it all during the Viet Nam era and into the eighties. They discontinued the use of it when the DoD could no longer hide the lasting deadly effects of Agent Orange.

[mopinko]

8. n the U.S. it would require significant studies and

immediate cleanup
until bush, that is.

[madokie]

9. The increased likihood of birth defects is the main reason I chose

to not father children of my own and thinking about that make me sad. Now I wouldn't trade my stepsons for anything though, they have given me so much