Allen Myers, Hanoi
The International Conference of Agent Orange/Dioxin Victims, held in Vietnam's capital on March 28-29, drew some 150 participants, about half of them from outside Vietnam.
After two days of discussion and a visit to Friendship Village, which provides medical and other assistance for some of the victims, the conference issued an appeal for an international campaign (see <http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/663/663p20c.htm>). This held the US government responsible for the effects of Agent Orange (AO) and urged material support for victims, including from governments, like Australia's, that were allied with the US during the Vietnam War.
From 1961 to 1970, the US military sprayed 77 million litres ( 8800 tonnes) of the Agent Orange herbicide over an area of 2.9 million hectares in Vietnam. After the US stopped spraying, it supplied the chemical to its puppet government in the south, which continued using AO until the end of the war in 1975.
AO and other dioxin-based herbicides or "defoliants", as they were called at the time, were used to destroy forests that could provide cover for Vietnamese guerrillas fighting to liberate their country. They were also were sprayed directly on rice fields to deny food to the guerrillas. Such deliberate destruction of civilian food supplies is itself a war crime.
All of the herbicides used by the US in Vietnam contained the dioxins which cause serious harm to the health of those exposed to these herbicides. AO, the most widely used in Vietnam, was a 50-50 mixture of the herbicides 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T. Both of these chemicals can be deadly even in small amounts; a concentration of 0.5 parts per million is lethal for salmon, for example. In Vietnam, the US often sprayed 2,4,5-T at 10 to 20 times the levels that were permitted when the chemical was allowed to be used in agriculture to kill weeds.
But 2,4,5-T is even more deadly because its production always results in the creation of at least small quantities of the dioxin 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-para-dioxin (TCDD), which is an extremely toxic chemical. TCDD is a cause of a variety of cancers, type 2 diabetes, reduced immunity, hormone disorders and genetic damage.
TCDD in soil appears to have a half-life of between 25 and 100 years. Because it is not soluble in water, there is no known means for removing it from the body. However, in a pregnant woman's blood it can pass through the placenta and lodge in the foetus.
The chemical is soluble in fat, so it easily becomes part of the food chain, including in mothers' milk. In 1998, the World Health Organisation (WHO) reported its findings on dioxin levels in mothers' milk in a number of countries. These levels typically ranged from 1.5 to 3 ppt, but in two contaminated areas of southern Vietnam they were 9 and 17 ppt. (In 1970, when the spraying was still going on, researchers from Harvard University found a concentration as high as 1450 ppt.)
The WHO has set 1-4 parts per trillion (ppt) per one kilogram of body weight as the maximum daily exposure. The US Environmental Protection Agency sets a maximum 160 times smaller, 0.006 ppt.
A "normal" level of dioxin in 2,4,5-T is 13 parts per million. However, the great demand for AO during the Vietnam War caused chemical companies to speed up production, resulting in much greater dioxin contamination — between 140 and 2000 ppm.
Scientists at Columbia University in New York calculated the total amount of dioxin sprayed on Vietnam as 336 kilograms. Other scientists have estimated the total at 500-600kg.
Vietnamese women exposed to AO have 10 times the rate of spontaneous abortion compared to women not exposed, 10-50 times the rate of molar pregnancies and 10 times the number of births with congenital defects.
Japanese scientists who studied two contaminated areas in southern Vietnam found 69 cases of anencephaly (partial or total absence of the brain) per 100,000 births. (The rate in Japan is 8, and in Northern Ireland 20.) They found 103 cases per 100,000 births of harelip or cleft palate (Japan 10, Malaysia 15, Northern Ireland 12).
The widespread use of AO and other toxic chemicals also had an effect on many of the US, Australian, South Korean and New Zealand soldiers who fought in Vietnam, and veterans from all these countries attended the Hanoi conference.
Also present were veterans from Canada. That country was not directly involved in the war, but it allowed a major military base to be used for testing various US herbicides, resulting in dioxin exposure of many soldiers, their families and civilians from the surrounding area.
A paper distributed by South Korean veterans at the conference pointed out that Korean soldiers were given no information or special instructions about AO. Soldiers noticed that AO kept mosquitoes away, and therefore would deliberately expose their bare skin to the chemical when it was sprayed from the air.
In January, a South Korean court ordered two US chemical companies to pay 6795 Korean veterans total compensation of US$62 million for their medical conditions arising from dioxin exposure.
However, last year a US court rejected a similar suit by Vietnamese victims. A ruling on the victims' appeal against that decision is expected this month.
In so far as possible, AO victims are incorporated into the broader Vietnamese society. Nguyen Thanh Tung was born blind but is an accomplished musician, a graduate from the Hanoi Conservatory of Music. He gave the conference a short performance on the an bau, a single-stringed harp.
But many of the people injured by AO/dioxin have severe physical deformities, and Vietnam is too poor to provide the kinds of technological assistance that can ease disabilities in a more developed country. As well, many of the victims with congenital defects also suffer greater or lesser intellectual impairment.
Friendship Village, on the western outskirts of Hanoi, was established in 1998 to provide medical treatment and education to AO victims. It is supported by contributions and cooperation of military veterans from England, France, Germany, Japan and the US.
The north of Vietnam was not sprayed with defoliants, but soldiers who fought in the south and were exposed to AO are now suffering medical problems, and fathering or giving birth to children with congenital defects.
Friendship Village treats about 240 veterans a year, mostly for two months at a time. It also assists second and third-generation dioxin victims, providing them with basic education and special education for those who require it.
These students usually live in the village for two, three or four years. Their education includes some type of vocational training so that they can contribute to their families' income when they return to their homes. Only a few students, whose families are dead or too poor to care for them, live permanently in the village.
From Green Left Weekly, April 12, 2006.
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