Agent Orange disaster and efforts to overcome the consequences (I)

Part 1

Agent Orange disaster

During their invasion war against Vietnam, the US Army conducted the largest-scale and longest-time chemical warfare in Vietnam, which has caused unprecedented consequences in human history.

In April 2012, an international scientific symposium was held in Yale University, the US, attracting a large number of world leading scientists. The participating scientists discussed the latest scientific research projects on chemical warfare and concluded: The US has conducted the largest, most cruel and inhumane chemical warfare in human history in South Vietnam.

During the 1961-1971 decade, the US Army sprayed some 80 million liters of toxic chemicals, including Pink, White, Green, Purple, Orange, among others. Among the toxic chemicals, Agent Orange (AO) accounted for 61%. This amount of AO containing 366kg of dioxin was sprayed onto one fourth of the area of South Vietnam, of which 86% was sprayed twice and 11% was sprayed 10 times or more.

 “Agent Orange/dioxin” that is often used to label the toxic chemical sprayed in South Vietnam by the US Army contains 2,3,7,8 tetracholorodibenzodioxin (called dioxin in short) – the most poisonous chemical compound. According to the World Health Organization, some dozens of nanograms of the chemical compound can kill a person.

Dioxin is an unwanted by-product, which is born during production of other chemicals. If AO is produced properly at 88.80 degrees Celsius in 12 hours, the by-product of dioxin is insignificant.

But in order to get more profits, US Agent Orange manufactures shortened the production time to eight minutes and raised the production temperature to 277.70 degrees Celsius, which made the amount of dioxin in the AO product increase by hundreds of times.   

Various kinds of dioxin can be produced in industrial production, earthquakes, bushfires and waste-burning. Normally, less than 10% of tetracholorodibenzodioxin is contained in the compound of dioxin during these processes. Meanwhile, tetracholorodibenzodioxin makes up 20%-100% of the dioxin compound in the AO product that the US Army used in the Vietnam War.   

The chemical warfare conducted by the US Army in South Vietnam has left unprecedented consequences in human history. These consequences have been described by domestic and international scientists with the words: tragedy, genocide, mass destruction, horribleness, terribleness, fierceness, brutality, fatality, catastrophe and Agent Orange Disaster.

Environmental disaster

As a huge amount of toxic chemicals were continually sprayed by the US Army for a long time, the environment was terribly polluted. Upstream forests, saltwater forests were all destroyed and became desert and deadly. No life could exist there: No animals nor green leaves were seen, and even no sounds of insects were heard. Forests in all 28 river basins in central Vietnam were heavily damaged. 16 river basins lost 30% of their natural forests, 10 others lost 30%-50% of their natural forests and the two remainders lost more than a half of their natural forests. As the rivers in central Vietnam are short and steep, the pollution and destruction of upstream forests had a direct negative impact on the lower parts of the rivers, home to populations. For example, the destruction of the upstream protective forests of the 28 rivers in the center evidently resulted in huge floods and severe draughts in the lower parts of the Huong, Thach Han, Han, Thu Bon, TraKhuc, Ve, Cau and Ba. In 1995, the World Bank noted that the second war in Indochinahas seriously destroyed the environment.

Disaster for humans

According to the results of a survey conducted by American scientists (Professor and his colleagues at Columbia University) released in the Nature No 422 on April 17th, 2003, as many as 4.8 million Vietnamese people were exposed to AO/dioxin and more than three million are victims of AO/dioxin.

Not only Vietnamese people but also US servicemen and troops from the US’s allies participating in the war in Vietnamese AO victims. According to Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, former Commander of the US Air Force and Navy in South Vietnam in the period 1968-70, at least 2.6 million US troops were exposed to AO/dioxin. Every year, the US Administration spends billions of US dollars on US Vietnam veterans with illnesses caused by AO/dioxin. In 2013 alone, the US Administration spent US$13.5 billion.

Meanwhile, the Korean Victims of Agent Orange Veterans Association (KAOVA) revealed that the Republic of Korea (RoK) had 100,000 AO victims, including 20,000 deceased ones. Every year, the RoK Government provides US$ 130 million of support for its AO victims.

In Vietnam, hundreds of thousands of AO victims have died. However, there still remain millions of alive AO victims who are around the clock struggling against incurable dreadful illnesses caused by AO/dioxin. They live with extreme pains in both physical and mental terms, and are dying down till their last breath. According to scientists, AO/dioxin cause sterility to males, which make a number of families at high risk of being deleted. AO/dioxin can also cause gene changes, thus leading to embryo deaths or abnormal development of embryos. Many Vietnamese mothers live in misery as they born their children with deformities, disabilities or/and incurable illnesses. Some of these childrencannot hear, see or speak; others are too weak to walk or do anything. All have little consciousness and intelligence to become a normal person.

Many mothers have never seen their AO children smiling or/and heard their AO children calling “Mum”. The AO disaster has deprived millions of Vietnamese families of modest peace and happiness. Life of the families whose children are all AO victims is really mournful. For example, the couple of Mr. Do Duc Diu and Mrs. Pham ThiNuc in Ha Thiep village, Vo Ninh commune, QuangNinh district, QuangBinh born all 15 children with illnesses and disabilities related to AO/dioxin. Of them, 12 died young and three are still alive. The couple have to work hard to support their AO children, and also spend all their time in taking care of their children as all the three children are not normal. Needless to say how miserable their lives are! The father and the mother have forgotten to either smile or cry for years.

The sole concern of the parents of AO children like Mr. Diu and Mrs. Nuc is how and whom their AO children live with when they pass away.

More than 40 years has passed since the end of the war. Many war wounds have been healed. Bomb craters in cities have been leveled and used to build parks, tall buildings and flower gardens. But the AO wound without blood remains in Vietnam and will last long as dioxin can cause genetic mutation to dioxin-exposed people and this passes from generation to generation.

According to preliminary statistics, the war participants disposed to AO/dioxin have more than 300,000 descendants with AO related illnesses and disabilities, not to mention dead embryos and newborns. Unfortunately, the modern science has not yet answered the question of how many generations AO/dioxin impacts can pass on to.

Therefore, it is not known when Vietnamese villages in the countryside and streets in towns will not have to hear sudden painful deeply resent screams of AO children at night that are often followed by lullabies sung by their mothers in an emotional but sad, sobbing and plaintive voice 

Families of AO victims are all poor or very poor, and they all live in extreme misery. They very much need support, care and empathy from individuals, organizations and the whole society as a whole.

“The pain of Vietnamese AO victims is the common pain of the Vietnamese people as well as of the human beings with common sense,” former President Nguyen Minh Triet wrote in his letter to AO victims on August 10th, 2006.

Colonel Ngo Khac Ky