Agent Orange
By loudcry
@loudcry (1043)
India
April 24, 2008 1:36pm CST
I was reading an old issue of national geographic magazine and came across an article about agent orange.
Agent orange was developed as a Herbicide in the US. It increases the rate of growth in leaves and results in early exfoliation. The rationale for use was that, when used in paddy feilds it kills the weeds while the thin blade like leaves of the crop plants remain undamaged, thus selectively killing weed plants.
Agent orange was later used in Vietnam by the US military between 1961 and 1971 in the forests. This was done in order to rob the vietnamese fighters of the cover provided by the forest canopy.
It has now been established that the chemicals used in agent orange are related to some malignancies.
It is beleives that it has caused thousands of children to be born with deformities in vietnam(check out flickr.com by typing agent orange victims). Though not much documentation has been undertaken in this regard by authorities other than the vietnemese authorities.
3 people like this
4 responses
@sedel1027 (17846)
• Cupertino, California
24 Apr 08
IIRC the US government stopped production of agent orange due to birth deformities. They are aware of what it does. They have paid out thousands of dollars to people affected by the product.
3 people like this
@harshadod (858)
• India
11 Jun 09
The Agent Orange which is poison used in Vietnam war has at least media attention.
The chemical component in it is dioxin and this is present in far more substances.
Plastics being on e common substance. Burning of plastic releases dioxin and it is potential carcinogen.
The Veterans Department is compensating only for Diabetes and it does not have or does not want to acknowledge the other ill effects. It has not found statistical significance for other adverse events.
There have been agents like Agent purple, green, pink.
@danishcanadian (28953)
• Canada
1 Oct 08
Agent orange is pretty scary crap. I have a couple of friends who were in Viet Nam, and who were affected by Agent Orange, and there is a possibility that my husband might have also been affected. That is what we are now about to investigate. It's sad, and scary, and tragic that the government would do that.
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