Will chemical’s legacy rekindle a sense of national responsibility?
It seems impossible during this election year that we would be hearing once again about Agent Orange, the blend of herbicides used by the U.S. military in Vietnam to destroy enemy food crops as well as jungle vegetation that concealed North Vietnamese fighters. But we are.
Four decades after the war ended, the U.S. seems willing, finally, to address the issue of birth defects and veterans’ illnesses linked with exposure to the chemical dioxin TCDD. This it will do by spending about $44 million over the next four years to remove dioxin residues around the former U.S. airbase in Danang where most of the chemical was stored.
A little history: One of the “Rainbow Chemicals” tested in the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico, Korea, India, Okinawa and Thailand from the mid 1940s to late 1960s, Agent Orange was used by the U.S. military from 1962 to 1971 during Operation Ranch Hand in the Vietnam War. The practice ceased after the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found the chemical caused birth defects in lab animals, but not before hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers and millions of Vietnamese civilians had been exposed to it.
Now, the Sept. 14 issue of The Week magazine, a compendium of news from national and international sources, contains a full-page article titled, “Agent Orange’s Shameful Legacy.” Turns out, dioxin remains in the soil and in the body for decades, and studies have linked it to numerous cancers and birth defects, as well as neurological illnesses like Parkinson’s disease, according to the NIH.
During the war, Vietnamese doctors began delivering babies born with no limbs, no eyes and sometimes no brain. One obstetrician, Dr. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuong, says even now that the breast milk of mothers who live in areas that were sprayed with Agent Orange 40 years ago contains dangerously elevated levels of dioxin.
For years, the U.S. military denied any link between exposure and veterans’ illnesses, apparently even after Congress passed the Agent Orange Act in 1991, which lists more than a dozen cancers and other illnesses for which the VA must compensate veterans. Veterans, however, complain the VA takes years to process their claims and most won’t live to receive compensation.
After decades of foot-dragging, the U.S. government seems finally willing to address the issue for pragmatic reasons. Now that it might be strategically useful and politically possible, cleanup of toxic sites may go forward. Washington also sees good reason to cooperate with Vietnam as the Navy shifts its emphasis from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and the U.S. seeks an ally in Vietnam. This has been precipitated by China’s claims to sovereignty over islands in the oil-rich South China Sea.
Is this what it takes to get our military to do the right thing? And what about all the other problems caused by toxic chemicals used in war that are never cleaned up? Are they just swept under the rug, so to speak? Even in this country, those who live near military bases may have been exposed to dangerous chemicals. The results are difficult to prove and therein lies the difficulty. Why spend the money to clean up the mess when there isn’t enough pressure on those responsible?
In this political year, which so far has been nearly devoid of responsibility, the candidates avoiding the really thorny issues and lying about their opponents, we can only hope for deeper discussion. With luck, the upcoming presidential debates may touch on issues of more consequence than who is or isn’t out of touch with a particular group of voters.
Those who blame a weak economy on too much regulation might see what happens when our institutions and corporations can skirt obligations so easily. Those politicians would repeal laws and defund agencies that try to hold accountable the chemical companies and the energy industries that befoul our water, pollute our soil and threaten our health in the name of jobs and economic progress. They want our votes but do we want them in charge of our lives?
What confidence can we have in a military that skirts its responsibility to veterans here and countries overseas with impunity, acting only when it’s strategically convenient? After all the political will it took to establish the EPA, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, will we cede their authority to the coal companies, the chemical companies, et al.? We should be demanding better of those who would lead. And those who formulate the questions put to the candidates have at least some influence over the discussion. Let’s hope their sense of responsibility prevails.