Secret Agents - Pesticides in Vietnam

Not only were thousands of tons of bombs dropped from the air by the United States onto North Vietnam, but the Vietnam War also saw the use of a new weapon: pesticides.

Britain was the first to pioneer the use of pesticides for war purposes in Southeast Asia. In order to deprive Malaysian rebels of resources, pesticide was sprayed from planes to destroy foliage used for cover and to kill crops that the rebels depended upon for food.


America upped the ante by orders of magnitude. The famous "Agent Orange", as the American combination of chemicals was named, was stored in 55-gallon barrels labeled with an orange stripe. In total, 11 million gallons were sprayed to contaminate food, water, and to strip bare trees in areas where Vietcong or North Vietnamese soldiers could be hiding under Operation Ranch Hand. 20 million total gallons were used.

Agent Orange infamously contained dioxins, the same chemicals mentioned by Rachel Carson in "Silent Spring" that were responsible for killing birds and other animals. Even today, some bases in Vietnam where Agent Orange was stored remain contaminated with dioxin "hot spots".

As with pesticides sprayed by the federal government in America, the government insisted that Agent Orange was safe to human life, but the number of Vietnam veterans and Vietnamese civilians who were affected proved that, in the field, dioxins were extremely detrimental to human health. Some experiments had shown that the chemicals created birth defects in mice, but many people the effects were clear and horrible.

In Vietnam and bordering Laos and Cambodia, the effects of Agent Orange and Operation Ranch Hand have been horrible disabilities resulting from birth defects, stemming from civilians who were exposed to pesticide in large quantities. According to the Red Cross, about 3 million civilians were affected, with 150,000 children being born with birth defects. Only recently, in 2013, has the US government taken responsibility and begun to clean up certain areas by sterilizing the soil.

The response from US veterans has also been overwhelmingly negative. After a class action lawsuit and hundreds of individual court cases brought against the government, President Bush passed the Agent Orange Act in 1991, which set up treatment and aid for some 2.4 million veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange. Many have claimed that their exposure to pesticide led to early-onset disease, like cancer, which was inherited by their children.

Although the US government has acknowledged the problems of pesticide use in Vietnam, such tactics have not been stopped entirely. For example, during the "war on drugs", Colombian coca fields were sprayed with US-sanctioned herbicide, causing many of the same harms as Agent Orange. Until the US government takes drastic action to ban pesticide use in populated areas, it seems that such treatment will be the norm.

Sources:
"Agent Orange," HISTORY, http://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/agent-orange
Clyde Haberman, 5-11-2014, "Agent Orange’s Long Legacy, for Vietnam and Veterans," New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/12/us/agent-oranges-long-legacy-for-vietnam-and-veterans.html?_r=0
Drew Brown, 1-5-2013, "4 decades after war ended, Agent Orange still ravaging Vietnamese," mcclatchydc, http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/article24751351.html