Word: dioxin
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...determining who should benefit is a nightmare. Tests to establish dioxin levels in individuals run as high as $1,000 per person - a price tag Vietnam says it can't afford. U.S. negotiators and scientists are frustrated that Vietnam seems to blame all the population's birth defects on the defoliants. Diplomats broke off talks several years ago complaining that Vietnam was unwilling to use accepted scientific methods because they might not support claims of widespread exposure and health damages. They have also complained that Vietnam could do more to help its own. No one is stopping the Vietnamese from...
...being done to comply with both U.S. and Vietnamese law and is a necessary step toward cleanup. "We're investigating many promising techniques," Michalak said following the signing ceremony in Hanoi. Careful study is required if the job is to be done right, he added. "We know there is dioxin in the soil," he said. "But what method do we use to remove it? Where do we tell the diggers to dig? It's just another step on the road." (See 90 years of battlefield portraits...
...Scientists have been raising the alarm about dioxins since the 1960s. After TCDD, the dioxin in Agent Orange, was found to cause cancer and birth defects, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) slapped an emergency ban on the herbicide in 1979. Dow and Monsanto, the chemical's largest manufacturers, eventually shelled out millions in damages to U.S. troops who were exposed to it while it was being used as a wartime defoliant from 1961 to 1971. The U.S. government still spends billions every year on disability payments to those who served in Vietnam - including their children, many of whom...
...Meanwhile, private foundations and individuals have taken the lead. Early efforts to identify and measure dioxin levels at Agent Orange hot spots were undertaken by the U.S.-based Ford Foundation in the 1990s. Later, with technical assistance from the EPA, Ford "capped" the most contaminated section of what is now the Da Nang International Airport, installing a filtration system to stop dioxins from flowing into the city's water supply and building a wall to keep people from entering the area. At another abandoned U.S. air base in the Aluoi Valley, a Vietnamese botanist raised $25,000 in donations...
...Carlos Capel, who sparked the conference's biggest controversy when he lambasted the ham industry for its lack of transparency, is sure nothing will displace the product's primacy: "We had mad cow several years ago, and people stopped eating beef. Then we had those Belgian chickens with dioxin, and people stopped eating poultry for a while. But now, no one remembers either of them...