Word: dioxin
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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JAMES J. GIBBONS recently fathered a child born with a cleft palate. Gibbons served in areas of Vietnam sprayed with an herbicide containing the lethal chemical dioxin. Searching for an explanation and aid money for his child, Gibbons appealed to the Army, with no success. As a last resort he wrote his Congressman, "I am desperate and don't know where else to turn...
Gibbons's dilemma is shared by many Vietnamese and American citizens who have been exposed to the deadly dioxin. Government agencies continue to allow its widespread use in a herbicide, despite scientific evidence of the chemical's hazards. The herbicide produced appalling results in Vietnam, where it was used as a weapon of war. And the U.S. government now allows herbicide users to wield this same weapon within our boundaries...
...countless laboratory experiments, dioxin has killed animals when applied in dosages as low as five parts per trillion. Scientists estimate that one medicine dropper of dioxin could kill 1200 people (assuming, as scientists routinely do, that scientists are more sensitive than laboratory animals...
Vietnam served as the first laboratory for testing the United States's latest form of chemical warfare, a dioxin-based herbicide known as Agent Orange. It ranks with napalm as one of the most gruesome destroyers of the Vietnamese land and people. The U.S. Army sprayed Agent Orange from 1962 to 1971 to destroy the protective cover of National Liberation Front bases, and to destroy the crops that were its food supply...
...Army sprayed more than 10 per cent of the inland forests, 36 per cent of the mangrove forests, and 3 per cent of cultivated land with Agent Orange. The Academy estimates that 11. 25 million gallons of Agent Orange drifted over Vietnam--at least 100 kilograms of pure dioxin. This is well over the dosage scientists believe could kill human beings. Even the conservative Academy concluded that the herbicide changed the ecosystem of the forests, spreading diseases and disease-carriers such as rats and mosquitoes. Other studies have found very high levels of dioxin in the wildlife and fish...