Word: dioxin
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...same symptoms as the Vietnamese. Veterans describe eating in sprayed areas, and climbing through jungles dripping with the herbicide. Their children have the same birth defects as the Vietnamese children and the veterans themselves complained of recurring dizziness and nausea, weight loss and skin disease--other common symptoms of dioxin poisoning...
...conducted by American scientists corroborate the herbicide's human effects. The experiments have produced death, cancer, liver tumors, birth defects, nervous disorders, loss of sexual drive, and spontaneous abortions in laboratory. While scientists agree that the evidence is not yet conclusive, one study seems to bear out claims that dioxin is harmful to human beings. A scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Dr. James Allen, conducted a series of tests on rhesus monkeys, the animal most like humans in chemical sensitivity. He found that dioxin administered over a period of months in dosages as low as 550 parts per trillion...
These and other scientists findings indicate that dioxin may accumilate in the body. Even if a person is exposed to a very low dosage of dioxin, repeated exposures have the same effect as one massive dose. Some scientists also speculate that dioxin may build up in the body fat producing toxic effects when the fat is broken down by weight loss. Accumulation would explain the characteristic symptoms of dioxin that occur years after a veteran served in a sprayed area...
Although the number of veterans with symptoms paralleling lab results is increasing, the Army and the Veterans' Administration (VA refuse to accept responsibility for the health problems of the veterans and their children. The V.A., which has received over 500 dioxin inquiries, still maintains that no one has proved cancer originated in Vietnam or that a male veteran exposed to Agent Orange could transfer genetic abnormalities to his child...
Like the Vietnam veterans, the people who live near the sprayed areas have begun to experience the ill-effects of the dioxin. Crop-dusters try to confine spraying to forested areas with sparse populations, but the herbicide wafts toward more populated areas. Studies conducted by the Forestry Service document the phenomenon of "spray drift": the herbicide spreads to outlying areas coating them in a fine mist of chemicals. The Service found that dioxin floats into streams, where it harms fish. The same study documented a loss of vegetation adversely affecting the fishfood supply...