Published on
by
Common Dreams

New Study Confirms One of Agent Orange's Toxic Legacies

Aircraft used to dump pernicious mix on Vietnam continued its threat for years.

by
Andrea Germanos, staff writer

C-123 aircraft spraying Agent Orange over Vietnam. (Photo: US Air Force)

A new study reveals that members of the Air Force Reserve were exposed to significant levels of Agent Orange long after planes were dumping the toxic cocktail on Vietnam.

The findings, published online Friday in the journal Environmental Research, stand in contrast to claims by the U.S. Air Force and the VA.

The researchers found that from 1971-1982, Air Force Reservists who flew C-123 aircraft which had been used to spray Agent Orange and continued to be used for other operations were exposed to levels of dioxin that exceeded U.S standards.

A statement on the VA's website reads:

SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT

Something is Happening. People are Drawing Lines.
And We’ve Got It Covered.

But we can't do it without you. Please support our Winter Campaign.



VA’s Office of Public Health thoroughly reviewed all available scientific information regarding the exposure potential. We concluded that the potential of exposure for the post-Vietnam crews that flew or maintained these planes was extremely low and therefore, the risk of long-term health effects is minimal.

Yet these "aircraft occupants would have been exposed to airborne dioxin-contaminated dust as well as come into direct skin contact, and our models show that the level of exposure is likely to have exceeded several available exposure guidelines," stated senior author Jeanne Mager Stellman, PhD, Professor Emerita of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.

The findings could be a game-changer for this group veterans who have been sickened by Agent Orange exposure and have thus far been denied reparations.

"We can't prove it, but everything in here is supportive of the fact that they were exposed and could have been quite highly exposed," Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, told The Huffington Post. "In fact, it would be reasonable to assume that those who flew in these planes after the war were more likely to be exposed than those servicemen who had boots on the ground in Vietnam."

__________________________

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

This is the world we live in. This is the world we cover.

Because of people like you, another world is possible. There are many battles to be won, but we will battle them together—all of us. Common Dreams is not your normal news site. We don't survive on clicks. We don't want advertising dollars. We want the world to be a better place. But we can't do it alone. It doesn't work that way. We need you. If you can help today—because every gift of every size matters—please do.



Share This Article

More in: