Vietnam - Vietnam, US launch Agent Orange clean-up

US Ambassador to Vietnam Ted Osius (R) shakes hands with Vietnam's Deputy Defense Minister Gen. Nguyen Chi Vinh as they attend a ceremony marking the start of the clean-up of dioxin contaminated-soil in central Danang city on October 18, 2016

Vietnam and the United States on Tuesday launched the second phase of a dioxin clean-up in the central city of Da Nang, where millions of litres of Agent Orange were stored during the war between the former enemies.

The US sprayed the defoliant over large swathes of southern jungle during the Vietnam War to flush out Viet Cong guerrillas, and Vietnamese victims' groups have long blamed the toxic residue for deformities and disease.

Though Washington has disputed the link between dioxin exposure and bad health, the US government has committed to help clean up toxic land in the communist nation.

The countries, whose relations have warmed in recent years, on Tuesday began treating 45,000 cubic metres of soil contaminated with dioxin at Danang Airport, a task expected to be finished by mid-2017.

"I am encouraged by how this project continues to be a symbol of our honesty about the past, dealing with what remains and turning an issue of contention into one of collaboration," US ambassador Ted Osius said at the scene, according to a statement.

The first phase of the clean-up, which also treated 45,000 cubic metres, was completed in May.

"The long-term impact of the project will be the elimination of potential health risks associated with dioxin exposure from the site," the US embassy statement said.

Osius and Vietnam's Vice Minister of National Defence Nguyen Chi Vinh switched on a thermal treatment system Tuesday at a ceremony in Da Nang, where they were photographed before a giant mound of covered earth.

The thermal technology heats the contaminated soil to temperatures high enough to break down dioxin into harmless compounds.

Da Nang Airbase was a key site in the defoliant programme, and much of the 80 million litres of Agent Orange used during "Operation Ranch Hand" was mixed, stored and loaded onto planes there.

The airbase is considered a "dioxin hotspot", where concentrations of toxic contaminants from Agent Orange are well above the globally-accepted maximum standard.

Victims groups say rates of cancer, birth deformities and other dioxin-related diseases are higher than the national average around the site.

The government says up to three million Vietnamese were exposed to Agent Orange, and at least 150,000 children were born with birth defects as a result.

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Vietnam - Toxic legacy of Agent Orange lives on in Vietnam

President Obama’s visit to Vietnam last week was certainly eventful. The US president announced plans to strengthen international ties and lift the decades-long ban on selling lethal weapons to the country. He also met with human rights activists, sampled street food in Hanoi and was serenaded by one of the country’s best-known female rap artists.

Absent from the trip, however, were any fresh commitments to help the victims of Agent Orange – a herbicide sprayed during the Vietnam War over vast areas of the country’s forests and farmland that has since been linked to death, disease and disability.

Agent Orange – named after the orange stripes on the barrels used to transport it – was used extensively by the US military to remove forest cover and destroy militia crops from 1962 to 1971 during the war. It shouldn’t have had any direct effect on the people of Vietnam as its own active ingredients – the herbicides 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) and 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T) – only affects plants. But the mixture was contaminated with a highly toxic dioxin called 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzodioxin (TCDD), formed as an unintended by-product during the 2,4,5-T manufacturing process when temperatures were too high. By the time anyone realised this it was far too late – more than 40 million litres of contaminated Agent Orange had been dumped on about 12% of the total area of South Vietnam.

It had been hoped – and rumoured – that the president would meet with some of the victim support organisations during this week’s visit, or announce a new funding commitment. But his only mention of Agent Orange – during a speech in Hanoi on 24 May – merely stated he was proud of the current US-funded clean-up efforts, which are only tackling the worst-hit areas. For many, this highlights the US’s unwillingness to address a tragedy that has persisted for decades.

Lasting impacts

The effects of TCDD poisoning have been extensively studied in animals. In rats, it has been associated with tumours, premature death and birth defects even when consumed in extremely low quantities. Authorities in Vietnam say millions of lives have been ruined by exposure to TCDD through contaminated crops or water. Incidences of several types of cancer – including childhood leukaemia – are higher in areas where contamination is most severe, and children have been born with birth defects and severe mental and physical disabilities, often unable to communicate, feed or look after themselves. TCDD is incredibly stable in soil, which has allowed it to persist for decades after the spraying of Agent Orange stopped. The Hatfield Group – a consultancy based in Canada – has worked on environmental monitoring of TCDD in Vietnam for 20 years, and has identified dozens of ‘hotspots’ where contamination is most severe. They have also measured and noted the high concentration of TCDD in the blood of people inhabiting these regions.

But the issue of health impacts remains controversial. ‘The difficulty … is that proof of the connections is quite elusive for many reasons, including inadequate research and a political and professional environment that has not always encouraged independent, objective research,’ says Chuck Searcy, a US veteran now based in Vietnam who runs the Agent Orange Working Group charity. He adds, however, that for him and many others the available evidence is compelling that the contamination has had a significant impact on the health of people in Vietnam, and in many cases exacerbated problems caused by poverty and poor access to healthcare.

As debate around the extent of its effects has raged on over the years, the US has been reluctant to commit money and resources to deal with the aftermath of Agent Orange use. Initially it only provided a modest amount of compensation to veterans who could show that their health problems were likely to have been caused by handling the contaminated herbicide. But the tide is starting to turn. In recent years, the US government has agreed to fund efforts to clean up the contamination, and a mammoth effort to decontaminate 90,000m3 of soil from Danang Airport – one of the worst affected regions – began in 2012, organised and funded to the tune of $100 million (£68 million) by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Slow progress

Cleaning up TCDD is easier said than done, however. Though it is very persistent in soil, the contamination only extends a couple of metres down. But the existing approach of scooping up the contaminated top layer of soil and dumping it in designated landfill sites is far from ideal – the transport process and runoff from the landfill can spread contamination. USAID’s project is attempting to implement a more permanent solution, in which the contaminated soil is heated to break down the TCDD into less harmful products such as water, carbon dioxide and chlorides.

This presents logistical challenges, but has been successful with sites elsewhere. TerraTherm, a company specialising in soil remediation who carried out a demonstration project in Japan, were chosen by USAID to build the necessary infrastructure at Danang. Their decontamination system comprises a 100m x 70m chamber to hold the contaminated soil. It took the best part of a year to build the chamber and fill it with the first 45,000m3 of soil. Once packed into the chamber, more than 1000 immersion elements heat the soil until it reaches 335°C – hot enough to decompose the TCDD. Decontaminating this volume of soil takes several months, during which time drains and pipes remove the decomposition products and take them to a nearby plant to be treated, and later released back into the environment.

The first 45,000m3 batch was completed in 2015, and the treated soil and sediment will be used to construct a new runway at the airport. The project’s second phase – originally due to be finished this year, but now projected to go on until 2018 – has begun, and a second lot of soil is currently being loaded into the system.

Victims neglected

The sheer difficulty and expense it has taken just to partially deal with one contamination hotspot highlights just how much of an uphill struggle the country still faces. The next site to be tackled will be another former airbase at Bien Hoa, but work has not yet begun.

‘There has not been much talk regarding the remaining two dozen or so sites which have been identified, all much smaller, most of them former US bases where Agent Orange was handled, stored and loaded,’ says Searcy.

Although the technical clean-up is important, he adds, politicians should not ignore the need for health and social work interventions focused on helping those who have already fallen ill  as a result of dioxin contamination.

‘Many of us – veterans, public health professionals, ordinary citizens are concerned that not enough attention and resources have been devoted to the plight of millions of Vietnamese whose medical and health conditions, and home environments, beg for some intervention and assistance,’ Searcy says. ‘While the problem may not be deliberately neglected, a comprehensive strategy to truly help suffering families has not been forthcoming.’

Emma Stoye

rsc

Vietnam - Life after Agent Orange: 'I lose my friends ... every day,' Vietnam vet says

Duane Wiskus remembers seeing Agent Orange being loaded aboard C-123 cargo aircraft at Nha Trang when he was based there during the Vietnam War.

"Nobody ever said anything about it," the Air Force veteran said. "It was just everybody doing their job."

U.S. military cargo planes and helicopters sprayed about 19 million gallons of Agent Orange and other "rainbow" herbicides across South Vietnam between 1962 and 1971 to deny enemy troops the use of crops and the cover of jungle.

What service members didn’t know was that Agent Orange contained dioxin, which has been linked to heart disease, diabetes and several forms of cancer.

On Sunday and Monday, read The World-Herald's special report on how the Vietnam War continues to takes its toll on the health of those who served – and, many believe, on the health of their descendants.

Veterans groups fought for years for the right to receive health care and disability benefits for those diseases from the Department of Veterans Affairs. So far, veterans can receive compensation for 18 different illnesses.

Now the battle continues on behalf of the children and grandchildren of those same vets. Advocates believe birth defects and a host of other medical conditions among those offspring are connected to their fathers’ exposure to Agent Orange.

For Wiskus, a native of Carroll, Iowa, who now lives in the Elkhorn area, the Agent Orange story is deeply personal.

Doctors suspected a link to Agent Orange, he said, when one of his sons was born with infantile muscular dystrophy and died at age 3.

Now 67, his own health problems are piling up. The macular degeneration that has taken most of his sight is not linked to Agent Orange. But Type 2 diabetes and the series of heart attacks he's suffered since 2003 are presumed by the VA to be connected to his wartime exposure. And so are the illnesses that have afflicted too many of his fellow veterans.

"A bullet killed my cousin over there," Wiskus said. "But I lose my friends now to Agent Orange every day."

Steve Liewer

omaha

Vietnam - The Lingering Health Effects of Agent Orange

Veterans are still suffering from the illnesses caused by the toxic herbicide used during the Vietnam War. They want to know why the VA doesn’t offer more help.

Most of the media coverage of President Obama’s trip to Asia has focused on whether the president should apologize to Japan for the United States dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima at the end of World War II.

According to Obama administration officials, there are no plans to apologize for this bombing, which took the lives of more than 100,000 Japanese civilians.

But might the same question be asked about Agent Orange in Vietnam?

The U.S. military sprayed the toxic herbicide, along with other deadly defoliants, over more than 20 percent of South Vietnam between the early 1960s and early 1970s in an attempt to flush out their enemies.

Agent Orange doesn’t get as much press as it used to, but its profound lingering effects remains a significant international public health issue in 2016.

The Effect on Soldiers

Hundreds of thousands of American veterans of the Vietnam War have died, or are still suffering because of exposure to dioxin, the deadly toxin in Agent Orange.

Exposure to it can cause multiple cancers as well as other diseases and health problems.

The Vietnam Red Cross estimates that Agent Orange has affected 3 million Vietnamese people, including at least 150,000 children. Babies in Vietnam are still being born with birth defects due to Agent Orange.

The United States and Vietnam set up a decontamination effort several years ago in Da Nang, a city in Central Vietnam that was once the site of a U.S. airbase that stored Agent Orange. It was the most toxic of 28 reported dioxin “hot spots” in Vietnam.

But because of chilly relations between the United States and Vietnam over the past four decades, efforts to clean up Agent Orange have been slow and minimal.

Could that change when Obama visits Vietnam for the first time on Sunday?

American Veterans Still Not Covered

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) presumes that any of the 2.8 million U.S. veterans who had “boots on the ground” in Vietnam from 1962 to 1975 were exposed to dioxin-contaminated herbicides, including Agent Orange, which was developed by Monsanto and Dow.

It took two generations and a lot of heartache among the Vietnam veteran community, but the VA’s “presumptive list” of diseases that are caused by exposure to Agent Orange now includes everything from non-Hodgkin lymphoma, prostate cancer, and multiple myeloma to Parkinson’s disease and ischemic heart disease.

But many veterans exposed to Agent Orange and their loved ones are still fighting for the disability coverage they believe they have earned.

The VA is denying disability benefits to most Vietnam veterans who are suffering or have already died from glioblastoma, a particularly deadly form of brain cancer that is not on the VA’s presumptive list.

“It’s absurd that it’s had to go this far,” said Kristi Anthony, a paralegal whose father, Danny Lee Howell, was exposed to Agent Orange while stationed during the war at Thu Duc, a military air base near Saigon.

Howell died of glioblastoma in February 2014

“Causal relationship between my dad’s brain cancer and service-related connection is clearly established,” said Anthony, who’s still fighting the VA on her own to receive the benefits her father sought for his family. “Glioblastoma cannot be disassociated from my dad's herbicide exposure in Vietnam.”

Robert Walsh, an attorney who’s represented hundreds of veterans in disability cases with the VA, said the VA approves some but rejects most.

“The VA has granted benefits to veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange and have glioblastoma a number of times since at least 2004,” Walsh said. “If VA accepts one medical opinion, if they grant just one case, how do they justify forcing all the other veterans to relitigate it over and over?”

Nearly a dozen men and women in various stages of the fight for their sick or their deceased husbands, brothers, fathers, and grandfathers with glioblastoma spoke exclusively with Healthline.

Each person interviewed expressed hope that President Obama's trip will shine new light on the issue of Agent Orange exposure, and each insisted that the VA is arbitrarily denying disability benefits to some veterans who were exposed while granting them to others.

Legislation for Sailors

Agent Orange is still being discussed in Washington this week.

Christopher Gibson (R-NY) offered an amendment today to the 2017 Military Construction-VA Spending in support of Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange.

Specifically, Gibson's amendment supports the sailors who were stationed offshore during the Vietnam War. They were also exposed to Agent Orange and are now sick and dying as a result.

They are also having trouble getting their illnesses related to Agent Orange covered by the VA.

"Their loyalties were never divided. They did everything they could every day to serve our nation," Gibson said on the floor of the House of Representatives on Thursday morning. "What developed over that time was that they became sick, they were exposed to Agent Orange.”

Gibson noted that 320 of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle agree with this amendment. He said that while this nation chose to defoliate in Vietnam with Agent Orange, "what we learned is that there is a direct link with nine maladies including cancer and diabetes and Parkinson's."

He concluded, "Regardless of the difficulty of the fight," he said, "we will never turn our back on our servicemen and women."

Fighting for Lost Family Members

Joshua Stephen Leach, a recently retired Air Force veteran who served four tours in Iraq and suffers from severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI), was able to win his grandfather’s Agent Orange case.

But it was a tough battle.

Leach’s grandfather, Angelo Venniro, served in the Army for 20 years and did two tours in Vietnam, where he was exposed to Agent Orange.

A lieutenant who later retired as a major, Venniro bravely fought his glioblastoma, but died in May 2015.

The VA initially denied Venniro’s disability claim. But Leach kept digging through case files and learned the history of Agent Orange.

An investigator in the Air Force, Leach met with renowned brain experts such as Dr. James Battiste, Ph.D., an expert in neuro-oncology at the University of Oklahoma.

Battiste submitted written testimony to the VA for Leach’s case stating that exposure to Agent Orange is a “significant factor contributing to the development of brain malignancies.”

Battiste wrote that it is “highly likely” that exposure to Agent Orange might, “cause, aggravate, or at a minimum contribute to the development of malignancies,” which in Venniro’s case, “this includes brain tumor.”

Leach won his grandfather's case on appeal, and the VA granted his family full service-connection benefits in April 2015, a month before Venniro died.

Leach said a lot of families lose when going up against the VA because “they aren't armed with the information that will win their cases and they don't know how to go about getting it as it is very technical. Plus, the VA and other aid groups will flatly tell you that you cannot win so right off the bat will discourage someone.”

Marine and Vietnam veteran Edward “Tommy” Evans, who was exposed to Agent Orange, died of glioblastoma in 2003.

It took six years for his widow, Sheree Evans, to see her late husband and his family be awarded service-connected disability coverage from the VA for his cancer.

Sheree Evans wrote a book about her fight for her husband, “By the Grace of God a Promise Kept,” and has become a leader in helping other families that are dealing with glioblastoma get the support they are seeking from the VA.

Thomas Temples, a Vietnam veteran exposed to Agent Orange who is fighting glioblastoma, recently won his case in court. But that doesn’t mean he’s actually won.

He’s still fighting with his VA regional office in Detroit to receive his benefits.

Walsh, who is Temples’ attorney, said his client won his VA claim for glioblastoma “because the science is overwhelming that the dioxin found in Agent Orange is the trigger at the molecular level for glioblastoma and many other cancers and diseases.”

Temples’ case was sent back to VA’s Regional Office in Detroit. It’s anyone’s guess if or when he will be compensated, Walsh said.

Will John Kerry Speak up?

Accompanying President Obama on this trip to Vietnam will be Secretary of State John Kerry, who knows all too well the harm Agent Orange can do.

During the Vietnam War, Kerry was a swift boat captain in the waters off the Mekong Delta, where he told this reporter for the first time in 2004 that he was exposed to Agent Orange.

Years after the war, Kerry spoke out on behalf of his Navy friend Giles Whitcomb, who was with Kerry on those boats and was also exposed to Agent Orange.

Whitcomb died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2006. Kerry fought the VA to give Whitcomb's family the benefits he felt they earned.

But on this trip to Vietnam, will Kerry continue to fight for America’s Vietnam veterans who’ve been exposed to Agent Orange? And will he reach out to the Vietnamese civilian population still suffering because of Agent Orange?

When asked this question, Katherine Pfaff, a spokesperson for the State Department, said Kerry would not be making any comment and referred Healthline to the trip announcement on the State Department’s website.

There is no mention in the announcement of any discussions of Agent Orange or anything else having to do directly with the Vietnam War.

One Veteran Goes Back to Vietnam

Larry Vetter, a Marine platoon leader during the Vietnam War, hopes and believes Kerry will discuss Agent Orange at one point or another during this trip.

Vetter, who returned to Vietnam for the first time eight years ago to reconnect with his past, stayed in Vietnam and subsequently joined the Da Nang Association for Victims of Agent Orange (AO)/Dioxin, which assists more than 5,000 Agent Orange victims in Da Nang.

"It would be a dream come true if the president and/or the secretary of state, a war vet himself, could make a stop in Da Nang and get a tour of the site at the old U.S. Air Force base, now the Da Nang International Airport,” he said.

Vetter said he is a firm believer in the goodness of the American people, but “they just do not know what happened here. Agent Orange was a horrible creation to use in warfare. It was no less than chemical warfare, the type of weapon we condemn others for using.”

Vetter said he hopes and prays that American leadership can realize what really happened in Vietnam.

“It’s time for reconciliation and cooperation between both countries and peoples,” he said.

Why Isn’t It on the List?

When asked about glioblastoma and Agent Orange, a VA spokesman told Healthline, “Part of the answer is the explanation between direct service connection versus presumptives. Brain cancer is not a presumptive but that does not stop us from directly service connecting if the medical evidence gives us the medical nexus. Unfortunately, not all medical evidence we receive is equal thus some denials may occur for what appears to be the same condition. Basically, every case is unique and different than any other.”

The spokesman added, “As of April 21, 2016, there are 303 Vietnam veterans who are service connected for brain cancer — all direct service connection. (Not presumptives at this time.)”

But numerous people told Healthline that glioblastoma needed to be placed on the VA’s presumptive list.

“Glioblastoma is a specific type of brain cancer, but the VA lumps it in colloquially as brain cancer along with the other types,” said Leach, who noted that the cost of treatment is “astronomical.”

“I think it's literally about the money,” he said. “There isn't any other logical reasoning for it. Several studies have conclusively determined Agent Orange causes any and all cancers, something that a now-declassified report alluded to over 25 years ago.”

Leach called the VA’s stand on glioblastoma “just another insult on top of their injury to deny these claims. The cancer rate for anyone exposed to Agent Orange is far beyond that of a normal citizen. These guys were placed in Vietnam by our government, in a military effort. It's not like they just went on a personal vacation and got sick.”

Leach said that every Vietnam veteran was exposed to Agent Orange.

“It's not a presumption, it's a fact,” he said. “It's also a fact that it causes cancer at any anatomical site. This cannot be disputed. There is overwhelming medical evidence that supports that statement.”

The fact the VA has not placed glioblastoma on its presumptive list, Leach said, is a “slap in the face to American service members, their families, and the country itself.”

Leach concluded, “I fully expect my generation’s burn pits [in Iraq] to become our version of Agent Orange. I also expect the same failures to care for our country's veterans to continue. We have already seen the proof.”

Jamie Reno

healthline