Agent Orange

Not only did the military and the Agent Orange makers know of its danger to humans and the environment, they also willing and knowingly made it twenty five times as strong as necessary. Remember, that’s Agent Orange, the weakest of the group. Therefore, if you do the math, that makes Agent Purple seventy five times too strong, and Agent Pink and Green almost two hundred times too strong. Is it really any wonder that these chemicals do such horrendous things to our bodies?

Agents Blue and White are the least known of the herbicides used in Vietnam. This is because they are made of a mixture of two arsenic based compounds, Na-dimethyl arsenate and dimethyl arsenic acid. Therefore, although still toxic, as they also contain high levels of cyanide, they don’t contain the deadly 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzodioxin, and consequently does not cause the shocking health effects the others do. This is not to say that any of the herbicides used during Vietnam were harmless, only some were less than others. In fact, Agents Blue and White are still used today as weed killers on golf courses, community parks, and some residential lawns. They are, however, believed to possibly be a carcinogen, although not as strong as Agent Orange or the others.

Most people believe that Agent Orange, or any of the other herbicides from Vietnam, were never used outside of Vietnam. They are wrong. Agent Orange was actually tested near a military base outside of Gagetown, Canada, the residents of which promptly developed cancer after the spraying. It was also used at Innisfall, Australia in testing trials. However the files about “Operation Desert” as it was called, have supposedly been lost. And not even the United States is safe. In 1969 the U.S. Forest Service sprayed millions of gallons of it outside Globe, Arizona to decrease plant overgrowth and increase water runoff. One woman who was affected by it wrote the book Sue the Bastards! about her experience. In it she claims that after being exposed to the spray, she experienced temporary blindness and skin irritation, and later developed, and died from, cancer presumed to be caused by Agent Orange. In 1966 several 55-gallon drums filled with Agent Orange were discovered in a BIA storage facility on the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation. Not surprisingly the inhabitants of the reservation have an unusually high rate of cancer.

The victims of Agent Orange exposure aren’t staying quiet. People in Vietnam, South Korea, Canada, and Australia have all filed lawsuits against the U.S. government and the makers of Agent Orange. On January 31, 2004, the Vietnamese Association for victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin filed a lawsuit against Dow Chemical, Monsanto Chemical and many other companies, most of which the lead makers of Agent Orange. On March 10, 2005, a U.S. judge dismissed the case, stating that under international law of the time when Agent Orange was used, it was not considered a poison, and that the companies who supplied the chemical are not liable for the way their government used it. In 1999 a large group of nearly 20,000 South Koreans filed lawsuits against Agent Oranges makers. This time the judge ruled in their favor, stating that by making the chemical stronger than necessary, the companies failed to ensure safety. Again in 2005 1100 Canadians living in and around Gagetown filed a lawsuit. The case has yet to be resolved.

Agent Orange is a testimony to mankind’s self-destructive destiny. There is a poem by W.H. Auden that reads:

“Fate succumbs

Many a species: one alone

Jeopardizes itself.”

Agent orange is just one way that men jeopardize their own well-being. And yet one thing the poem does not mention is that we do not contain our destructiveness to our own species, we tend to pill over and devastate others. Agent Orange again illustrates this, as it not only affected hundreds of thousands of people, but devastated the environment as well. With dioxins in the soil and water plants will still not grow on farm or forest land to this day. On top of that, there is little to no effort being put to try to restore the ecosystem. And with how long the dioxins in the rainbow herbicides last, sometime, millions and millions of years hence, after humans have finally and permanently destroyed them selves once and for all there will still be traces of them devastating the environment, a tribute to the careless civilization that created them.