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US makes a start to clean its toxic mess in Vietnam
New York Times - August 11, 2012
Forty years after the US stopped spraying herbicides in the jungles of south-east Asia in the hopes of denying cover to Vietcong fighters and North Vietnamese troops, an air base is one of about two dozen former American sites that remain polluted with a toxic strain of dioxin, the chemical contaminant in Agent Orange that has been linked to cancers, birth defects and other diseases.
This week, after years of rebuffing Vietnamese requests for help in a clean-up, the US began its first major effort to address the environmental effects of the war.
"This morning we celebrate a milestone in our bilateral relationship," David Shear, the US ambassador to Vietnam, said at a ceremony attended by senior officers of the Vietnamese military. "We're cleaning up this mess."
The four-year program will cost $US43 million ($40.6 million). Agent Orange is mentioned often in the news and is commemorated annually on August 10, the day in 1961 when it was first tested in Vietnam.
"It's a big step," said Ngo Quang Xuan, a former Vietnamese ambassador to the United Nations. "But in the eyes of those who suffered the consequences, it's not enough."
During a decade of war, the US sprayed about 760 million litres of Agent Orange and other herbicides in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, halting only after scientists commissioned by the US Agriculture Department issued a report expressing concerns that dioxin showed "a significant potential to increase birth defects." By the time the spraying stopped, Agent Orange and other herbicides had destroyed 2 million hectares of forest and cropland.
Nguyen Van Rinh, a retired lieutenant-general who is now the chairman of the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin, has vivid memories of hearing US planes above the jungles of southern Vietnam and seeing Agent Orange raining down in sheets on him and his troops. Plants and animals exposed to the defoliant were dead within days.
"The plight of Agent Orange victims continues," he said. "I think the relationship would rise up to new heights if the American government took responsibility and helped their victims and address the consequences."
Those who have worked on the issue say the US has been slow to address the issue in part because of concerns about liability. It took years for US soldiers to secure settlements from chemical companies. The US government has spent billions on disability payments and healthcare for soldiers who came into contact with Agent Orange.
A class-action case against chemical companies filed in the US on behalf of millions of Vietnamese was dismissed in 2005 on the grounds that supplying the defoliant did not amount to a war crime and that the Vietnamese plaintiffs had not established a clear causal effect between exposure and their health problems.
The US government is rolling out a modest $US11.4 million program to help people with disabilities in Vietnam, but it is not explicitly linked to Agent Orange.
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