Thursday, October 8, 2009

Agent Orange


Agent Orange was a defoliant and herbicide used in the Vietnam War by the U.S. The goal in using this chemical was to minimize the dense forests of South Vietnam. In fact, over 21,000,000 gallons of Agent Orange was sprayed over 20% of South Vietnam’s jungle in a nine year period. For what seemingly harmless herbicide, this chemical had huge repercussions.
Practically 5 million Vietnamese were exposed to this harsh contaminant. From it, there were 400,000 deaths and disabilities. Furthermore, half a million children of those who had been exposed to it had birth defects. Many of the tests and studies on these health effects were done by Vietnam scientists. In the picture is someone born with this defect as a result of Agent Orange.

11 comments:

  1. That is horrible that they were exposed to this dangerous chemical. Not thinking about the results and side effects of this chemical, so many people were born with birth defects and head health issues. It's awful that just because they wanted to minimize the dense forests of south vietnam, the people were put through this agonizing terror.

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  2. Oh, wow. I never knew about this. It is a shame that so many inocents had to die as of a side effect. On the other hand, the jungle gave a huge tatical advantage to the North Vietnamese as they knew the terrian quite well. Neverless, the war was a huge tragedy as a whole for both sides.

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  3. sorry i guess i should have stated that they minimized the dense forests in order to traverse through them. That at least provides their reason for it.

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  4. good correction, robby. as with many chemicals, the full extent of the horror of it was not known for many years. my cousin merle did two tours in Vietnam and has had a huge personal battle with the effects of being sprayed with this when he was in the jungle. it is some nasty, horrible junk.

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  5. That looks awful. I feel really bad for the innocent people who had to go through this. It is a shame.

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  6. i think this is awful and sad that all of the innocent people wh owere hurt. i think the image makes it more powerful though. it gives you a good idea of what happened to them and the long term problems it caused them. so sad

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  7. That is horrible. I never knew that used this. I feel bad for all the people that were hurt by this.

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  8. I knew that Agent Orange was used but I knew very little about it. It has done some horrible things to people and the after affects of being born from people infected is tremendous and often horrifying. I couldn't even imagine living with it.

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  9. I think it is amazing how many casualties occur in war from things other than a gun or an explosion. So many were effected and/or killed by something as trivial (in my opinion) as an herbicide used to clear a forest. The picture was very powerful too.

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  10. It's crazy that they used 21,000,000 gallons of this stuff over 9 years before they realized how dangerous it was.

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  11. I am really shocked I never heard of this. It's extremely sad to know children were affected by this when they had nothing to do with the war.

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