Trien Meng Hiep, 9, against wall, is hugged by another boy at a "Peace Village" center in Tu Du hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam on Friday, May 25, 2007. Both of the boys were born with severe physical deformities typical of spina bifida and which hospital officials suspect to have been caused by their parents exposure to dioxin in the chemical defoliant Agent Orange. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
By Ben Stocking, Associated Press Writer | June 14, 2007
DANANG, Vietnam --More than 30 years after the Vietnam War ended, the poisonous legacy of Agent Orange has emerged anew with a scientific study that has found extraordinarily high levels of health-threatening contamination at the former U.S. air base at Danang.
"They're the highest levels I've ever seen in my life," said Thomas Boivin, the scientist who conducted the tests this spring. "If this site were in the U.S. or Canada, it would require significant studies and immediate cleanup."
Soil tests by his firm, Hatfield Consultants of Canada, found levels of dioxin, the highly toxic chemical compound in Agent Orange, that were 300 to 400 times higher than internationally accepted limits.
The report has not yet been released, but Boivin and Vietnamese officials summarized its central findings for The Associated Press.
Earlier tests by Hatfield, which has been working in Vietnam since 1994, showed that dioxin levels were safe across most of Vietnam. But until the study of the old air base at Danang, the consulting firm had never had access to some half-dozen "hotspots" where Agent Orange, a defoliant designed to deny Vietnamese jungle cover, was stored and mixed before being loaded onto planes.
The study is the product of a new spirit of cooperation between Washington and Hanoi -- after years of disagreement -- toward resolving this contentious leftover of the war that ended in 1975.
On a visit to Vietnam last fall, President Bush and Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet agreed to work together to address dioxin contamination at old Agent Orange storage sites. They are expected to discuss the issue further when Triet visits Washington next week.
Read the rest of this article here.
A YouTube Video on birth defects caused by Agent Orange is below. Be warned, this is very dificult to watch.
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