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Study Shows Agent Orange Still Taints Aging C-123s
__roo writes "Herbicides used in Vietnam in the 1970s still pose a threat to servicemen, according to a study published Friday. The U.S. Air Force and Department of Veteran Affairs denied benefits to sick veterans, taking the position that any dioxin or other components of Agent Orange contaminating its fleet of C-123 cargo planes would have been 'dried residues' and unlikely to pose meaningful exposure risks. According to the lead researcher, 'The VA, whether out of ignorance or malice, has denied the entire existence of this entire branch of science. They have this preposterous idea that somehow there is this other kind of state of matter — a dried residue that is completely inert.' To show that such exposures happened, her research team had to be 'very clever.'"
if it was a private company that did not have a fascist relationship with the government you know the EPA would be all up in their asses
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Not saying that dried residues aren't dangerous, but the researcher's quote in the summary comes off as extremely disingenuous.
Of course being exposed to dried residues will result in much lower levels of exposure than being REPEATEDLY DOUSED with liquid herbicide as were field infantry in the Vietnam war.
Toxicology is all about maximum safe dosages - scary sounding toxins like arsenic, radon, dioxin, mercury, and even radionucleotides are pervasive in our environment. The question is whether the level of exposure is biologically significant or not. While the VA's contention that the levels of exposure to Agent Orange residues is safe is a valid matter for debate, they nowhere claim that it has magically transformed into some heretofore unknown state of matter.
I'm a 'Nam vet and I get all of my health care from the VA. With very, very rare exceptions, everybody I've dealt with over the last several decades has understood that if it weren't for people like me, they wouldn't have their government jobs. Once in a while, I'll grant, there's a paper-pusher who's more interested in making sure that the forms are filled out than in giving good service, but almost everybody who is involved in caring for veterans and their dependents gives good, prompt, cheerful service. If the VA has been denying that dioxins in C-123s is a hazard, there are many possible reasons, but malice is the least likely of all. As in everything else, ignorance is always a much more probable reason.
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My father was a service connected disabled (both physical and mental) WW2 Vet and I would strongly disagree with this assessment. I took care of him for many years and struggled with the VA - although they did increase his pension towards the end.
The VA psych doctors were compassionless, unprofessional and bottom of the class grade doctors and I would often have to research the drugs they were prescribing and inform them of the side-effects and suitability to his condition. They eventually killed my father by over prescribing drugs like Haldol and other harsh psychotropics.
All I can say is, what I reported is not just my own personal experience, but that of every vet I know who uses the VA. I'm sorry that you ran across a set of bad apples, and that they did your father's condition so much damage. And, I'll agree that the psych departments are probably the worst; I needed help from them at one point and I had to fight with the person doing the original write-up to get her to describe my complaints as I told them to her, instead of re-writing them to fit her own pre-conceived ideas. (She simply couldn't understand that I could be unemployed, broke and depressed without being violent and/or suicidal.)
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All I can say is, what I reported is not just my own personal experience, but that of every vet I know who uses the VA. I'm sorry that you ran across a set of bad apples, and that they did your father's condition so much damage. And, I'll agree that the psych departments are probably the worst; I needed help from them at one point and I had to fight with the person doing the original write-up to get her to describe my complaints as I told them to her, instead of re-writing them to fit her own pre-conceived ideas. (She simply couldn't understand that I could be unemployed, broke and depressed without being violent and/or suicidal.)
I understand we each have our experiences. Yes the psych departments are the worst.... I didn't really have a problem with the physical medical care side of things. In fact I would agree that the teams assigned to the general medical side generally do a good job.
People need to understand that wars produce causalities and those causalities need to be taken care... sometimes for the rest of their lives. A war is never over until the last person involved dies.
Original article title:
Agent Orange Posed A Health Threat To Servicemen Long After Vietnam
Slashdot headline:
Herbicides used in Vietnam in the 1970s still pose a threat to servicemen
These planes were repurposed for other duties during the 70's. They went out of service in 1982. They don't "still" pose a threat because nobody is using them. The issue is for the servicemen who worked on them 40 years ago.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
It is interesting everyone ignores the greater harm agent orange is doing to the Vietnamese servicemen.
Yes, hundreds of thousands to millions of Vietnamese were harmed depending how you count - everythings from terrible birth defects to characteristic cancers.
And, of course, the main use of agent orange in Vietnam was to destroy the farm land so that the peasants would be forced, by starvation, to move to the cities (that happened to be controlled by the USA).
I am an analytical chemist, and analyzed Agent Orange while employed by the Dow Chemical Company (one of the manufacturers of Agent Orange). The spraying apparatus in the planes in the C-123 sprayed out a side door, and Agent Orange filled the air inside the plane drenching the men who operated the sprayers, and coated everything in the interior. Agent Orange is not volatile, and evaporates extremely slowly. This combination of circumstances IMHO would cause a residue of Agent Orange inside the planes which could reasonably last for decades.