Hi ratman2,
Thank you for your question.
The definition of toxic chemical according to the Nation Safety
Council - NSC.org is:
http://www.nsc.org/ehc/glossar2.htm
"toxic chemical: Substances that can cause severe illness, poisoning,
birth defects, disease, or death when ingested, inhaled, or absorbed
by living organisms."
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Agent Orange From Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange
"Agent Orange is the code name for a powerful herbicide and defoliant
used by the U.S. military in its Herbicidal Warfare program during the
Vietnam War. Agent Orange was used from 1961 to 1971 and has
disputedly caused serious harm to the health of exposed Vietnamese,
Australians, Canadians and Americans, their children and
grandchildren.
Agent Orange is a roughly 1:1 mixture of the herbicides
2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) and
2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T). These herbicides were
developed during the 1940s for use in controlling broad-leaf plants.
First introduced in 1947, both of these herbicides had widespread use
in agriculture by the middle of the 1950s.
During the Vietnam War, Agent Orange's official military purpose was
to remove the leaves of trees to prevent guerrilla fighters of the
National Liberation Front from hiding. Agent Orange is a colorless
liquid: its name was from the color of the stripes on the barrels used
to transport it. Other code-named herbicides used by the US Army in
moderate to large quantities during this timeframe include Agent Blue
(cacodylic acid), Agent White (4:1 mixture of 2,4-D and picloram),
Agent Purple, Agent Green, and Agent Pink.
Agent Orange as a military defoliant was discontinued in 1971, after
over 6,000 spraying missions in Vietnam and Cambodia; 2,4-D continues
to be widely used as an herbicide. The use of 2,4,5-T has been banned
in the U.S. and many other countries."
[edit]
Effects on humans
"Agent Orange was found to have toxic dioxin contaminants which have
been blamed for causing health disorders and birth defects in both the
Vietnamese population and U.S. war veterans. It has also been found to
have carcinogenic properties."
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Agent Orange - CHILDREN OF APOCALYPSE
http://www.health-report.co.uk/agent-orange-toxic-chemicals-dioxin.htm
"But 19 years after war's end, it seems plain that Agent Orange is
killing and maiming human beings -- something it was never intended to
do. The apparent toxic fallout from those clouds of herbicide is a
crop of human miseries -- including cancers, miscarriages and birth
defects -- that may persist for decades. Says Dr. Hoang Dinh, who
heads a Vietnamese committee researching Agent Orange: ''We think this
will last three generations,'' possibly longer if chromosomal damage
is also involved.
Agent Orange is a pitiless, ongoing executioner -- not only to the
Vietnamese who lived around the 1.3 million hectares where it was used
and to the thousands of U.S. servicemen who believe they were harmed;
it could also threaten the children and grandchildren of both sets of
victims.
The risk seems clear but has not been incontrovertibly established. In
a much anticipated 2,000-page report last week, the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency concluded that dioxin, the poison in Agent Orange,
probably causes cancer and may be linked to other health problems
including failed embryo development and immune-system disorders. The
agency's investigation was spurred by the discovery of dioxin in U.S.
fish, meat and dairy products, largely as a by-product of industrial
processes."
[edit]
"Agent Orange, named for a distinguishing orange stripe on its steel
drums, was one of a range of herbicides used for nine years in what
was formerly South Vietnam. The chemicals it contained had long been
used as agricultural herbicides in the U.S. But the shipments that
went to the military were contaminated with higher than usual levels
of dioxin -- one of the most potent poisons known to man -- during the
manufacturing process. In all more than 42 million liters of Agent
Orange were sprayed on Vietnam, and they contained an estimated total
of 170 kg of dioxin. A few millionths of a gram is enough to kill a
laboratory animal.
By the late 1970s, U.S. veterans began to suffer strange health
problems, for which they blamed Agent Orange. A class action against
seven chemical companies that manufactured the defoliant was settled
in 1984 for $180 million. More than 230,000 veterans originally
requested Agent Orange physicals from the Department of Veterans
Affairs, though only 38,000 claims have been approved thus far from
the settlement fund."
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AGENT ORANGE by L. Vancil
http://www.vvvc.org/vvvc/agntor.htm
"Agent Orange is a defoliant, a plant killer, that was used in Vietnam
for "Territory Denial". The idea was that the VC wouldn't be so hard
to kill if we could see them better by killing the jungle canopy that
protected them. Specifically Agent Orange was a 50:50 mixture of two
Phenoxy herbicides, 2, 4-D (2, 4 dichlorophenoxy acetic acid) and 2,
4, 5-T (2, 4, 5-trichlorophenoxy acetic acid). It is ironic that the
Dioxin that makes Agent Orange so deadly isn't even an intended part
of the plant killer. Dioxin is a man made by-product of the
manufacturing process for making Phenoxy herbicides like Agent
Orange."
[edit]
"Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), for example is four times more
likely to kill the children of Veterans exposed to Agent Orange than
it is children of parents who were not exposed. This makes medical
sense because it has been shown in the laboratory that Dioxin has an
affect on the immune system and SIDS seems to be an immune system
defect. Information and cases are sparse but they are there. And they
are frightening.
In one case a platoon that operated in an part of Vietnam that had
been heavily sprayed has had five of it's twenty members diagnosed as
suffering from dioxin poisoning. That's twenty five percent. That's
500 percent above the national average for these types of disorders.
This in itself is frightening but, the researcher was only able to
locate six of the twenty members of his platoon! How many of those
that weren't contacted had similar symptoms? Veterans tell story after
story of Veterans who suddenly age. Their hair falls out in clumps,
what remains turns white. They suffer from strange nerve disorders,
irritableness, weight loss, palsies and finally, mercifully, death. In
every case these men were exposed to Agent Orange."
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Best regards,
tlspiegel |
