Over 40 years after the United States began spraying Agent Orange over Vietnam, a panel is pushing the U.S. and other donors to pay $300 million for the destruction caused by the chemical.
The figure proposed by a joint U.S.-Vietnam group of policymakers, citizens and scientists far exceeds the $6 million the U.S. has allocated thus far to address health and environmental issues stemming from the herbicide, which deforested five million acres of forest and affects millions of Vietnamese today.
“The war is over but the wounds from the war still remain in many areas of Vietnam,” said one member of Vietnam’s National Assembly to the Associated Press. ”Many Agent Orange victims have died, but many other victims, including children with disabilities, have been fighting diseases under extreme hardship, and they are in dire need of treatment and support.”
Agent Orange contamination has been a sensitive issue for the two countries. The United States has disputed Vietnamese Red Cross estimates, saying that other health and environmental factors like malnutrition have inflated the three million said to be affected by the chemical.
Scientific reports have linked dioxin — a major Agent Orange ingredient — to cancers, birth defects and other illnesses. Blood and breast milk samples from people who lived near the Da Nang Air Base during the Vietnam War contain dioxin levels 100 times above permitted levels, according to studies performed by the Canadian environmental firm Hatfield Consultants.
