Seventeen-year-old Nguyen Thi Hue with her mother.
"Vietnam Syndrome" in Photographs by James Nachtwey.
In the 1960s, the United States covered the Mekong River Delta with the chemical defoliant Agent Orange. Thirty years after the end of the Vietnam War, the chemical still poisons the water and flows in the blood of a third generation.
Exposure to Agent Orange has been associated with increased rates of birth defects, cancers, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes.
In total, there are approximately 4.8 million victims of defoliant spraying in Vietnam, including three million directly affected.
"Agent Orange" is a mixture of synthetic defoliants and herbicides. It was used by the British Army during the Malayan War and by the US Armed Forces during the Second Indochina War from 1961 to 1971 as part of the Ranch Hand program to clear tropical forests and vegetation, a key phase of Operation Trail Dust, primarily in South Vietnam and several other countries on the Indochina Peninsula. The informal verbal name "Orange" derives from the orange stripe painted on the barrels used to transport the chemical. Approximately 52 million liters of Agent Orange were produced by the American chemical industry between 1963 and 1969.
by Aleksandr_Ulyev
3 Comments
Got a tour in vietnam and agent orange is still a thing. Deformed baby’s and all.
same toxic chemical found in agent orange (dioxin) is what Russia infamously [poisoned Viktor Yuschenko](https://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45092000/jpg/_45092471_trio_260.jpg), the former president of Ukraine with.
to note is that it is still unclear whether or not the US knew it was toxic as it was for all intents and purposes treated as a wonder herbicide and was actively used in American agriculture at the time.
but one can still question the logic in burning down massive swaths of jungle and poisoning the land of Vietnam in their war on the Viet Cong as the US accomplished literally not a single war goal and the moment they withdrew after the Paris Peace Accords the Viet Cong pretty much captured the entire country anyway leading to the communist Vietnam that still exists today.
After all that was done to Vietnam and it’s people, it surprises me that Americans are not only free to visit, but that so many retire there, happily filming YouTube videos about how far their dollars stretch and how great their retirement lifestyle is.