American troops were stunned by Vietnamese guerrillas in Vietnam. These guerrillas who come and go without a trace freely shuttle through the rainforest, bringing fear to American soldiers all the time. In order to contain the Vietnamese army, the US military tried to cut off the supply lines of these guerrillas. The problem is that Americans can't find the route from northern Vietnam to southern Vietnam at all? Ho chi Minh trail? At this site, a main road is often cut off after indiscriminate bombing, but another jungle path is soon opened, and all the efforts of the US Air Force are in vain.
If it doesn't stop, the US military will start to implement it from 1962? Weeding action? Scheme and? Ranchers? Action, that is, spreading a lot over the virgin jungle of Vietnam? Agent orange. Let the plants wither and expose what is hidden under them? Ho chi Minh trail? . According to post-war statistics, since 1962, the US military has sprayed agent orange in Vietnam for at least 10 years. Nice name. Agent orange is named after the iron drum that transports it. It was packed in a 55-gallon orange striped barrel, so it was named Agent Orange.
Its molecular formulas are mainly 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-t) and 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-d), and due to the complicated production process, a strong carcinogen-tetrachlorodibenzo-dioxins (TCDD) will be produced when orange agent is produced. Tetrachlorodiphenyl dioxin belongs to a kind of carcinogen, which is very harmful to human body. These chemicals are mainly produced by Dow Chemical, Monsanto, Diamond Clover and other chemical plants.
The harm first appeared in Vietnam after the war. At that time, many deformed babies were born in Vietnam, and many people began to suffer from various strange diseases, including the following health problems: cleft palate, mental retardation, hernia and polydactyly. Compared with other areas, the incidence of strange diseases in areas sprayed with orange agent has increased by dozens of times.
Schematic diagram of spraying agent orange in Vietnam (red). Dioxin concentration in the circle is high. Then, it is the American army that suffers. During routine physical examination, some American soldiers began to find high concentrations of dioxins in their blood. After the war, American veterans serving in Vietnam increased the incidence of cancer, nervous system, digestive system, skin and respiratory diseases. Vietnam veterans have a high incidence of throat cancer, acute and chronic leukemia, Hodgkin lymphoma and non-Hodgkin lymphoma, prostate cancer, lung cancer, colon cancer, soft tissue sarcoma and liver cancer.
Among them, aircraft and helicopter personnel, members of the Army's chemical defense forces, the defoliation remote control battalion of the US special forces, and the US Navy's river troops around the clearing base may suffer the most serious pollution. For this reason, American veterans who participated in the Vietnam War began to wake up and sued the manufacturer of Agent Orange. American environmental lawyers even submitted more than 1000 pages of reports on the hazards of agent orange to these accused chemical companies.
However, these "black-hearted" companies tried to shift the responsibility to the US government to avoid being accused. In fact, in the procurement contracts signed between the US military and these companies, it is stipulated that only weeding ingredients are needed, and dioxins should never appear. However, in the production of cutting corners, the US military finally tasted the bitter fruit it deserved.
199 1 year, the US Congress promulgated the Agent Orange Act, which gave the Department of Veterans Affairs the right to declare that these Vietnamese veterans who had been exposed to Agent Orange could receive treatment and compensation under certain conditions. The same law requires the National Academy of Sciences to regularly review the scientific achievements of dioxins and herbicides used in Vietnam and notify the Minister of Veterans Affairs. In 2005, victims of Agent Orange in Vietnam took up legal weapons and sued the US military for using highly toxic dioxins during the Vietnam War, but they were eventually rejected by the judges of the federal court in new york.