Agent Orange

During the war, the armies want to be ahead of their enemies, so they introduced their new technologies. In the Vietnam War, the Americans used Agent Orange because they discovered that the Agent Orange can make their enemies more visible. Agent Orange was a herbicide for warm, tropical climates. Agent Orange was a 50-50 mix of two chemicals known as 2,4,D and 2,4,5,T. Then the final result was combined with kerosene and diesel fuel, creating TCDD or dioxins, which contained powerful carcinogenic chemicals. It was sprayed with helicopters, airplanes, vehicles and by hand on the Vietnam landscape. The purpose of the product was to deny an enemy cover and concealment in dense terrain by defoliating trees and shrubbery where the enemy could hide. The product “Agent Orange” was principally effective against broad-leaf foliage, such as the dense jungle-like terrain found in Southeast Asia.

An estimated 20 million gallons of Agent Orange were used in South Vietnam during the war. The earliest health concerns about Agent Orange were about the product’s contamination with TCDD, or dioxin. TCDD is one of a family of dioxins, some found in nature, and are cousins of dibenzofurans and PCB’s. In 1962, the United States Military began to use a potentially toxic chemical known as Agent Orange. The toxic chemical was used a defoliant to destroy crops and eliminate ground cover during the Vietnam War. Vietnamese troops would hide underneath the thick forest and make it impossible for United States troops to spot them. So in 1962 the Army began using Agent Orange as a way of eliminating that problem. The government had very little knowledge about the deadly chemical but went ahead and used it anyway. They had no idea of the disastrous long-term effects that it would have on men, women and children. But the hardest group hit by the chemical was not Vietnamese civilians but United States troops. In 1962, Project Ranch Hand was being deployed all over Vietnam. The idea was to...