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- HANOI, Vietnam (Reuters)
- Villagers living close to a former U.S. air base where there was a big
spill of the defoliant Agent Orange during the Vietnam War show elevated
levels of dioxin contamination, a leading researcher says.
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- Arnold Schecter, a professor of environmental sciences
at the University of Texas, told Reuters the findings and previous Canadian
research showed dioxin had found its way back into the food chain in at
least two Agent Orange ``hot spots'' in Vietnam.
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- Schecter said he and Vietnamese scientists had taken
blood samples last year from 20 villagers living close to the former U.S.
air base of Bien Hoa, where thousands of gallons of Agent Orange had been
spilled in the late 1960s.
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- Analysis of the samples obtained this year showed 19
of the 20 had elevated levels of dioxin.
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- ``Nineteen out of 20 really surprised us,'' Schecter
said in an interview in Hanoi. ``One woman had the highest level seen in
Vietnam since the last samples were taken during the war.
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- ``That's a 135 percent increase above the level for non-exposed
Hanoi residents. It startled us, it startled my group -- it's striking.''
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- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently
issued a reassessment of dioxin, concluding that it is a known carcinogen
that causes cancer and deaths from cancer in humans.
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- However, there was the possibility of the EPA findings
being contested by industry, including Agent Orange manufacturers, worried
about potentially large damages settlements.
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- Litigation by industry had meant similar conclusions
by the U.S. Public Health Service's National Toxicology Program had not
been released, Schecter said.
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- Spraying of Agent Orange, used by the United States to
deny communist guerrillas jungle cover, ended in Vietnam in 1971.
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- Schecter said if researchers were better funded they
could map out other hot spots like Bien Hoa and see if they could be cleaned
up and what could be done for people affected.
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- ``I hope and expect from what I hear in Washington they
will try to get U.S. government funding for Agent Orange research in Vietnam
started this year.
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- ``It Must Be Done Now''
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- ``This year is the last year of the Clinton administration
and we have no idea what the next administration will want to do. It must
be done now, or it may never be done.''
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- During a visit to Vietnam earlier this year, Defense
Secretary William Cohen called for cooperation in research into the harmful
effects of Agent Orange.
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- Schecter, a member of the U.S. Army Medical Corps in
the Vietnam War who has been researching Agent Orange in Vietnam since
1984, said implications of such research extended beyond Vietnam and U.S.
veterans seeking compensation for the effects of contamination, to cases
like the recent Belgian food scare.
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- ``It will tell us how dioxin moves through the environment.
he said. ``Most people thought the dioxin from Agent Orange had just moved
away, been washed away. Clearly, 30 years after the spraying ended, it's
not doing that and it is being remobilized in certain hot spots and getting
into people.''
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- It could also show what levels of dioxins caused which
health effects, Schecter said.
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- ``Vietnam has the biggest dioxin contamination in the
world and probably the most men women and children contaminated with dioxin.
Unfortunately for Vietnam, it is probably the best laboratory in the world
to study the effects of dioxin.''
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- Schecter said that of those villagers contaminated near
Bien Hoa, some were old enough to have been exposed to spraying during
the war but others were born long after the spraying ended.
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- The highest levels of contamination were among heavy
fish consumers, specifically in a family that ate a lot of fish from a
stream on their property downstream from the air base.
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- ``The spillage of Agent Orange at Bien Hoa air base probably
got into a waterway that goes nearby, probably contaminated silt that probably
contaminated fish,'' Schecter said.
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- ``We know now that Agent Orange is a human carcinogen,
we know it causes endocrine disruption and we know it causes certain types
of damage to children if the mother has high enough exposure,'' Schecter
said.
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