"...I do remember walking through defoliated zones. Everything was dead. The trees had literally grown to death, because that’s how Agent Orange works, it accelerates growth in a plant’s cells until finally the plants or trees dies..."
-John Green, Vietnam medic, circa 1980
"Foliage-applied herbicides include contact herbicides or desiccants, which kill primarily by contact with plant tissues, and systemic herbicides, which are absorbed and translocated within the plant from the point of entry. Soil-applied herbicides kill germinating seeds and established plants by uptake of the chemical from the soil."
-Excerpt from Veterans and Agent Orange: Health Effects of Herbicides Used in Vietnam, 1994
“As more and more Agent Orange was dropped, our patrol boat casualties began to drop significantly.”
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"It was sprayed out of airplanes, it was sprayed by hand, by sprayers that the soldiers would carry in their backpack. Unfortunately, when it was sprayed out of the airplanes, the chemicals would drift according to the wind, what direction the wind was going, sometimes it would go into the drinking water, streams, rivers, and contaminate areas that were not intended to be sprayed on. It was only intended to be sprayed on vegetation and jungles. Well, they found out in 1961 that it had limited success and was not killing enough vegetation. What they did, in certain areas, was to set the vegetation on fire...The heat from the fire just made the chemicals more potent..."
-Joseph B. Pasek, Vietnam War medic with the 101st Airborne, in a personal interview, 2018
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"Believing that the Nation has far more to lose than to gain from the use of such weapons, the scientists oppose the large-scale anti-personnel and anti-crop chemical weapons in Viet Nam. "...qualified scientists, both inside and outside the government, and in the governments of other nations, have judged that seriously adverse consequences will not occur. Unless we had confidence in these judgments, we would not continue to employ these materials." |