- (AFP) -- The amounts of pesticide sprays like Agent Orange
used during the Vietnam war have been largely underestimated, according
to a US study to appear in the British journal Nature.
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- From 1961 to 1971, the US and South Vietnamese armies
sprayed millions of liters of toxic herbicides, mainly Agent Orange, to
destroy the dense tropical forests that served as camouflage for their
adversaries.
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- The chemicals, which contained high levels of dioxins,
built up in the food chain, and according to the Vietnamese Red Cross,
more than a million people still suffer from the ill effects of the spraying
missions.
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- After combing through data compiled by the US military
on the use of these sprays, US researcher Jeanne Mager Stellman and her
colleagues have concluded that the amounts used are at least 10 percent
higher than originally thought.
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- "We located more than seven million more liters
of spray, or about 10 percent more," said Stellman, a researcher at
Columbia University in New York.
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- "What makes these 10 percent particularly significant
is that they were of the most heavily contaminated herbicides," she
told AFP.
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- According to the study, the extent of the distribution
of the pesticides at the start of the Vietnam war was underestimated, with
some 1.9 million liters used between 1962 and 1965.
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- The chemicals spread in the early stages of the conflict
were more concentrated and hence more dangerous than those used later on,
the study revealed.
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- The study also gives more complete data about where the
pesticides were spread which could help serve as the foundation for follow-up
epidemiological studies on the long-term health effects of the agents,
the authors wrote.
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- As many as 4.8 million people could have been present
during the spraying of the affected villages and hamlets, the researchers
noted.
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