Hanoi (VNA) – Sixty yearshave passed since the US army dropped tens of millions of extremely toxicchemicals on various areas across the south of Vietnam, but their devastatingimpact still lingers, destroying the environment and claiming the lives of manygenerations of Agent Orange (AO) victims.

About 4.8 million Vietnamese peoplehave been exposed to AO, and more than 3 million others who are their second,third, and even fourth generations have still suffered from pains and losseseven when the war ended nearly 50 years ago.

In 1961, then US President J. Kennedyauthorised chemical warfare, aside from the “hot war”, in Vietnam.

To conceal their plan from thepublic, the US Department of Defence used the code name “Operation Ranch Hand”and spread a false belief among US troops and people that the chemicals usedwere just normal herbicides and defoliants aimed to uncover the enemy’s hidingplaces and minimise casualties for the US army and its alliance’s troops, andthat they were not hazardous to animals and did not have considerable impact onhuman health.

However, it is a fact that thechemical warfare waged by the US in Vietnam was the largest and longest one causingthe most destructive consequences in human history.

From 1961 to 1971, the US army conducted19,905 missions, spraying about 80 million litres of toxic chemicals - 61percent of which, containing 366kg of dioxin, was AO - on 3.06 million ha ofland in southern Vietnam, equivalent to nearly 25 percent of the south’s totalarea. Up to 86 percent of the affected area was sprayed more than twice, and 11percent more than 10 times.

This lead to severe environmentalpollution as seen in the undermined water storage and flood mitigationfunctions of forests,  the biodiversityloss, the extinction of some rare fauna and flora species, and the mushroomingof rodents and weeds.

Nowadays, the toxic chemicals droppedby the US military are still present in some southern areas and have become sourcesof pollution.

At the second international workshopon the toxic chemicals used by the US in the Vietnam war and their impact onthe nature and human held in Hanoi in 1993, many Vietnamese and foreign scientistsaffirmed that those toxic chemicals destroyed the nature and human health andcaused many acute diseases and genetic mutations passed from mothers orfathers.

In July 2009, a report by the USInstitute of Medicine proved the links between the exposure to AO/dioxin andfive diseases, namely soft tissue sarcoma, benign lymphoma, chronic lymphocyticleukemia, cancer, and chloracne.

The Vietnamese Ministry of Health also confirmed 17 diseases, disorders,deformities, and malformations connected with AO/dioxin.

An estimated 3 million Vietnamese peoplehave had their health affected due to the exposure to toxic chemicals/dioxin. Amongthem, at least 150,000 children suffer from inborn defects and at least 1million people suffer from serious impacts of AO, according to the Vietnam Associationfor AO Victims and the Vietnam Red Cross Society.

Not only Vietnamese but a largenumber of soldiers of the US, the Republic of Korea, Australia, and New Zealandwho used to fight in Vietnam and their descendants have also got many diseasescaused by the AO exposure and after-effects.

Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, Commander of theUS naval forces in Vietnam from 1968 to 1970, said at least 2,100 US soldiers were exposed to AO.

Meanwhile, the Republic of Korea’s associationof war veterans exposed to AO estimated that about 100,000 of the 300,000 Koreansoldiers fighting in Vietnam are victims of AO, more than 20,000 of them havedied.

Scientists believed that the impactof AO may last for hundreds of years and affect tens of millions of people, andthe number of generations suffering from after-effects will not be limited tofour, making the AO disaster the worst chemical one in human history./.