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Agent Orange Vietnam Essay

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The scene is the late 1950s. The United States of America is at war in Vietnam. The war is based around the conflict between the communist government of the North, and the government in South Vietnam, aided by the United States. The North of the country wants to unify the country as a whole under a communist form of government based on that of China and the USSR; however the South wants a government more closely resembling that of the West. Meanwhile, American soldiers are struggling to fight against the Vietcong, as the soldiers of the North camouflage in perfectly with the expansive jungle that easily hides them from the Americans. The South Vietnamese and Americans needed a solution. The South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem requests …show more content…

Agent Orange contained a deadly chemical known as dioxin. Dioxin is a type of environmental pollutant and is a part of a group of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) nicknamed “the dirty dozen”. Dioxins have a highly toxic potential and are known to damage several organs over time. They last a long time once they’re in the body due to their stable molecular structure, ability to be absorbed into the fat tissue, and half life of 7 to 11 years. Agent Orange was originally created by Dr. Arthur W. Galston, a botanist who researched chemical compounds that controlled plant growth. He created Agent Orange for this purpose originally, but when the US military used it on a massive scale, the dioxin caused terrible side effects. Dioxin is one of the most toxic chemicals in the world, and in September of 1994 the US Environmental Protection Agency declared Agent Orange to be a “serious public health threat”. Agent Orange as a whole is an herbicide, a mix of two herbicides called 2,4,-D and 2,4,5-T. When these two chemicals are combined, they create a deadly poisonous spray that many soldiers were exposed to and inhaled, having deadly side effects on their health. The negative health effects of Agent Orange were also increased by the fact that it was sprayed up to 20 times the recommended concentration for killing plants when it was used in the Vietnam

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