FILE: U.S. government agrees to clean up Agent Orange residue buried below Danang Airport

Record ID: 578720

  • Title: FILE: U.S. government agrees to clean up Agent Orange residue buried below Danang Airport
  • Date: 16th June 2011
  • Summary: UNDISCLOSED LOCATION, VIETNAM (ORIGINALLY 4:3) (FILE) (REUTERS) U.S. PLANE SPRAYING AGENT ORANGE OVER JUNGLE VARIOUS OF PILOT AGENT ORANGE CONTAINER PLANES SPRAYING AGENT ORANGE OVER JUNGLE PILOT FLYING PLANE OVER JUNGLE VARIOUS OF PLANE SPRAYING AGENT ORANGE SOLDIER SPRAYING AGENT ORANGE FROM PLANE VARIOUS OF SOLDIERS MARCHING THROUGH JUNGLE
  • Embargoed: 1st July 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Vietnam
  • Country: Vietnam
  • Topics: War / Fighting,International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA8X34QY97CNUVD43VZKMRU17MX
  • Story Text: The U.S. government has agreed to clean up the residue of Agent Orange, buried below Danang Airport in central Vietnam.
    The clean up process will begin on Friday (June 17). The U.S. government has approved a grant of 17 million U.S. dollars for the process.
    Vietnam estimates as many as two million people have been exposed to the defoliant, used from 1962 to 1971 to deny communist fighters food and forest cover.
    The communist country also says the product caused tens of thousands of birth defects and other diseases.
    Agent Orange got its name because of the coloured stripes on the containers, sprayed over a wide part of Vietnam during the war, which ended in 1975.
    During the war, some 72 million litres of herbicides, of which Agent Orange was one, were sprayed over Southern Vietnam in what experts now say was the world's biggest and most prolonged dioxin contamination.
    The use of the herbicide was stopped in 1971 after it was discovered to contain dioxin.
    Agent Orange was also sprayed in Cambodia.
  • Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2011. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
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