From
WIRE REPORTS
A
massive decontamination effort has begun in one of Viet Nam’s major dioxin hot
spots nearly four decades after the end of the Viet Nam War.
The
project, which will involve the cleansing of around thousands of cubic feet of
land contaminated with dioxin, has, for the time being, put on the back-burner
contentious, unresolved questions of culpability and compensation for millions
affected by the toxic chemical that was sprayed by a U.S. military operation
titled Operation Ranch Hand.
A
newspaper reported that the project would create a dioxin-free area that will
remove risks of dioxin infection to residents in the vicinity. The area can be
exploited for economic purposes, the paper said.
“The
project has been carefully planned to prevent any harmful impacts in the area
of the airport where work will be performed and in the surrounding community.
Safety measures will be in place to control dust, storm-water runoff, and steam
or vapor emissions,” the USAID said in a statement on the launch of the
project.
The
U.S. is providing non-refundable aid of $41 million for the project and the
Vietnamese government will make a small investment. The Viet Nam People’s Air
Force and Air Defense Services will carry out the project that is expected to
be completed by the end of 2016.
“The
war ended more than 35 years ago, but consequences of the U.S. Army’s herbicide
use in Viet Nam remain very serious,” the Quan Doi Nhan Dan newspaper quoted deputy defense minister Lt.
General Nguyen Chi Vinh as saying.
“Millions
of [acres] of forest have been destroyed and the ecosystem is yet to recover.
Millions of people exposed [to the chemical] have become victims of
dioxin/Agent Orange.
“Together
with Bien Hoa and Phu Cat airports, the Da Nang Airport was used as a place to
store, handle and disperse the herbicide in the war, and these have become
dioxin infection hot spots. In the following years, the toxic chemical has been
spreading, affecting human health and the surrounding ecosystem,” he said.
Vinh
said his ministry, which has been asked to deal with the problem, has worked
hard to surround and limit the spread of dioxin impacts.
“However,
there have been difficulties in decontamination, evaluating the exact scale of
known areas and locating unidentified contamination areas.”
U.S.
Ambassador David Shear said: “We are both moving earth and taking the first
steps to bury the legacies of our past. I look forward to even more successes
to follow.
“Over
the next few years, workers will dig up the contaminated soil and sediment and
place it in a stockpile, where it will be treated…to break down the dioxin in
the contaminated soil and make it safe by Vietnamese and U.S. standards for the
many men, women, and children who live and work in this area.”
The
governments of Viet Nam and the United States have been collaborating on issues
related to Agent Orange since 2000 and USAID has worked closely with Vietnamese
authorities to develop the project in Da Nang since 2009, USAID said in a press
release.
Between
1961 and 1971, the U.S. Army sprayed some millions of gallons of Agent Orange
containing the highly toxic dioxin over 30,000 square miles of southern Viet
Nam. Dioxin, a highly toxic chemical in the defoliant used by the U.S. troops
to strip Vietnamese forces of ground cover and food, stays in the soil and
sediment at the bottom of lakes and rivers for generations. It can enter the
food supply through the fat of fish and other animals.
As
many as 4.8 million Vietnamese citizens were directly exposed to Agent Orange
and other chemicals that have been linked to cancers, birth defects and other
chronic diseases during the Viet Nam War that ended in April 1975, according to
the Viet Nam Red Cross.
