In 2022 in Viet Nam, about 150,000 children suffer from birth defects caused by Agent Orange/dioxin that US leaders ordered to be sprayed. About 1 million people suffer disability and severe effects from dioxin. About 3 million live with effects from mild to severe.[i]   

In 1959, a scientist at the US Army Chemical Corps proved that, in some cases, the chemical called dioxin caused death or serious internal injury. But withiout scientifically disproving the 1959 proof, in 1961 the National Security Council, in direct contact with the Chemical Corps, approved the spraying of dioxin. What had happened between those years was that in 1960, villagers seized about 90 percent of the souhern half of Viet Nam. That “deteriorating situation” grew very important in “the highest levels” of government, said a later USAF study..[ii]  

Dioxin is a class of chemical compounds that are “extraordinarily destructive and persistent” and can remain for decades in the environment and human body. Agent Orange was the most widely sprayed mixture containing dioxin that US leaders sprayed in Viet Nam.[iii]  

During 1961—1970,  US leaders sprayed the southern half of Viet Nam with chemical mixtures containing enough TCDD, the most potent kind of dioxin, to harm earth’s entire population several times over. The sprays exposed at least 2.1 million Viet people to dioxin. A US government report in 2009 stated:[iv]

Dioxin is not water soluble, but an unknown amount of dioxin has washed into the rivers, streams and coastal waters of Vietnam, and presumably settled into its river and ocean beds. 

A 2019 study by K. R. Olson pointed out that dioxin’s half-life is “. . . as long as 20 to 50 years or more when buried in tropical subsoils, and more than 100 years in river and sea sediments.” Some websites showing photographs of victimes include: https://www.globalresearch.ca/vietnams-horrific-legacy-the-children-of-agent-orange/5451862

https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/legacy-of-agent-orange

https://www.businessinsider.com/paula-bronsteins-photos-of-disabled-agent-orange-vietnamese-2014-7

[i] Number of victims. https://en.vietnamplus.vn/exhibition-looks-back-on-60-years-of-ao-disaster-in-vietnam/204594.vnp Exhibition looks back on 60 years of AO disaster in VietnamNumber of victims. Interview of Nguyen Thi Phuong Tan [Nguyễn Thị Phương Tần], Assistant Chairperson of Ho Chi Minh City Association For Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin, December 19, 2019 by Brian Roesch, with interpreter. About 1 million disabled victims 2015. www.globalresearch.ca/vietnams-horrific-legacy-the-children-of-agent-orange/5451862.

 [ii] Army scientist Hoffman report 1959 to Pentagon links dioxin and deaths, Kassel on stopping research; but research continued. Sills, P. (2014). Toxic war : The story of Agent Orange. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, Kindle location 1172—1273, 1901. The “deteriorating situation.” Buckingham, W., & United States. Air Force. Office of Air Force History. (1982). Operation Ranch Hand : The Air Force and herbicides in Southeast Asia, 1961–1971. Washington, D.C.:
Office of Air Force History, U.S. Air Force, pp. iv, 7–8.

[iii] Dioxin 300 chemicals, destructive, persistent. Sills, Toxic war, p. 29, Kindle location 752. Nearly 73 million liters (over 19 million gallons) chemical mixtures containing dioxin 1961-1971; over 45 million liters were Agent Orange. Martini, E. (2012). Agent Orange: History, Science, and the politics of uncertainty (Culture, politics, and the Cold War). Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, Kindle location 196.

[iv]  Not water soluble, in waters of Viet Nam. Martin, M. (2009). Vietnamese Victims of Agent Orange and U.S.-Vietnam Relations. Congressional Research Service, Kindle location 336-337. Half-life in sediments, subsoils. Olson, K.R. and Morton, L.W. (January 31, 2019). “Long-Term Fate of Agent Orange and Dioxin TCDD Contaminated Soils and Sediments in Vietnam Hotspots.” Open Journal of Soil Science, 9, 1–34, especially p. 1, https://doi.org/10.4236/ojss.2019.91001.