HANOI - A leading U.S. researcher said Vietnam's Health Ministry agreed on Monday on the need for emergency steps after people living near a former U.S. base where there was a big wartime spillage of the toxic defoliant Agent Orange were found to have "alarmingly high" dioxin levels.
Arnold Schecter, MD, MPH et al. Recent Dioxin Contamination From Agent Orange in Residents of a Southern Vietnam City
Journal of Occupational Medicine 43:5, pp 435-443 May01
University of Texas Professor Arnold Schecter told Reuters he had met Health Minister Do Nguyen Phuong in the morning to discuss U.S. laboratory findings showing tests of blood from 24 out of 25 people taken in the southern city of Bien Hoa in 1999 and 2000 showed elevated levels of dioxin, some "alarmingly high."
Schecter, one of the foremost Agent Orange experts after research in Vietnam dating back to 1984, gathered the samples with Hanoi's top researcher Le Cao Dai, executive director of the local Red Cross. Expensive tests were done in the United States.
"The minister of health agreed that what Professor Dai and I had been showing does constitute an urgent public health matter," Schecter said.
"He is going to meet with the Minister of Science and Technology and Environment to discuss an emergency medical survey or health survey. That will involve monitoring of blood and food in hotspots and comparison areas."
The government has not commented.
Schecter said he envisaged hundreds or perhaps thousands of people being tested in 30-50 Agent Orange "hotspots" starting within weeks, not months. He said it would be the biggest survey of its kind ever carried out in Vietnam.
Schecter cautioned that the initiative still needed to be approved by Vietnam's Committee 33, the body in charge of Agent Orange projects under Science Minister Chu Tuan Nha.
Schecter had earlier complained he had been unable to secure permission from Committee 33 on Sunday to collect new blood and food samples. He said he was now more optimistic about future cooperation, although there were still potential obstacles.
U.S., VIETNAM IN TALKS
The professor's report came just as U.S. and Vietnamese officials were to resume talks on Agent Orange in Hanoi, picking up from an inconclusive initial meeting in Singapore in December.
The United States says the purpose of the talks is to discuss U.S. proposals for joint Agent Orange research. Schecter, who is not on the U.S. negotiating team, said the last round stalled on Vietnam's insistence an agreement should include humanitarian assistance to Agent Orange victims.
The United States sprayed millions of gallons of Agent Orange and other defoliants on Vietnam from 1962 to 1971 to deny communist fighters jungle cover. The chemicals were contaminated by TCDD, the most dangerous form of dioxin.
Washington argues that there is still no solid scientific proof Agent Orange was responsible for a wide range of maladies, including tens of thousands of mental and physical birth defects.
Schecter estimated about a million Vietnamese had been exposed to elevated levels of Agent Orange, but by current research, it was impossible to tell how many may have been made ill.
Bien Hoa, is a city of more than 350,000 north of Ho Chi Minh City. It was once home to a huge U.S. base where there was a major spillage of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. This is thought to have contaminated a lake where locals fish and swim.
Schecter said the tests showed "a large number of people at increased risk for illnesses of all kinds caused by dioxin, whether its cancer, lower IQ for children, emotional problems for children...spontaneous abortions and maybe some malformation if the mother is exposed."
He said there was a need to find out exactly how people were being contaminated. While there was a suspicion the contamination came from fish from the lake, this was not known for certain and pork and duck meat also needed to be tested.
He said the longer research was delayed, the more people would be contaminated, and added: "This would be considered a public health emergency in the United States and immediate action taken."
Schecter thought Washington could be more imaginative and dynamic in its approach to the problem, but said its attitude was complicated by foreign policy implications and the fact that costs of care for any proven victims and cleanups of contaminated areas would likely run to hundreds of millions of dollars.
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