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Agent Orange: The Deadly Fog

By Fred Wilcox

Before the Meramac river rose from its backs, sending tons of water cascading through the streets of Times Beach. Mo, residents of that small Midwestern village were proud of their town. It was, they would tell visitors, a kind of Mom and apple pie place where people didn't worry about their children talking to strangers and doors were left unlocked, even at night. Unlike Los Angeles or New York the air was clean, water still tasted like water, and the family income could be augmented by hunting and fishing. No it wasn't Paris, but at least it would always be there for their grandchildren—a permanent dot on the ever-changing American landscape.

In early spring 1983, the Meramac rose above flood level, receded, then rose again, washing over the town in great muddy geysers that left behind a thick, odoriferous residue. Like giant beetles cars lay stranded in the mud, and throughout the day and late into the evening one could hear the sound of chain saws and the lament of those made homeless by the vicissitudes of nature. Still, the people of Times Beach were not discouraged. Formidable as the task before them seemed, they were optimistic that they could clean up the damage and restore their town to its pre-flood serenity.

But in a matter of days optimism turned to despair, and the effort to salvage the flood-ravaged town was all but abandoned. Bewildered, angry and frustrated, the residents of Times Beach watched apprehensively as technicians from the EPA probed through the debris and removed solid samples in search of TCSS—Dioxin, the most toxic chemical known to science. Yet even after the technicians arrived in the village wearing moonsuits and carrying what appeared to be miniature vacuum cleaner, people did not give up hope. Perhaps, they said, health officials were mistaken in their belief that soil in Times Beach contained high levels of dioxin. Or maybe the government knew a way of ridding their town of the contamination and their ordeal would soon be over. But when the results of the EPA's tests returned the news was devastating: so much dioxin had been found in the soil that the town would have to be evacuated and most household goods, including furniture, rugs, appliances and even cars, left behind. Times Beach, its residents soon learned, was about to become the first toxic ghost town in America.

Were Times Beach an anomaly in an otherwise pristine environment it might have been quickly forgotten by a media more interested in sensation than substance, but in the weeks following the evacuation of this small village, Americans discovered that dioxin is widespread possibly even ubiquitous, in our environment. It has been found, for example, in several varieties of fish taken from Lake Ontario and the Hudson River, in the tissues of fish caught eight miles down river from a plant that once manufactured Agent Orange, and in carp taken from Michigan's Saginaw Bay. In Missouri, more than one hundred sites may be contaminated with dioxin, and scientist had discovered traces of the chemical in beef fat taken from cattle grazed on land with 2,4,5-T and in mother's milk from women living near areas heavily sprayed with dioxin-contaminated her bicides. In addition, the public learned, dioxin is found in certain herbicides, pesticides, disinfectants, detergents, and wood preservatives, products that can be purchased at most any hardware store.

The discovery of dioxin in Times Beach did more than substantiate that our air, water, and food chain are being inundated with deadly chemicals. It precipitated an intense and often acrimonious debate between those who believe dioxin-contaminated products should be banned and the environment swept clean of this chemical, and those who argue that in small doses dioxin is rather innocuous. In California and Oregon opponents of the use of 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T—herbicides that when mixed together in a 50/50 ratio from Agent Orange—are threatening to shoot down helicopters spraying these chemicals on or near their land. In Washington, DC, thee Environmental Defense Fund, calling dioxin the most powerful carcinogen know to science, has established an emergency dioxin action plan to "combat Dow's 'information' campaign" and to force the government and industry to control dioxin contamination. And in New York lawyers for thousands of Vietnam veterans clash almost daily with attorneys from the chemical industry who deny that veterans' illnesses are related to dioxin exposure.

While the National Cancer Institute, Public Health Service, EPA, federal and state health officials, and leading experts in environmental science throughout the world have verified dioxin's toxicity, the American Medical Association calls public concern over this chemical unwarranted. In a statement released shortly before I was about to embark on a two-week promotion tour for Waiting for an Army to Die, the AMA denounced what is called "hysteria over dioxin." Dioxin, said the association's executive council, is a victim of a witch hunt orchestrated by an ill-informed and irresponsible media. The nation's chief executive also rushed to dioxin's defense. "News reports about dioxin," said Ronald Reagan, "have frightened a good number of people unnecessarily." And to set the record straight Dow Chemical Company announced that it is mounting a $3 million campaign to counter what it calls the "hysteria over dioxin." "This effort," said Dow's president, Paul F. Oreffice, "will seek, through sound science, to reassure those with concerns about dioxin." To reassure the American people, Dow would attempt to prove that "trace amounts of dioxin found in Midland, and in other communities with similar levels, pose no significant, long-term health problems." Neither the AMA nor Dow Chemical said they were planning to conduct long-term health studies of Vietnam veterans who were exposed to dioxin-contaminated herbicides and who have filed the largest product liability suit in the nation's history against five war-time manufacturers of Agent Orange.

In every city I visited and on every radio or TV program people were very disturbed or angry about the AMA's statements and Dow's contention that there is no proof dioxin (a chemical scientist believe if 170,000 times more toxic than cyanide, 670 times more toxic than arsenic, and one million times more fetus-deforming than thalidomide) harms human beings. Many calls were from Vietnam veterans of their wives asking why, if dioxin posed no threat to human health, the government rushed its technicians to Times Beach, evacuated the town, and paid its residents $33 million never to return. And if low levels of dioxin pose no long-term health problems, why did an Illinois jury award $58 million to 47 railroad workers exposed to this chemical for a short period of time—the workers developed cancer of the skin and testicles, liver damage, neurological problems, loss of sex drive, and other symptoms that Vietnam veterans have been complaining of for many years. The American public, I concluded, is deeply disturbed but hardly hysterical over contradictory reports on the toxicity of dioxin.

On the final day of my tour I was accompanied by a former Marine who had spent 12 months in area of Vietnam sprayed heavily with herbicides. Before Vietnam he had been in " perfect health" and had even planned on playing professional football when he returned home; but now, he explained, he can only hope that the cancer doctors in one of his testicles and the lymph nodes of his stomach will not spread to other parts of his body. Because of an operation that rendered him sterile, he and wife will never be able to have children and this often leaves him feeling depressed and angry. Did anyone know, he asked, that Agent Orange contained dioxin, and if so why hadn't they warned the troops who, like himself, spent months in "the bush" drinking water and eating food contaminated with herbicides?

As we waited to appear on a San Francisco news program, a technician rushed into the room and we suggested we accompany him to the nearest monitor where a Medal of Honor winner was speaking before a Congressional panel. Former Sergeant Sammy Lee Davis had served in Vietnam and had long suspected that his illnesses were related to exposure to Agent Orange, but the Veterans Administration hospitals, he told the panel, "had always found other explanations." Advised by a veteran's group to seek help elsewhere, Davis consulted Dr. Bertram Carnow of the University of Illinois School of Public Health, who told him that indeed his illnesses were directed related to dioxin-contaminated herbicides. His voice quivering Davis said: "I am an American, gentlemen, and therefore too proud and too bullheaded to beg you. But I humbly request that you do not break faith with those of us who answered the call that cam from this building....I maybe called away soon. I am 36 years old, gentlemen, and that terrifies me. But at the very least the darkness of uncertainty has passed and I can rest with the fact that I know what to expect."

To the AMA, to Dow Chemical and other manufacturers of dioxin-contaminated products, Sammy Lee Davis's testimony and the health problems of the Marine with whom I spent a day in San Franciso are merely "anecdotal"—admittedly disturbing and sad, but hardly scientific proof that dioxin harms human beings. There is, however, a curios and rather frightening irony in the chemical companies' insistence that no correlation between human illness and dioxin exposure has been proven. Ironic, because in establishing the toxicity of any chemical to human beings scientist rarely use human guinea pigs, relying instead on a process of extrapolation from the effects of a particular chemical on laboratory animals to the possible effects a chemical might have on human beings. In test after test dioxin has proven to be a potent tumor promoter in rats, teratogenic (fetus deforming) in rats and mice, fetotoxic in a variety of species, and deadly to rhesus monkeys in doses as low as 2 parts per billion (one part per billion is the equivalent of one second in approximately 37 years). From the laboratory studies it seems highly probable that dioxin poses a hazard to human health and that the argument that it is innocuous in small doses is based more on politics than science.

Barricaded and deserted, Times Beach, Missouri, squats on the banks of the Meramac like harbinger of America's future. Dioxin has faded from the headlines, the AMA has modifies—one might almost say recanted—its statements about dioxin, and Dow Chemical's public relations teams receive hardly and notice as they scour the hinterland in search of an appreciative audience for their message that in small doses dioxin is harmless.

But for thousand of Vietnam veterans there is little consolation in the fact the "hysteria" over dioxin has subsided. Sick, dying, bitter, they try to understand why their health has deteriorated so dramatically since their return from Vietnam and why no one seems willing to help. If dioxin is not destroying their livers, damaging their nervous systems, and promoting cancerous growths in their colons, stomachs, testicles, and bladders, then what is? And if the chemical industry is so absolutely certain that dioxin does not permanently injure or kill human beings, then why have they not done group studies of Vietnam veterans to substantiate these claims rather than spending twenty million dollars to fight the veteran's class action suit?

The answers to these questions have serious implications for our future. For if, based upon the plethora or scientific studies showing dioxin to be carcinogenic, teratogenic, fetotoxic, and just plain deadly in laboratory animals, we cannot make a learned guess about its effects on human beings, is there really any basis for limiting or banning the production or marketing of any chemical or drug? The chemical industry's argument that dioxin is "innocent until proven guilty" is a dangerous reversal of the process whereby regulatory agencies attempt to safeguard the American public from toxic drugs or chemicals. To accept this argument would be to agree to market products first and remove the "suspected" killer from the market only when a substantial number of people had sickened or died.

"If dioxin were a human being," said Victor Yannacone, "it would be convicted in any court in the land no matter who was sitting on the bench or whether it was a judicial or jury trial. Dioxin is a killer, and it will be convicted of destroying the lives of thousands of young men who served our country in Vietnam."

Mr Yannacone, of course, is mistaken. Were the jury comprised of members of the AMA's executive board or scientists from Dow, Monsanto, Uniroyal, et al, the charges against dioxin would be reduced from homicide to a misdemeanor. In spite of a number of reputable studies that strongly suggest a correlation between dioxin exposure and human illness, and regardless of Dow Chemical's own internal and, until recently, secret memos that state dioxin could prove " fatal" in human beings, the chemical industry continues to insist that "all the evidence is not in." And until it is, we should not be alarmed over the discovery of this chemical in Times Beach or, even, our own back yards. Accept the payment—perhaps we should say payoff—and move on, hoping that you might find haven from the most toxic chemical known to science. In a nation where dioxin has been found in fish, beef fat, and mother's milk, the real question is just where this hiding place might be.

(This article by Fred Wilcox, author of Waiting for an Army to Die; it appeared in Grapevine, a weekly magazine from Ithaca, NY, and is reprinted by the kind permission of Grapevine and Mr Wilcox.)