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How Agent Orange Worked · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know?
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Speaker 1: From how Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. I thought you were gonna
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Speaker 1: say I'm Radius and this is almah. Let's try that again. Shoh. Okay, Hey,
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Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. Charles W. Bryant is here,
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Speaker 1: and so am I. I'm Josh Clark and this is
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Speaker 1: stuff you should know. I thought you were gonna say,
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Speaker 1: I'm Radius and this is almah. Wow. Okay, okay, so olmah,
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Speaker 1: how are you doing, Radius? I'm doing fine. That's fantastic.
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Speaker 1: That good? Um, Chuck, Sorry, what I'm just gonna say?
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Speaker 1: You know, I'm just doing the wrist bond thing. Are
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Speaker 1: you metacarpal? Yeah? Um? Okay, so we start over. I
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Speaker 1: don't care. Okay, Yeah, we're gonna leave it in because
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Speaker 1: our producer Jerry loves this kind of stuff. Uh, and
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Speaker 1: we're gonna go forward about that, Chuck. Um, you served
1:02
Speaker 1: in the Vietnam War, correct? That is correct? That is
1:05
Speaker 1: not correct. That was not even born yet, are you sure, jerk? Yeah?
1:09
Speaker 1: When did Vietnam? And oh well, sure I was born,
1:13
Speaker 1: then I wasn't born. Then good for you. Um well, chuck, surely.
1:17
Speaker 1: Growing up in the eighties, you heard of Agent Orange,
1:20
Speaker 1: remember the skateboard company? Absolutely yeah, so, um that just
1:25
Speaker 1: really attracted me. I never had an Agent Orange skateboard.
1:28
Speaker 1: I was more of a Powell per Alta fan, Mike
1:30
Speaker 1: McGill specifically. Um, but I always thought Asian Orange just cool.
1:34
Speaker 1: It just had the coolest name. Yeah. And then I
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Speaker 1: came to find find out that it was actually an herbicide,
1:40
Speaker 1: and it's not that cool. Yeah. I used to get
1:42
Speaker 1: it confused with the napalm. Yeah. I knew there were
1:45
Speaker 1: different things, but I would napalm was orange, and so
1:47
Speaker 1: it would kind of confuse me. Have you ever made
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Speaker 1: napalm at home? No? I haven't, Okay. Um well, once
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Speaker 1: I came to find out that Agent Orange was an herbicide, um,
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Speaker 1: I kind of lost interest in it. And then now
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Speaker 1: here we are, what ten, twelve, fifteen years later, and
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Speaker 1: my interest is once again peaked because Agent Orange was
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Speaker 1: about the baddest mofo that the US Army deployed against
2:12
Speaker 1: the Vietnamese. Right now, actually Agent Purple may have been,
2:15
Speaker 1: but we'll get into that. Okay, well let's talk about it.
2:18
Speaker 1: Agent Orange. Let's let's give a little background and just
2:20
Speaker 1: how much agent orange is used. As we said, it
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Speaker 1: was an herbicide now, very very potent herbicide acting and um,
2:29
Speaker 1: you want to do the stats, buddy, that's my deal.
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Speaker 1: It is a defoliant. And we used about eleven million
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Speaker 1: gallons of specifically of agent orange alone forty two million leaders, yes,
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Speaker 1: from January of sixty five April nineteen seventy and about
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Speaker 1: twenty million gallons, which is uh, that is about oh,
2:51
Speaker 1: I don't know, somewhere in the neighborhood is seventy six
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Speaker 1: million leaders, very good total herbicides altogether from seventy one right,
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Speaker 1: it was that's a lot. As a matter of fact,
3:01
Speaker 1: I think, um over the course of six thousand missions
3:05
Speaker 1: spraying missions, because it was all aerial as far as
3:08
Speaker 1: I know, um, about uh of Vietnam was sprayed with
3:14
Speaker 1: agient orange alone. That is a lot of herbicide. Yeah,
3:18
Speaker 1: and that's a substantial portion of a country to be
3:21
Speaker 1: infected with a harmful, dangerous killer. Yeah. Now, anybody who's
3:25
Speaker 1: sprayed like ground up or some other herbicide around the garden,
3:28
Speaker 1: you kind of almost have this uh this natural inclination
3:31
Speaker 1: to keep it away from you as much as possible,
3:34
Speaker 1: and when some gets on your fingers, you like run
3:36
Speaker 1: inside and wash your hands fifty times. Right. I can't
3:38
Speaker 1: use any of that stuff because the animals and you know,
3:41
Speaker 1: it's it's rough stuff. It can be, right, but it
3:44
Speaker 1: does kill the grass, as did agent orange. But not
3:48
Speaker 1: only did agent orange killed grass, it killed everything. And
3:52
Speaker 1: what's ironic about it is that it's actually it was
3:56
Speaker 1: it's actually a growth regulator, meaning that it stimulates growth
4:00
Speaker 1: and plants. That shocked me, Yeah, it was shocking. I
4:02
Speaker 1: thought it was a flat out killer. But apparently what
4:04
Speaker 1: it does is it if it's used too much, then
4:07
Speaker 1: they grow to the point where it dries out and dies. Yeah,
4:10
Speaker 1: it grows so fast that the water depletes its water
4:13
Speaker 1: supply very quickly. And that's that crazy. Never knew that.
4:16
Speaker 1: But there's this guy, a botanist named Dr Arthur W. Galston,
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Speaker 1: and he actually created agent orange, and he did create
4:24
Speaker 1: it as a growth regulator to boost plant growth. Um
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Speaker 1: And after the military got ahold of it, yeah, he
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Speaker 1: started to realize that his his invention was being used
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Speaker 1: in a really horrible way. And actually campaigned against it. Yeah,
4:39
Speaker 1: I feel I felt bad for that guy, but that's
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Speaker 1: his legacy. And well, did you read that quote from him?
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Speaker 1: And I agree with it? Yeah, you want to you
4:45
Speaker 1: want to read it? Uh? Yeah, Josh. The quote is
4:49
Speaker 1: nothing that you do in science is guaranteed to result
4:51
Speaker 1: in benefits for mankind. Any discovery, I believe is morally neutral,
4:55
Speaker 1: and it can be turned either to constructive or destructive ends.
4:58
Speaker 1: That's not the fault of science, right, And I agree
5:00
Speaker 1: with that. Yeah, And I'm sure Philip Oppenheimer would agree
5:03
Speaker 1: with that as well. You know, I mean he created
5:06
Speaker 1: nuclear vision I'm pretty sure he created nuclear vision um
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Speaker 1: and it was used in a catastrophic manner to kill
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Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands, millions probably people. He didn't create it
5:22
Speaker 1: for that, and it was just he created something and
5:25
Speaker 1: basically open Pandora's box and there you go. So I
5:28
Speaker 1: agree with Galston's um assessment as well. But still the
5:32
Speaker 1: fact remains the U. S. Military got ahold of this
5:34
Speaker 1: and they sprayed it everywhere they could. So chuck um,
5:39
Speaker 1: what's the problem with it? I mean, aside from the
5:42
Speaker 1: fact that you know, if you're living in Vietnam, in
5:45
Speaker 1: in you know, between nine and seventy and they come
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Speaker 1: over your village and spray that stuff. Number one, it's
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Speaker 1: probably going to stink, which it did. Number two, you're
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Speaker 1: covered in herbicide. Number three, all of your trees are
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Speaker 1: suddenly leafless. What are some other problems that it posed, well,
6:00
Speaker 1: not only trees, buddy, Well, we should point out that
6:02
Speaker 1: the reason they did this was because of the thick
6:05
Speaker 1: jungle cover in Vietnam made it very difficult for snipers
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Speaker 1: and uh air squadrons to see what's going on, not
6:12
Speaker 1: to mention the guys in the jungle, so they would
6:14
Speaker 1: use this herbicide to just wipe it out completely and
6:17
Speaker 1: make it like a barren black landscape, so you know,
6:21
Speaker 1: the enemy could be seen. So um, not only did
6:24
Speaker 1: it kill the vegetation, but it also killed crops, and
6:28
Speaker 1: it also destroys the roots system and really completely. I
6:32
Speaker 1: mean it gets into the soil, so nothing would grow
6:35
Speaker 1: there afterward either, I mean that would eventually if you eradicated,
6:38
Speaker 1: but sure well, and also without um roots systems, then
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Speaker 1: your soil structure is messed up. And so apparently you know,
6:47
Speaker 1: Vietnam's monsoons carried much of the top soil away the right,
6:52
Speaker 1: which also, um, then that the the the agent orange
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Speaker 1: entered the water, right, yeah, polluted that, and then you
7:00
Speaker 1: have a big problem with cropland so we've got the
7:02
Speaker 1: polluted water supply. So even if you do have crops,
7:05
Speaker 1: and you're just spraying more agent orange on when you
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Speaker 1: irrigate it. So it's it's kind of a vicious cycle.
7:11
Speaker 1: At the time, though, Yeah, you're getting rid of snipers,
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Speaker 1: which were a huge problem in Vietnam. And also supposedly
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Speaker 1: this the US government secretly sprayed the Ho Chiumn trail
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Speaker 1: in Cambodia, which they were definitely not supposed to, and
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Speaker 1: that was a key supply route into Vietnam. So yeah,
7:28
Speaker 1: there there was a reason. This wasn't just like, hey,
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Speaker 1: we're over here, and why don't we just get rid
7:33
Speaker 1: of all the vegetation you know. Um. But again, Chuck,
7:36
Speaker 1: I repose my question, what's the Actually no, you did
7:41
Speaker 1: answer it. But I think the problem is, Okay, so
7:44
Speaker 1: most of the stuff has grown back, right, we're talking
7:46
Speaker 1: like almost forty years ago. More, Yeah, we're talking almost
7:49
Speaker 1: forty years ago. The trees have grown back, the vegetations
7:52
Speaker 1: grown back. What's the problem. Why are we still talking
7:55
Speaker 1: about agian orange. Well, because it um it's been care
8:00
Speaker 1: down through uh genetics essentially right through through families. Well,
8:04
Speaker 1: what's the active ingredient that's that's so nefarious? Are you
8:09
Speaker 1: talking about the dioxin? I am indeed my friend. Yeah,
8:13
Speaker 1: the docks and is the trouble. Now, you may have
8:16
Speaker 1: heard of dioxins, uh with with that whole tupperware thing,
8:20
Speaker 1: that tupperware I'm sorry tupperware. I don't know if you
8:22
Speaker 1: use it or not, but some of these um food
8:24
Speaker 1: storage containers. I think dioxin is a softener that that's
8:30
Speaker 1: used in plastics to make them keep them from snapping,
8:33
Speaker 1: being very brittle and snapping. The problem is as they
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Speaker 1: can considerably leach out and you're not supposed to have
8:40
Speaker 1: dioxins in them there, but curin disruptors. We everyone has
8:43
Speaker 1: a little bit of docks and in our system. Well, yeah,
8:45
Speaker 1: aren't they naturally occurring in to some degree? Yeah? And
8:48
Speaker 1: and but beyond that, the fact that it's used in
8:50
Speaker 1: things like those kind of plastic small amounts of docks
8:52
Speaker 1: and are present and pretty much all of us. Plus
8:54
Speaker 1: also when you burn trash, I believe dioxin are created
8:58
Speaker 1: or released it's usually a by product I think of
9:01
Speaker 1: some other which I know you do on the weekend,
9:04
Speaker 1: so you should probably go get checked from a big
9:06
Speaker 1: copper smelter. But yeah, but we can, we can deal
9:09
Speaker 1: with some level of die ox. And the problem is
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Speaker 1: is Agent Orange that had such high concentrations of dioxins
9:14
Speaker 1: in them that there were some serious health effects, right,
9:18
Speaker 1: And the Department of Veterans Affairs actually claimed that it
9:21
Speaker 1: only had minute traces of docks and initially and uh
9:25
Speaker 1: for agent Orange it was t C d D. It
9:27
Speaker 1: was was the specific docks. And but that's just not
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Speaker 1: true because people in Vietnam, in some areas have blood
9:34
Speaker 1: levels up to ten times above normal for DOC containing
9:38
Speaker 1: docks and today yeah, yeah, and uh, originally, like right
9:43
Speaker 1: after the Vietnam War, even during I believe some people
9:46
Speaker 1: had about two d times the normal level. Right, So yeah,
9:50
Speaker 1: there's a lot of dios and flying around and these
9:52
Speaker 1: were all in areas where agent Orange was being sprayed.
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Speaker 1: And we're talking cancer, we're talking births, birth defects, miscarriages.
9:59
Speaker 1: You want to know how it gets in there and
10:01
Speaker 1: screech things up? So bad school, Okay, So um, basically,
10:05
Speaker 1: dioxins are capable of binding to um it's fat soluble, right, exactly,
10:13
Speaker 1: they're capable of binding to hormone receptor sites, right. So
10:18
Speaker 1: um it can also very easily get into the nucleus
10:21
Speaker 1: of your cells. When that happens, my friend, your DNA
10:25
Speaker 1: can be tampered with. Okay, So let's say you remember
10:29
Speaker 1: that we were talking about the chicken or the egg,
10:32
Speaker 1: and and mutations take place in the zygote stage. So
10:35
Speaker 1: let's say a couple of parents of a child have
10:39
Speaker 1: dioxins in their cells, in the nucleus of their cells,
10:42
Speaker 1: and these cells are contributed to create the zygote. Well,
10:46
Speaker 1: if the if the dioxin has managed to mess with
10:49
Speaker 1: the d n A, it's going to send all sorts
10:51
Speaker 1: of funky instructions. And that's how you get things like, um,
10:56
Speaker 1: grossly misshapen heads. Yeah, you sent me some emails of
10:59
Speaker 1: pictures of children, Vietnamese children. It's just awful. Yeah, it's amazing.
11:03
Speaker 1: If you type in agent orange and go to search
11:06
Speaker 1: image results in Google, it's startling some of the things
11:09
Speaker 1: that happened. One one I saw it was a picture
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Speaker 1: of a five year old girl who didn't have eyes.
11:15
Speaker 1: It was just skin and kind of a depression because
11:17
Speaker 1: she still had the the ocular cavity in her skull,
11:21
Speaker 1: but it was a skin grown over it, and I
11:23
Speaker 1: was reading the caption next to it. They were saying
11:25
Speaker 1: they think what happened was um the hormones that were
11:29
Speaker 1: released that are supposed to instruct the cell to develop
11:33
Speaker 1: eyes or to instruct the body to develop eyes failed
11:37
Speaker 1: to do so because there was dioxen bound to these
11:40
Speaker 1: receptor sites that should have gotten that hormone and taking
11:43
Speaker 1: the information and created eyes. So it gets in there
11:46
Speaker 1: pretty bad and it can be passed down and Vietnam
11:49
Speaker 1: has a real problem right now. I think they estimate
11:51
Speaker 1: as many as one million of the four million people
11:54
Speaker 1: who live in Vietnam have been poisoned by agent orange. Yeah, yeah,
11:59
Speaker 1: And you were said earlier that it's the worst, and
12:01
Speaker 1: I brought up agent purple. They actually had a bunch
12:04
Speaker 1: of agents with the colors, and evidently they were named
12:06
Speaker 1: by the not by the color of the chemical, but
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Speaker 1: the color of the container that it came in. There
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Speaker 1: was an orange stripe on the container, so agent purple
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Speaker 1: and agent pink. They use millions of gallons of this
12:18
Speaker 1: stuff too, and it's possibly even more deadly because agent
12:22
Speaker 1: purple has three times as much docks and as agent orange. Yeah,
12:26
Speaker 1: you don't hear much about agent pink or agent purple, No,
12:29
Speaker 1: I think because agent orange was used in spades. So sure,
12:33
Speaker 1: you know it's odd you said that cancer is a
12:37
Speaker 1: is a result of agent orange or dioxen poisoning, right,
12:40
Speaker 1: yeah about risk of an increased risk? Well, cancer is
12:45
Speaker 1: uncontrolled cellular growth, right, that's it. Um. What's what's surprising
12:49
Speaker 1: is that you remember we were talking about agent orange
12:51
Speaker 1: being a growth regulator and that it causes plants to
12:54
Speaker 1: grow rapidly. Interesting in humans, the exact opposite happens. In
12:58
Speaker 1: small doses, dioxins actually keep cancer cells in check from growing,
13:04
Speaker 1: but then in larger doses it promotes this uncontrolled growth.
13:08
Speaker 1: So it has the the exact opposite effect on humans
13:11
Speaker 1: as it does plants. It's weird, is that it's very weird.
13:14
Speaker 1: And I know the w h O, the World Health Organization,
13:17
Speaker 1: it's it's officially classified as a as a known carcinogen.
13:20
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's no mistaking it. No, but there's still
13:24
Speaker 1: a debate. Well, there's not much of a debate anymore,
13:27
Speaker 1: but there has been um since the eighties. Well since
13:31
Speaker 1: the seventies really about whether or not Asian orange caused
13:36
Speaker 1: all these problems. Why why lawsuits? Yep, because no one
13:41
Speaker 1: wants to pay and be responsible for this. No, and
13:44
Speaker 1: certainly not the U. S Government, which has actually been
13:47
Speaker 1: hiding behind um sovereign immunity. Yeah. That means the US
13:51
Speaker 1: government cannot be sued. Yeah, it's as simple as that,
13:54
Speaker 1: nicely done. Yeah. Basically, there's this it's a doctrine. Uh,
13:59
Speaker 1: that's it's stablished, this international law. And you it says,
14:02
Speaker 1: like Chuck said, you can't sue a government, right, So
14:06
Speaker 1: everybody went after the chemical companies instead. And I think
14:11
Speaker 1: it behooves us to mention some of these chemical companies
14:13
Speaker 1: that created agent orange. Uh, Dow, Monsanto, Hercules, Diamond, Shamrock
14:18
Speaker 1: were four the big ones, right, and they all say
14:21
Speaker 1: that they were contracted out by the government to do
14:23
Speaker 1: a job. So it's not our fault. Yeah, And the
14:25
Speaker 1: Supreme Court, I believe upheld that, or at least tossed
14:29
Speaker 1: out a lawsuit that challenged that. Uh that you know,
14:32
Speaker 1: these companies were working as government contractors and were ordered
14:35
Speaker 1: to produce agent orange for the government, so by default
14:38
Speaker 1: they're protected by sovereign immunity, say, by proxy. Basically, it
14:42
Speaker 1: seems like anytime there's been a big suit, it's kind
14:44
Speaker 1: of resulted in a big, fat dead end. Yes, but
14:47
Speaker 1: we should say that those four companies I mentioned, in
14:50
Speaker 1: addition to I think three others, yes, seven total, um
14:54
Speaker 1: ended up paying out two and forty million dollars class
14:58
Speaker 1: actions too, Yeah, to two hun people. Right, and that
15:01
Speaker 1: was a settlement to right. Yeah, that was a settlement. Sure,
15:05
Speaker 1: but there's still plenty of other people who have lawsuits
15:08
Speaker 1: pending or would like to sue, but it doesn't look
15:10
Speaker 1: like it's going to be happening. There was an attorney
15:14
Speaker 1: for Vietnamese a national who is trying to sue one
15:17
Speaker 1: of the chemical companies, who said that the the ruling
15:22
Speaker 1: that the government UH ordered or that because the government
15:26
Speaker 1: ordered these chemical companies to produce agent orange, that they
15:30
Speaker 1: were government contracts, and therefore, the lawyer said, that's pretty
15:34
Speaker 1: much the end of agent orange lawsuits. Right. Did you
15:36
Speaker 1: ever see The Fog of War? The documentary Errol Morris is,
15:40
Speaker 1: you know, it's one of my heroes as a filmmaker.
15:43
Speaker 1: You should check that out. It's it's it's an hour
15:46
Speaker 1: and a half a long interview with Robert McNamara and
15:49
Speaker 1: just hardcore, intense interview about the Vietnam War. I would
15:54
Speaker 1: love to see that. It's it's really awesome fogg of war.
15:56
Speaker 1: I'll check it out. So, Chuck, what all these lawsuits
16:00
Speaker 1: are Some are being paid off, some aren't. There's still
16:03
Speaker 1: a problem of dioxin poisoning in Vietnam. How do you
16:07
Speaker 1: remediate this? Well, Josh, I have some numbers for you.
16:10
Speaker 1: I think I know what you're getting at here. Uh,
16:12
Speaker 1: just as an example, the town of Ben Trey has
16:16
Speaker 1: one hundred and forty thousand people there and the Red
16:18
Speaker 1: Cross estimates that fifty eight thousand of them have suffered
16:23
Speaker 1: the effects of agent orange. That that's like more than
16:26
Speaker 1: of the population and as you said, a million total
16:29
Speaker 1: in the entire country. Right, But how do you how
16:31
Speaker 1: do you clean this up? I mean this is a
16:33
Speaker 1: I think Christopher Hitchens mentioned that it's been called an
16:36
Speaker 1: eco side. Is that who said that? Yeah? So I
16:40
Speaker 1: mean what do you do about this? Well? You clean
16:42
Speaker 1: it up? Josh, Okay, Uh, there's well that's kind of
16:45
Speaker 1: an expensive proposition. There is you know, ways that that
16:49
Speaker 1: this can be cleaned up and and we said, a
16:51
Speaker 1: lot of the um, A lot of the countryside has
16:54
Speaker 1: been naturally reforested, right right, Are you talking about the
16:57
Speaker 1: wall of trees? The wall of trees seems pretty cool. Yeah.
17:00
Speaker 1: They planted essentially a barrier to protect people from this
17:04
Speaker 1: in the form of trees. Yeah, which sounds I don't
17:08
Speaker 1: know how that works. Actually, it probably leaches it out
17:11
Speaker 1: of the soil eventually. UM that that or the um
17:16
Speaker 1: the trees will hold the soil in place so it
17:20
Speaker 1: won't be washed away, and then perhaps the soil can
17:22
Speaker 1: act as a natural filter. We should also say that
17:25
Speaker 1: UM dioxins appear to have about a half life of
17:29
Speaker 1: seven years, but once they hit the top soil they
17:33
Speaker 1: can actually they've been shown to to stick around a
17:36
Speaker 1: lot longer. I think part of the problem is there's
17:39
Speaker 1: a lot of people who have a lot of money, uh,
17:42
Speaker 1: that don't want to part with it, who are saying,
17:45
Speaker 1: you know what, this is just eventually going to work
17:47
Speaker 1: itself out. Right, Well, they outlawed it, and Richard Nixon
17:50
Speaker 1: actually outlawed it when they found conclusive test results and
17:54
Speaker 1: lab rats. Yeah, but the damage was done, definitely, and
17:57
Speaker 1: it has been going on, and it may be going
17:59
Speaker 1: on without some sort of large scale intervention. It doesn't
18:02
Speaker 1: look like that's going to be happening anytime soon. Should
18:05
Speaker 1: we talk about Victor Victor Yushenko. Yes, he's actually a
18:10
Speaker 1: living case study in diox and poisoning unity. Yes, he's
18:14
Speaker 1: a Ukrainian politician and many of you may know this.
18:17
Speaker 1: He was poisoned with Dixon, but survived during the two
18:21
Speaker 1: thousand four presidential election, which you want, so not too
18:23
Speaker 1: long ago. And he thinks he was purposely poisoned and
18:27
Speaker 1: they traced it back to a dinner he had and uh,
18:30
Speaker 1: but no one, you know, there have no charges have
18:33
Speaker 1: been filed. No one's claimed responsibility. But you saw the
18:37
Speaker 1: before and after pictures. Yeah, this effect on him, Yeah,
18:42
Speaker 1: he was. He was a good looking man, he was.
18:44
Speaker 1: After the diox and poison he ain't pretty no more. No,
18:47
Speaker 1: his face was. And you should look this up on
18:49
Speaker 1: the internet as well, and the Google images. No, no, no,
18:53
Speaker 1: our our loyal fan base. It's um it's startling pockmarked face. Um,
18:58
Speaker 1: deeply sw yeah, deeply talk marked like you know, moon
19:01
Speaker 1: crater type stuff. Um, swollen swollen up, big circles under
19:06
Speaker 1: his eyes. I mean I think they said he he
19:08
Speaker 1: had six thousand times the normal level of docks and
19:13
Speaker 1: is that right, which is the highest second highest ever
19:16
Speaker 1: recorded any human that lived. Yeah, and he looks a
19:19
Speaker 1: little better now, he does. And he's still up and
19:22
Speaker 1: walking around, which is miraculous. But yeah, they you can't
19:26
Speaker 1: keep your shanko down. And should we talk about the veterans, yeah,
19:30
Speaker 1: zoom walt, Well then yeah, we'll get to that in
19:33
Speaker 1: a second. But um in the v A set up
19:37
Speaker 1: a program to officially deal with this and conducted health
19:41
Speaker 1: exams on three and fifteen thousand veterans and uh, basically
19:47
Speaker 1: the presumption is if you were exposed to agent orange,
19:50
Speaker 1: then you've got some trouble and you have v A
19:53
Speaker 1: care the v A. UM, even before the lawsuits, any
19:56
Speaker 1: lawsuits were settled, the v A was operating on the
19:59
Speaker 1: premise that, um, yeah, there there was a huge link
20:02
Speaker 1: between agent orange exposure and all of these problems. So
20:06
Speaker 1: the v A actually has done a lot to help
20:09
Speaker 1: out veterans from Vietnam and actually Korea. And I didn't
20:13
Speaker 1: even know we're in Korean the late sixties. Yeah, and
20:15
Speaker 1: they actually that was hand sprayed by people, but by Koreans.
20:19
Speaker 1: I got you. Um, actually not hand sprayed, but the
20:21
Speaker 1: Koreans did the spraying and they actually the v A
20:24
Speaker 1: is also covering the children of soldiers because a lot
20:29
Speaker 1: of times passed on down and potentially even to another generation.
20:34
Speaker 1: Well that's the problem in Vietnam. It's sticking around, So
20:37
Speaker 1: I mean, eventually it will be rinsed out. I guess
20:40
Speaker 1: you could put it genetically speaking, but that's a pretty
20:42
Speaker 1: sick way of dealing with the situation. But that looks
20:45
Speaker 1: like the way it's being handled. So you want to
20:47
Speaker 1: talk about zoom Walt, now, sure if you want to,
20:49
Speaker 1: I think so. He was a Navy Admiral um Almo
20:53
Speaker 1: zoom Walt, Jr. And he commanded naval forces in Vietnam,
20:57
Speaker 1: and he now has a destroyer class named after him,
21:01
Speaker 1: the zoom Walt Class destroyer. Didn't know that. Um. On
21:04
Speaker 1: a positive note, he was credited with helping to end
21:06
Speaker 1: race and ginger discrimination in the navy, so that's a
21:09
Speaker 1: good thing. But during the war he was concerned about
21:12
Speaker 1: snipers and the Mekong Delta. He ordered agan orange to
21:16
Speaker 1: be sprayed there. He had a son, Elmo the Third
21:20
Speaker 1: or zoom Walt the Third, and he was commanding a
21:22
Speaker 1: boat that was in the Mekong Delta at the time.
21:25
Speaker 1: So essentially what he did was ended up spraying his
21:28
Speaker 1: own son, I mean, not by his own hand, but
21:31
Speaker 1: he gave the order to have it sprayed right where
21:33
Speaker 1: his son was, and he died of cancer. Zoom walt
21:37
Speaker 1: the third did, and his son, Elmo the fourth, has
21:41
Speaker 1: a severe learning disability, and zoom walt to this day says,
21:45
Speaker 1: you know, it haunts him to this day. And then
21:47
Speaker 1: later later on zoom walt Um advocated for compensation for victims.
21:52
Speaker 1: He he tried to fight the good fight afterwards. So
21:55
Speaker 1: that's Agent Orange really in a nutshell. Yeah, if you
21:58
Speaker 1: want to learn more about it, you can type in
22:00
Speaker 1: those two words in the handy search bar of how
22:02
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. It will bring up a really
22:05
Speaker 1: good article written by our former colleague now freelancer Jacob Silverman,
22:11
Speaker 1: which I guess leads us to I would say, I
22:14
Speaker 1: don't know, listener, mail time, maybe I've got a couple
22:22
Speaker 1: of couple for you here jobs. Do they have anything
22:24
Speaker 1: to do with high fruit toast corn, sir, No, they don't.
22:26
Speaker 1: This is from a serviceman serving in Rome, Italy, Okay,
22:30
Speaker 1: And I like to read the ones from the serviceman
22:32
Speaker 1: because I don't know you're proud to be an American
22:34
Speaker 1: I am. Indeed, I just wanted to write and thank
22:36
Speaker 1: you for the podcast. Serving in the Navy currently station
22:39
Speaker 1: in Rome, Italy, because job I wasn't always in Rome,
22:43
Speaker 1: into two and a half years on a ship in
22:45
Speaker 1: Japan before this. Sadly, I don't have a glamorous job.
22:49
Speaker 1: My compatriots and I are postal clerks. You never think
22:51
Speaker 1: about these jobs that you have to do in the military,
22:53
Speaker 1: these kind of everyday mundane chores. You doll good for you.
22:59
Speaker 1: You're better than me. Uh. We make sure the letters
23:01
Speaker 1: and care packages get from home in the States and
23:04
Speaker 1: make it to the guys in the field in the rack.
23:06
Speaker 1: You wouldn't believe how much theft and rifling takes place
23:09
Speaker 1: when a partial is sent to when it arrives at
23:11
Speaker 1: its destination. It's terrible. It is terrible and distressing. There
23:15
Speaker 1: are not many of us here in Rome, no more
23:16
Speaker 1: than a dozen or so, and there's always more than
23:18
Speaker 1: enough work to do. I know this kind of a
23:20
Speaker 1: long set up with no segue, but one of the
23:22
Speaker 1: PCs I work with is a master of useless knowledge
23:25
Speaker 1: and facts. About everything and anything. In short, I work
23:27
Speaker 1: with a real Cliff Claven from Cheers. He's a big
23:31
Speaker 1: he's big, he's a maleman, he's funny and in true
23:34
Speaker 1: Cheers tradition, he can pound a beer or seven. Sounds
23:36
Speaker 1: like our kind of guy. Yea. But thanks to you
23:38
Speaker 1: and your podcast, I can only keep up with him,
23:41
Speaker 1: but have been able to trump him. So you yeah,
23:45
Speaker 1: and he is. He's very psyched about this. He says,
23:47
Speaker 1: you have no no idea how good that feels. I
23:50
Speaker 1: listened to the podcast when I'm driving mail from the
23:52
Speaker 1: airport to the various NATO installations and back. I look
23:56
Speaker 1: forward to each and everyone. Take her easy, p S.
23:59
Speaker 1: I'm sorry e C three s W langdon and please
24:03
Speaker 1: give a shout out to the rest of the PCs
24:04
Speaker 1: at m C a Rome So shout out you've been
24:07
Speaker 1: shouted out the PCs. Yeah, I have another real quickie.
24:10
Speaker 1: This is a tongue twister. And I know this is
24:12
Speaker 1: long overdue, but this one is so hard and so
24:15
Speaker 1: simple at the same time that I cannot even say it.
24:17
Speaker 1: Once Irish wrist watch, Irish wi, Irish wristwatch. That was okay,
24:28
Speaker 1: that was Jerry says, okay, Jerry the judges, all right, well,
24:31
Speaker 1: let me try to get one more time. Irish wristwatch
24:34
Speaker 1: rist better but still not not perfect. But I couldn't
24:37
Speaker 1: even say it once, so it's not one of those
24:38
Speaker 1: three times. Just did say it once well, with about
24:41
Speaker 1: a five second lag and got all right. So we
24:44
Speaker 1: want to thank Ryan for sending that in a truly
24:46
Speaker 1: twisted tongue twister. Irish wristwatch not bad. Thanks, but you've
24:50
Speaker 1: been drinking so it listens to the tongue. My friend. Uh,
24:54
Speaker 1: if you want to send us a tongue twister that
24:57
Speaker 1: has to do with the Irish or anybody else, if
25:00
Speaker 1: you're stationed in Rome or anywhere else, or if you
25:03
Speaker 1: just want to say hi, you don't have to impress this.
25:06
Speaker 1: You can just say hi and you can send an
25:09
Speaker 1: email to stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com
25:17
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Because
25:20
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
25:23
Speaker 1: check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
25:26
Speaker 1: com home page. Brought to you by the reinvented two
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Speaker 1: thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you