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Agent Orange's lethal legacy: a potent poison is clear and present danger
Part 4 of a Tribune investigation finds that a former U.S. air bases in Vietnam remain highly polluted by defoliants, but the U.S. has done little to clean up the sites it contaminated during the war. Complete coverage >>
When a small Canadian environmental firm started collecting soil samples on a former U.S. air base in a remote Vietnam valley, Thomas Boivin and other scientists were skeptical they'd find evidence proving herbicides used there by the U.S. military decades ago still posed a health threat.
But results showed levels of the cancer-causing poison dioxin were far greater than guidelines set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for residential areas.
That's when Boivin, now president of the firm, says he had his "Eureka moment."
Vancouver-based Hatfield Consultants began tracing the toxin through the food chain, from the soil and sediment of nearby ponds to the fat of ducks and fish to the blood and breast milk of villagers living on the contaminated site.