Agent Orange

The enduring icon of "the American War" is not the bursting of a bomb, it's the soft deadly chemical rain sprayed to melt away the rain-forest hiding places of the Vietcong. Throughout the 1960's the Americans showered more than seventy million liters of herbicides; mostly one named 'Agent Orange' -- a toxic drizzle that destroyed plantlife within hours. Thirty years later its effectiveness is still visible in a patchwork of living forest and dead zones where the soil retains the residue of Dioxin -- one of the most malignant molecules ever concocted.

Thirty years after the war the children of Vietnam may be the lingering victims of an environmental horror. Officials here believe more than a million children have been affected by chemical residue left over from "the American War"




	Agent Orange	The Bombing
	The enduring icon of "the American War" is not the bursting of a bomb, it's the soft deadly chemical rain sprayed to melt away the rain-forest hiding places of the Vietcong. Throughout the 1960's the Americans showered more than seventy million liters of herbicides; mostly one named 'Agent Orange' -- a toxic drizzle that destroyed plantlife within hours. Thirty years later its effectiveness is still visible in a patchwork of living forest and dead zones where the soil retains the residue of Dioxin -- one of the most malignant molecules ever concocted. Thirty years after the war the children of Vietnam may be the lingering victims of an environmental horror. Officials here believe more than a million children have been affected by chemical residue left over from "the American War"


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