The poison lingers for some veterans

The poison lingers for some veterans
Veterans feeling effects
AGENT ORANGE STILL A SCOURGE


By Aaron Nicodemus TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

Ask any Vietnam veteran if he was exposed to Agent Orange, and you'll likely get a shrug and a nod.

“The stuff was everywhere,” said Gary P. Swenson of Oxford, a Worcester native and U.S. Army Vietnam veteran. “They never told anyone where they were spraying, or what they were spraying.”

Vietnam veteran James C. Savage III of Worcester said of Agent Orange, “It was a pretty hard thing to figure out where it was not.”

Agent Orange, named for the orange-colored barrels it came in, was a defoliant used to burn back thick brush and jungle in Vietnam from 1961 to 1970. It contained dioxin, a chemical now classified as a carcinogen. As many as 2.6 million U.S. soldiers were exposed to the chemical, which has been linked to birth defects and cancer deaths in thousands of Vietnamese and Cambodians.

They're all still suffering health effects 40 years later.
go here for more
http://www.telegram.com/article/20091028/NEWS/910280441/1003/NEWS03