Anthropic arsenic has remained in the Mekong Delta environment for the last 60 years and added to persistent As contamination in water supplies, sediments and soils. Today arsenic contaminated rice and groundwater are growing concerns as neither naturally occurring arsenic nor anthropic arsenic have a half-life and cannot be destroyed. Arsenic (As) is a naturally occurring element that is found throughout SE Asia deltas including the Mekong Delta. Lawrence Seaway to the coast of South Vietnam. During the Vietnam War, ocean going ships were loaded with 208-liter Agent Blue barrels and shipped via the St. at the Ansul Company chemical plant in Marinette, Wisconsin and Menominee, Michigan. Manufacturing of cacodylic acid began in the late 1950s in the U.S. Agent Blue (cacodylic acid, C 2H 2AsO 2,) was the most effective of all the Rainbow herbicides in killing rice and grasses. and Republic of Vietnam military personnel, and communist insurgents were exposed to these herbicides with immediate and longer term impacts on personal health, civilian household food security and population-wide famine. Six Rainbow herbicides, commonly called Agent Orange, Agent Green, Agent Pink, Agent Purple, Agent White, and Agent Blue, were sprayed on wetlands, rice paddies, forests, mangroves, bamboo and military base perimeter fences to defoliate jungle vegetation, reveal guerilla hiding places and destroy the food supply of enemy troops. Spraying of Agent Blue on 100,000 ha of mangrove forests and about 300,000 ha of rice paddies just before rice harvest time resulted in the destruction of the standing crop and rendered the land contaminated with arsenic (As).
Republic of Vietnam and United States (U.S.) militaries began destroying food crops (rice) in November of 1962 primarily via aerial applications in the Mekong Delta and Central Highlands of South Vietnam. The destruction of the South Vietnamese rice ( Oryza sativa L) crop using an arsenic-based herbicide known as Agent Blue during the American Vietnam War (1965-1972) was not a secret however, it received little media attention in the United States.
0 kommentar(er)
