Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined by staff writer Jane Grass. Jane because sometimes when you think about war or historical wars, I can seem sort of romantic, and not love romantic, but the idea of you know, like the romances of history. Thinking back to um like the Revolutionary War, when you envisioned the tri cornered hats in the red coat, glorious. Yeah, it just it feels kind of good. Or when you think about the Alamo and you know there was dust everywhere and people wearing moccasins and leather and there was just such bravery. Just I don't know, it paints an interesting and vivid picture in your mind. Or even when you see paintings and history bookton museums, like you said, I think glory is it's the perfect word. But when you think about a war like Vietnam and you look at the backdrop, I mean, aside from the associate of cultural implications of the war, even the backdrop of the land is entirely different. You don't see the snow covered landscapes you you you know, don't see the I don't know the cacti of the Texan desert. I know what would have been president the Alamo, But Vietnam was essentially deforested throughout the war, and so when you look at it, it's just black death on the landscape. Yeah, it's it's pretty startling to see. And like, yeah, as you mentioned, if you've ever seen a Vietnam war movie, that is one thing that you know, the image that comes to your mind is a very jungle e um uh situation right there where obviously it's it's a scary situation to be fighting in a in a war, in a jungle situation where the people you're fighting against are very familiar with it and you're not. They can your enemy can use it against you. And that's why the Americans in Vietnam were very preoccupied with with clearing the area of jungle. And one of the most effective ways that they did that was the use of agent Orange. That's right, and this was a herbicide. Um. The basically they dumped it on about ten percent of Vietnam and a governed of a lot of jungle. It did it did its job, um about eleven million gallons. I think between nineteen sixty five and nineteen seventy, and it was actually one of a class of her. Besides they call it like so called rainbow um her. Besides the different colors and all to do with the stripe that was on the box, nothing with the actual substance. But there was actually others like pink and purple were actually more dangerous than agent orange, but they weren't used as quite as much, right, And we should note that when it was developed the scientists he developed at Dr Arthur Galston. He was a botanist and he essentially started researching growth hormones and um. He had no idea that his discoveries were going to be interpreted and used like this, And he actually sad, after all of a sudden done. Nothing that you do in science is guaranteed to result in benefits for mankind. Any discovery, I believe is morally neutral, and it can be earned either too constructive or destructive ends. That's not the fault of science. That's interesting, And you know he must have felt incredible guilt. And here he was being very rational and illogical about it. But to think that you developed something that was repurposed and used in this way, and we're going to go on to tell you guys about the horrible health effects that it caused, but just to start with, you know, I think we should paint some background about what it actually did to the jungle, and we should mention that the main ingredient and Agent Orange was dioxin and the effect that it had on the plants was that it caused the leaves to fall off and die first, and then the roots of the plants are killed as well, and the vegetation just turns black and it smells. And the way it does this is it has too much growth regulation within the chemical and the plant tissue grow so fast that the rest of the plant just can't keep up die. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of ironic about it because Golson's work was was particularly aimed towards help plants grow more and speedily. And um So, in small amounts, these sort of substitute substances actually do um just that they help encourage plant growth. But in large substances, the tissue and everything actually grows much too quickly and it and it dies very quickly as a result. And that's what's so strange about the use of agent orange. And this is why it was called an eco side and that means that it caused the death of wildlife and the environment, and it posed to health risk to people. Was that, like you were saying, Jane, and small doses diox and can actually decrease cancer. Yeah, that really shocked me. Yeah, but in large doses quite the opposite of quite the opposite. And I'll give you all a very very visual example and a contemporary wanted that. Um are you familiar with Victory Schenko? I don't think i am. He was Ukrainian politician or just a couple of years ago, was a victim of docs and poisoning. And if you look at pictures of him, and if you haven't seen these pictures, I would encourage you to go look them up on the end as soon as possible. And that word was internet. On the way my southern accent gets sometimes you can see instantly he was, you know, sort of a middle aged man, but handsome, you know, chiseled, jaw, striking features, very youthful. And after the poisoning, his skin has this greenish tent to it, and he's got wrinkles and spots and it's just all crumbled up. It's just pitiful to look at. But the thing about diox and is that it will eventually work its way out of your system. It's right, and it's actually I think I remember reading that everyone has a little bit of dios and in them, so that that kind of makes sense. And scientists don't know how long it takes to completely work out of you, but it does dissipate over time. It's effects to do, and so if you look at pictures of you shouldn't go today, it's not quite as severe as right after the attacks. But the thing about diox and that makes it so scary is that we don't know that much about its effects and how long it stays in the body. We do know that it is um fat soluble, so it stays in your body when you eat crops that have been affected by it, or animals that have gray based on the crops that have been affected by it, and it just accumulates and your fat tissue. That's right. And one thing that helps it spread so much um is the fact that seats into the ground that eventually gets in the water sources, and like obviously it spreads a way beyond control. And so as we mentioned during the Vietnam war. Jane said it was um. It was used in about ten percent of the country. It was sprayed from aircraft, and not only there, but also on the hotelm and trail and Allows and Cambodia that the viet Cong used as a supply route. And so not just Vietnamese soldiers, but Vietnamese civilians fell prey to your too, as well as American soldiers. That's true, and UM. One of the problems with this, at least one source, the US Veteran Dispatch, believes that the military didn't dilute the herbicides that used enough. The manufacturer UM suggests that they should have diluted it UM six twenty five times more than they did. Yeah, so that obviously didn't help the problem. So today there's some Vietnamese who have ten times more diox and and their blood than what's normal. And when big doses, the health problems that it can cause primarily affect the endocrine, immune, and nervous systems, and from here docks and causes things like miscarriages and cancer, birth effects, even type two diabetes and nerve disorders. Yeah, it's it's pretty surprising, and obviously so many of the veterans were exposed to this. That now the actually as literally as the Veterans Administration actually UM set up a program specifically for this problem, helping helping veterans deal with the health effects that came from agent orange. And but now they even make the presumption of all veterans being exposed to this. And we were saying, we're not sure how long it takes for docks and and the other chemicals and agent orange to finally leave someone's body, but we do know that veterans who came home and gave birth to children saw the same health problems that they were having or lesser greater degrees and their offspring. That's right, and that was particularly a problem or at least a heart wrenching story UM about Elmo are Zomalt jr. Uh. He was renowned in the Navy for ending helping to end raised gender discrimination the Navy. And actually when he was fighting in the Vietnam War, he uh he was responsible for for dumping some agent orange on this area called the Makong Delta. And what he wanted to do was was helped to expose the snipers that were killing a lot of Americans there. But as it happened. His son, Elma third, was actually commanding a boat in that area and he was exposed to the agent orange. That was that his father was responsible for dumping. UM. So when the war ended, Elma the third came home and UH he had a child, his son, Elmo the fourth, and UH he was actually uh showed UM he suffers from a significant learning disability as a result. They think of this agent orange exposure and UH and later Elmo the third, the son of of of Zamat Junior, actually died of cancer and they think that was a result of the agent orange exposure as well. But before he died, father and son wrote a book about their experiences in Vietnam. And the father was an admiral and his son was of a lesser rank. But together they came up with a unified opinion that while agent orange did cause destruction, and yes, in fact, it was responsible for the third and the fourth's health problems, it also saved many lives of American soldiers in the war because it did cut down on the foliage, and it did expose snipers, and it did expose you know, UM troops station along the supply roads. And UH. While the Admiral later on became an advocate for helping people get compensation for agent orange prone injuries or diseases and things like that. You know, he pointed out what was on everyone's mind, and that was that this was such a sticky situation. You know, did we do we condone the use of agent orange or do we allowed it and say it was a necessary war casualty for the enemy? Do we blame the government? Should we get reparations for it? And this has actually been a big issue in court. Back in four there was a class action lawsuit brought against seven companies who were disseminators of agent orange, and they essentially were charged with not giving full disclosure to the government about what was in this chemical, how it should be used, and the government, I think maybe because of this, wasn't as careful as it should have been when using it against civilians in Vietnam. You know, there was no distinction given to using in land where there were no civilians versus where they were Vietcong soldiers, and that's what made it's so messy. But after this lawsuit, about one hundred eighty million was allocated for two hundred people and the finals, the final settlement came to two hundred forty million after it had compounded interest, and the chemical companies continued to be uh, targets of plaintiffs who came against them. I shouldn't really use the word target, because that's not fair. But they continued to have plaintiffs come to them and say we need compensation, that our health issues now. But they kept saying, well, you know, too much time has passed for your claims, and you know, the government told us to make these chemicals, and we're not really sure what agent orange is caused and what health problems run in your family. Yeah, what brings up the question like, well, who else can we blame? I mean, maybe the military is to blame and we should go to the U. S. Government itself. And that actually has been a tough thing to accomplish because the government has been able to hide behind this idea of sovereign immunity, which is the idea that the government cannot be sued, and the Supreme Court has has held it up in many situations, and so it's made it very difficult for suffers of agent orange to get recompense. Right, and so even if you can't do the government, you can still lobby against the government to go and clean up the mass from agent Orange's still causing trouble and the soil today, and it's very expensive to clean up as well is and there are plenty of humanitarian and activist groups out there who were saying, what you cleaned up all these land mines, now you need to get back in there and clean out the effects from agent orange as well. It's a good point. So we're not really sure what's going to come of this. I mean, we don't really know what sort of chemicals are being used in wars today that are going to continue to have lasting effects on generations. To comment's just, you know, it's one of those things about war, and it's another scary thing about science and what's developed a theory in a lab. When it's actually put into practice we can know the consequences. It's like a Pandora's box, something you don't really know. What's in a beaker is much different from what's being sprayed from an aircraft over Vietnam. And we should mention too that agent orange was also used again in the Korean War, not by the US but by Korea, so that we have melodies and not war as well. That's true. So you want to learn more about Agent Orange and the Vietnam War and even the scientific method, be sure to check out how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com Let us know what should think. Send an email to podcast and how Stuff We're that car

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined by staff writer Jane Grass. Jane because sometimes when you think about war or historical wars, I can seem sort of romantic, and not love romantic, but the idea of you know, like the romances of history. Thinking back to um like the Revolutionary War, when you envisioned the tri cornered hats in the red coat, glorious. Yeah, it just it feels kind of good. Or when you think about the Alamo and you know there was dust everywhere and people wearing moccasins and leather and there was just such bravery. Just I don't know, it paints an interesting and vivid picture in your mind. Or even when you see paintings and history bookton museums, like you said, I think glory is it's the perfect word. But when you think about a war like Vietnam and you look at the backdrop, I mean, aside from the associate of cultural implications of the war, even the backdrop of the land is entirely different. You don't see the snow covered landscapes you you you know, don't see the I don't know the cacti of the Texan desert. I know what would have been president the Alamo, But Vietnam was essentially deforested throughout the war, and so when you look at it, it's just black death on the landscape. Yeah, it's it's pretty startling to see. And like, yeah, as you mentioned, if you've ever seen a Vietnam war movie, that is one thing that you know, the image that comes to your mind is a very jungle e um uh situation right there where obviously it's it's a scary situation to be fighting in a in a war, in a jungle situation where the people you're fighting against are very familiar with it and you're not. They can your enemy can use it against you. And that's why the Americans in Vietnam were very preoccupied with with clearing the area of jungle. And one of the most effective ways that they did that was the use of agent Orange. That's right, and this was a herbicide. Um. The basically they dumped it on about ten percent of Vietnam and a governed of a lot of jungle. It did it did its job, um about eleven million gallons. I think between nineteen sixty five and nineteen seventy, and it was actually one of a class of her. Besides they call it like so called rainbow um her. Besides the different colors and all to do with the stripe that was on the box, nothing with the actual substance. But there was actually others like pink and purple were actually more dangerous than agent orange, but they weren't used as quite as much, right, And we should note that when it was developed the scientists he developed at Dr Arthur Galston. He was a botanist and he essentially started researching growth hormones and um. He had no idea that his discoveries were going to be interpreted and used like this, And he actually sad, after all of a sudden done. Nothing that you do in science is guaranteed to result in benefits for mankind. Any discovery, I believe is morally neutral, and it can be earned either too constructive or destructive ends. That's not the fault of science. That's interesting, And you know he must have felt incredible guilt. And here he was being very rational and illogical about it. But to think that you developed something that was repurposed and used in this way, and we're going to go on to tell you guys about the horrible health effects that it caused, but just to start with, you know, I think we should paint some background about what it actually did to the jungle, and we should mention that the main ingredient and Agent Orange was dioxin and the effect that it had on the plants was that it caused the leaves to fall off and die first, and then the roots of the plants are killed as well, and the vegetation just turns black and it smells. And the way it does this is it has too much growth regulation within the chemical and the plant tissue grow so fast that the rest of the plant just can't keep up die. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of ironic about it because Golson's work was was particularly aimed towards help plants grow more and speedily. And um So, in small amounts, these sort of substitute substances actually do um just that they help encourage plant growth. But in large substances, the tissue and everything actually grows much too quickly and it and it dies very quickly as a result. And that's what's so strange about the use of agent orange. And this is why it was called an eco side and that means that it caused the death of wildlife and the environment, and it posed to health risk to people. Was that, like you were saying, Jane, and small doses diox and can actually decrease cancer. Yeah, that really shocked me. Yeah, but in large doses quite the opposite of quite the opposite. And I'll give you all a very very visual example and a contemporary wanted that. Um are you familiar with Victory Schenko? I don't think i am. He was Ukrainian politician or just a couple of years ago, was a victim of docs and poisoning. And if you look at pictures of him, and if you haven't seen these pictures, I would encourage you to go look them up on the end as soon as possible. And that word was internet. On the way my southern accent gets sometimes you can see instantly he was, you know, sort of a middle aged man, but handsome, you know, chiseled, jaw, striking features, very youthful. And after the poisoning, his skin has this greenish tent to it, and he's got wrinkles and spots and it's just all crumbled up. It's just pitiful to look at. But the thing about diox and is that it will eventually work its way out of your system. It's right, and it's actually I think I remember reading that everyone has a little bit of dios and in them, so that that kind of makes sense. And scientists don't know how long it takes to completely work out of you, but it does dissipate over time. It's effects to do, and so if you look at pictures of you shouldn't go today, it's not quite as severe as right after the attacks. But the thing about diox and that makes it so scary is that we don't know that much about its effects and how long it stays in the body. We do know that it is um fat soluble, so it stays in your body when you eat crops that have been affected by it, or animals that have gray based on the crops that have been affected by it, and it just accumulates and your fat tissue. That's right. And one thing that helps it spread so much um is the fact that seats into the ground that eventually gets in the water sources, and like obviously it spreads a way beyond control. And so as we mentioned during the Vietnam war. Jane said it was um. It was used in about ten percent of the country. It was sprayed from aircraft, and not only there, but also on the hotelm and trail and Allows and Cambodia that the viet Cong used as a supply route. And so not just Vietnamese soldiers, but Vietnamese civilians fell prey to your too, as well as American soldiers. That's true, and UM. One of the problems with this, at least one source, the US Veteran Dispatch, believes that the military didn't dilute the herbicides that used enough. The manufacturer UM suggests that they should have diluted it UM six twenty five times more than they did. Yeah, so that obviously didn't help the problem. So today there's some Vietnamese who have ten times more diox and and their blood than what's normal. And when big doses, the health problems that it can cause primarily affect the endocrine, immune, and nervous systems, and from here docks and causes things like miscarriages and cancer, birth effects, even type two diabetes and nerve disorders. Yeah, it's it's pretty surprising, and obviously so many of the veterans were exposed to this. That now the actually as literally as the Veterans Administration actually UM set up a program specifically for this problem, helping helping veterans deal with the health effects that came from agent orange. And but now they even make the presumption of all veterans being exposed to this. And we were saying, we're not sure how long it takes for docks and and the other chemicals and agent orange to finally leave someone's body, but we do know that veterans who came home and gave birth to children saw the same health problems that they were having or lesser greater degrees and their offspring. That's right, and that was particularly a problem or at least a heart wrenching story UM about Elmo are Zomalt jr. Uh. He was renowned in the Navy for ending helping to end raised gender discrimination the Navy. And actually when he was fighting in the Vietnam War, he uh he was responsible for for dumping some agent orange on this area called the Makong Delta. And what he wanted to do was was helped to expose the snipers that were killing a lot of Americans there. But as it happened. His son, Elma third, was actually commanding a boat in that area and he was exposed to the agent orange. That was that his father was responsible for dumping. UM. So when the war ended, Elma the third came home and UH he had a child, his son, Elmo the fourth, and UH he was actually uh showed UM he suffers from a significant learning disability as a result. They think of this agent orange exposure and UH and later Elmo the third, the son of of of Zamat Junior, actually died of cancer and they think that was a result of the agent orange exposure as well. But before he died, father and son wrote a book about their experiences in Vietnam. And the father was an admiral and his son was of a lesser rank. But together they came up with a unified opinion that while agent orange did cause destruction, and yes, in fact, it was responsible for the third and the fourth's health problems, it also saved many lives of American soldiers in the war because it did cut down on the foliage, and it did expose snipers, and it did expose you know, UM troops station along the supply roads. And UH. While the Admiral later on became an advocate for helping people get compensation for agent orange prone injuries or diseases and things like that. You know, he pointed out what was on everyone's mind, and that was that this was such a sticky situation. You know, did we do we condone the use of agent orange or do we allowed it and say it was a necessary war casualty for the enemy? Do we blame the government? Should we get reparations for it? And this has actually been a big issue in court. Back in four there was a class action lawsuit brought against seven companies who were disseminators of agent orange, and they essentially were charged with not giving full disclosure to the government about what was in this chemical, how it should be used, and the government, I think maybe because of this, wasn't as careful as it should have been when using it against civilians in Vietnam. You know, there was no distinction given to using in land where there were no civilians versus where they were Vietcong soldiers, and that's what made it's so messy. But after this lawsuit, about one hundred eighty million was allocated for two hundred people and the finals, the final settlement came to two hundred forty million after it had compounded interest, and the chemical companies continued to be uh, targets of plaintiffs who came against them. I shouldn't really use the word target, because that's not fair. But they continued to have plaintiffs come to them and say we need compensation, that our health issues now. But they kept saying, well, you know, too much time has passed for your claims, and you know, the government told us to make these chemicals, and we're not really sure what agent orange is caused and what health problems run in your family. Yeah, what brings up the question like, well, who else can we blame? I mean, maybe the military is to blame and we should go to the U. S. Government itself. And that actually has been a tough thing to accomplish because the government has been able to hide behind this idea of sovereign immunity, which is the idea that the government cannot be sued, and the Supreme Court has has held it up in many situations, and so it's made it very difficult for suffers of agent orange to get recompense. Right, and so even if you can't do the government, you can still lobby against the government to go and clean up the mass from agent Orange's still causing trouble and the soil today, and it's very expensive to clean up as well is and there are plenty of humanitarian and activist groups out there who were saying, what you cleaned up all these land mines, now you need to get back in there and clean out the effects from agent orange as well. It's a good point. So we're not really sure what's going to come of this. I mean, we don't really know what sort of chemicals are being used in wars today that are going to continue to have lasting effects on generations. To comment's just, you know, it's one of those things about war, and it's another scary thing about science and what's developed a theory in a lab. When it's actually put into practice we can know the consequences. It's like a Pandora's box, something you don't really know. What's in a beaker is much different from what's being sprayed from an aircraft over Vietnam. And we should mention too that agent orange was also used again in the Korean War, not by the US but by Korea, so that we have melodies and not war as well. That's true. So you want to learn more about Agent Orange and the Vietnam War and even the scientific method, be sure to check out how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com Let us know what should think. Send an email to podcast and how Stuff We're that car