Agent orange linked to birth defects
About the article
This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.
See the article in its original context from March 1996.
Brought to you by
The report issued Thursday also found a new association between the herbicide and a nerve disorder that can cause temporary numbness or pain.
The study is the second in a series of reevaluations of the Agent Orange question by the Institute of Medicine. A 1991 law calls for the National Academy of Sciences to review new Agent Orange and herbicide studies every two years to determine whether the fresh research finds any added connection between the chemicals and disease. The institute is an affiliate of the academy. "We still do not know the precise degree of risk from Agent Orange exposure for individual Vietnam veterans, but the base of research has improved," said Dr. David Tollerud, chairman of the institute committee and director of environmental medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.
Recent studies, he said, "give us hope that researchers are getting closer to answering the lingering questions about the health effects of herbicide exposure."
Agent Orange and other chemicals were used to defoliate trees in the jungles of Vietnam. Beginning in 1962, about 19 million gallons (72 million liters) of the chemicals were sprayed over about 3.6 million (1.44 million hectares) acres. In 1969, studies linked chemicals in Agent Orange to birth defects in laboratory animals. Use of chemical defoliants were halted by 1971, but tens of thousands of American troops are thought to have been exposed to the chemicals to some degree.
Institute of Medicine scientists evaluated the likelihood of the chemical causing various disorders reported by Vietnam veterans and established categories ranging from those with "sufficient evidence of an association" to those with no valid evidence of association.
The study released Thursday put spina bifida in the second strongest linkage category, called "limited or suggestive evidence of an association."
Members of the institute committee analyzed data from three studies that focused on the rate of birth defects among children born to Vietnam veterans. The committee found that these babies were up to 2 1/2 times more likely to have spina bifida than children born to non-veterans.
