What future diseases or medical problems occur as a result of exposure to Agent Orange?”
FRIDAY, July 24 (HealthDay News) — Exposure to Agent Orange and other herbicides that were sprayed far and wide by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War might put veterans at increased risk for heart disease and Parkinson’s. An Institute of Medicine report released Friday finds “suggestive but limited” evidence of an elevated risk for these two conditions among soldiers who served in that conflict. Agent Orange is made up of compounds known to be contaminated with a type of dioxin — tetrachlorodibenzo-para-dioxin (TCDD) — during manufacture. The chemical, named for the color of the barrel it was stored in, was one of the “broad-leaf defoliants” used in Vietnam to destroy vegetation to make enemy activity easier to spot. Between 1962 and 1970, more than 20 million gallons of herbicides were sprayed in the jungles of Vietnam so that American forces could fight more effectively; Agent Orange was the herbicide used most often to accomplish this goal. The International Agency for Rese
A new report from the Institute of Medicine finds suggestive but limited evidence that exposure to Agent Orange and other herbicides used during the Vietnam War is associated with an increased chance of developing ischemic heart disease and Parkinson’s disease for Vietnam veterans. The report is the latest in a congressionally mandated series by the IOM that every two years reviews the evidence about the health effects of these herbicides and a type of dioxin — TCDD — that contaminated some of the defoliants. A finding of “limited or suggestive evidence of an association” means that the evidence indicates there could be a link between exposure to a chemical and increased risk for a particular health effect, though conflicting results from studies, problems with how the studies were conducted, or other confounding factors limit the certainty of the evidence. Until now, the cumulative evidence had been inadequate to draw conclusions about whether these two conditions may be associated
