The US is cleaning up a dangerous chemical left from the defoliant Agent Orange, some 50 years since it was first sprayed by American planes on Vietnam’s jungles.
Dioxin, linked to cancer, birth defects and other disabilities, will be removed from the site of a former US air base in Danang, central Vietnam. Washington quibbled for years over the need for more scientific research to show that the herbicide caused health problems and birth defects among Vietnamese.
“We are both moving earth and taking the first steps to bury the legacies of our past,” US Ambassador David Shear (photo above, right) said at the groundbreaking ceremony.
The $43m joint project with Vietnam should be completed in four years on the 19-hectare (47-acre) contaminated site, located near Danang’s commercial airport and a Vietnamese military base. (photo below, right).
The US has given about $60m for environmental restoration and social services in Vietnam since 2007, but this is its first direct involvement in cleaning up dioxin, which has seeped into Vietnam’s soil and watersheds for generations.
The remediation begins as Vietnam and the US forge ties to counter China’s influence in the disputed South China Sea, which is believed to be rich in oil and natural resources.
The Danang site is closed to the public. Part of it consists of a dry field where US troops once stored and mixed the defoliant before it was loaded onto planes. The area is ringed by tall grass.
The area includes lakes and wetlands where dioxin has seeped into soil and sediment over decades.
The US military dumped 20m gallons (75m litres) of Agent Orange and other herbicides on about a quarter of former south Vietnam between 1962 and 1971, decimating 5m acres forest – roughly the size of Massachusetts.
The war ended on 30 April, 1975, when northern Communist forces seized control of Saigon, the US-backed capital of former South Vietnam. Some 3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans died.
Following years of poverty and isolation, Vietnam in 1995 normalised diplomatic relations with the US.