Unit 8. Military Use of Pesticides. Toxicity of Agent Orange.

The present topic is called “Warfare use of pesticides. Toxicity of Agent Orange”. The first documented intentions to use the toxic potentials of certain pesticides in military operations consider the efforts to develop herbicides, or growth regulators that mimic the effect of plant hormones, and to implement them as a tactic in war to destroy enemy crops. Agent Orange contains two of these compounds – 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T and acts by provoking plants into frantic growth before they wither and die. During the Vietnam War (1960 1971), Agent Orange and other herbicides were sprayed in great amounts to kill crops to deprive Vietcong and North Vietnamese troops of food and to remove the vegetation cover used for concealment. Operation Ranch Hand involved about more than 8 thousand spraying missions and sprayed about 72 million liters of herbicides, 11 million of which consisted of Agent Orange. The 2,4,5-T, used to produce Agent Orange was unintentionally contaminated during the manufacturing process with small amounts of extremely toxic dioxin compound, 2,3,7,8-TCDD (2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin).