Tag Archives: 4-d

Agent Orange: The Toxic Legacy of Polychlorinated Pesticides

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Orange Witness

Directed by Andrew Nisker

Film Review

This film about the devastating health effects of the herbicides 2,4 D, 2,4,5-T and TCDD (aka dioxin) is narrated by survivors of toxic exposures in Vietnam, Oregon, Ontario and New Plymouth New Zealand.

It begins with footage of US aircraft blanketing the jungles of Vietnam with Agent Orange, a jungle defoliant consisting mainly of dioxin. In most cases, the latter is manufactured by combining 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T. Among US GIs and Vietnamese civilians, extensive Agent Orange exposure led to epidemic levels of cancer and neurodevelopmental disorders, as well as three generations of birth defects. There is no safe level of dioxin exposure.

The film notes that New Zealand was one of the first countries to use dioxin extensively to clear brush in the late 1940s. It was manufactured right here in New Plymouth by the Dow subsidiary Ivan Watkins Dow. Up until 1987, IWD contaminated the air, water and people of the Paratutu area with with TCDD emissions, producing massive numbers of birth defects, miscarriages, crib deaths, brain and spinal tumors, sarcomas, lymphomas, prostate and respiratory cancers and multiple sclerosis, as well as neurodevelopmental (mainly autism, Asperger’s disorder, mental retardation and ADHD) problems. See New Zealand’s Love Canal

Dioxin was also used extensively throughout the US and Canada to keep roads, railroads and high voltage power lines free of trees and weeds. During the 1960s, Black Flag sold TCDD over-the-counter in garden shops.

Although 2,4,5-T and TCDD have since been banned in most industrialized countries, most still allow 2,4-D use in farms and in gardens despite its link to cancer.

*Herbicides 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D)- and 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T)

Film can be viewed free on Beamafilm.

https://beamafilm-com.eznewplymouth.kotui.org.nz/watch/orange-witness

Arkansas’s Unlikely Environmental Activists

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The Natural State of America

Written and produced by Brian Campbell (2010)

Film Review

The Natural State of America is an inspiring documentary about an unlikely group of Arkansas environmental activists who take on their rural electric cooperative for spraying toxic herbicide in the Ozark highlands.

The Newton County Wildlife Association (NCWA) was first formed back in the 1970s, when they took on the US Forest Service over their plan to spray Agent Orange to destroy hardwood Ozark forest to benefit private timber interests seeking to replace it with quick growing pine.

Their success in obtaining a court injunction against the Forest Service inspired environmental activists in Washington and Oregon to undertake similar campaigns – resulting in an ban on domestic Agent Orange use in 1978.

A few years later the NWCA blocked the Army Corps of Engineers from damming the Buffalo River.

In recent years, the NWCA has joined with the Organic Growers Association and back-to-the-land homesteaders to protest a 2006 decision by the Carroll Electric Cooperative to spray toxic herbicides without consulting their membership.

Prior to watching this film, I was unacquainted with the pristine natural beauty of the Ozark region or the wealth of medicinal herbs found nowhere else in North America. I was also intrigued by the unusual personal profiles of the activists and their intimate knowledge of the geology and natural history of the region.

That being said, the film’s soundtrack was the high point for me. I’m pretty passionate about blue grass.

*Agent Orange is an equal mixture of 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D that was used by the US military to defoliate the jungle during the Vietnam War. Thousands of GIs who were exposed to it developed cancer, autoimmune and neurological disease and other health problems and have seen major birth defects in their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. In 2014, the EPA generated major controversy by approving a new Dow herbicide containing a combination of 2,4-D and glyphosate (Roundup) EPA approves new 2,4-D blend