Decades after the fall of Saigon, millions are still dealing with the legacy of the Vietnam War.
The chemical ghost of Agent Orange, a potent herbicide used by US forces, haunts generations, leaving a legacy of disability and suffering.
Nguyen Thanh Hai, 34, embodies this tragic inheritance. Simple acts like buttoning his shirt or writing his alphabet are herculean tasks for Hai, who lives with severe developmental disabilities linked to Agent Orange exposure.
He attends a special school in Da Nang, a city once home to a US airbase where vast quantities of the toxic chemical were stored. The remnants of this stockpile continue to contaminate the local environment, poisoning the food and water consumed by residents.
During the war, US forces doused Vietnam with 72 million liters of defoliants in an attempt to deprive enemy forces of cover. Over half of this deluge consisted of Agent Orange, a herbicide contaminated with dioxin, a highly toxic chemical linked to cancer, birth defects, and widespread environmental damage.
Today, the grim toll of this chemical warfare continues to mount, with an estimated three million million Vietnamese, many of them children, grappling with debilitating health problems attributed to Agent Orange.
While Vietnam has dedicated significant resources, aided by belated US financial assistance, to mitigating the lingering effects of Agent Orange, the task remains unfinished. Now, a new threat looms: proposed cuts to foreign aid by the Trump administration have sparked fears that the US may abandon its commitment to cleaning up the toxic mess it left behind, leaving millions of Vietnamese to face an uncertain future.
When the war ended, the U.S. turned its back on Vietnam, eager to turn the page on a painful chapter in its history.
But Vietnam was left with dozens of dioxin hotspots spread across 58 of its 63 provinces.
Vietnam says the health impacts last generations, threatening the children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren of people exposed to the chemicals with health complications ranging from cancer to birth defects that affects the spine and nervous system.
But the science about the human health impact — both to those exposed to Agent Orange and the generations that follow — remains unsettled. This is partly because when the two countries finally started working together in 2006, they focused on finding dioxin in the environment and clearing it instead of studying the still-contentious topic of its impact on human health, said Charles Bailey, co-author of the book From Enemies to Partners: Vietnam, the U.S. and Agent Orange.
“The science of causality is still incomplete,” said Bailey.
Vietnam identifies Agent Orange victims by checking family history, where they lived, and a list of health problems linked to the poison. And Hai’s disabilities were very likely linked to the spraying of the defoliant, added Bailey.
The 34-year-old dreams of becoming a soldier like his grandfather, was unable to leave home for years, waiting alone while his family went out to work. It was only five years ago that he began attending a special school. “I am happy here because I have many friends,” he said. Other students at the school hope to become tailors or makers of incense sticks.
