Dioxin residues have leaked into the soil and contaminated groundwater near Danang airport, a US military base during the war, increasingly causing birth defects.
Several lakes lying in a four-hectare area around the airport have been found to have high dioxin concentrations, and locals have been using lotus and fish from them as food for decades.
The rate of birth defects in the surrounding areas is at least five times the national average, a leader of Thanh Khe District, which is situated to the former military base, told Tuoi Tre on condition of anonymity.
No comprehensive survey has ever been made but 139 people were reported to have serious birth defects in 2007 in Chinh Gian, one of the district’s 10 wards, he added.
Most reside in areas where the dioxin-based herbicides were stored or leaked in and around the former US military installations.
Tu, who has lived in the district for 20 years, said he recently came to know about the danger from the lakes but their fish are the only source of food for his family.
“I not only pick lotus seeds from the lakes for food but also sell it in local supermarkets,” he admitted.
Another man who has been living in the district for 45 years, Tran Van Duoc, said: “Residents use water from local wells and fish from the lakes as they have no other option.
“The water and mud in the lakes and wells smell of chemicals.”
Poisoned time
Between 1961 and 1971, the US army sprayed dioxin-contaminated herbicides over about five million acres of upland and mangrove forests and about 500,000 acres of crops – or around 24 percent of southern Vietnam’s land area.
Some places in Laos and Cambodia along the Vietnamese border were also sprayed.
Since dioxin, which is not water-soluble, breaks down in sunlight or clings to soil particles and is washed away by rainwater, little of it remains in areas that were sprayed.
Dioxin leached into the soil or was transported by runoff into the sediments of nearby rivers, lakes and ponds, according to Canadian environmental services firm Hatfield Consultants.
Research by Hatfield and the Vietnamese government in 2007 found there are 28 such dioxin hotspots.
The most significant are at Danang and Phu Cat airports in the central region and Bien Hoa in the southern province of Dong Nai, which had US military bases.
Since most exposure to dioxin is through the food chain, the greatest concern for human exposure is the dioxin level in soil and sediments.
Internationally, dioxin levels must not exceed 1,000 ppt (parts per trillion) in soil and 100 ppt in sediments, with any levels beyond that requiring immediate remediation.
In Vietnam, researchers found dioxin levels of up to 365,000 ppt at Danang, 185,000 ppt at the Bien Hoa base, and 236,000 ppt in former storage areas at the Phu Cat base.
Assistance
The 2007 survey by Hatfield estimated cleaning up Danang, Bien Hoa, and Phu Cat to cost US$59 million without including the cost of healthcare or compensation to victims.
Vietnam has 28 such spots.
In 2003 the US Environmental Protection Agency began a US$2.4 million project in cooperation with Vietnamese agencies to investigate the situation at Danang.
The US Congress allocated $3 million the same year to address remediation of dioxin hotspots and support public health programs in the surrounding communities.
A second allocation of $3 million was made in 2009 and another was approved this year.
By last January the US Agency for International Development, the implementing agency, had distributed $2 million for programs to support people with disabilities in Danang.
The Ford Foundation has provided grants of $11.5 million to test dioxin-contaminated soils and support victims.
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