Chemical Warfare In Vietnam War Essay

During the Vietnam war, Chemical Warfare was used on the enemy, particularly with agent orange to which was used tactically and caused many negative effects for veterans and the Vietnamese. Agent orange was a chemical used in the Vietnam war that caused deforestation, hurt crops, and disabled veterans. The creator of agent orange was Monsanto who created the chemical designed for the U.S. Department of Defence to deforest the area and take out the crops so they could fight and weaken the food supply(wiki author). When agent orange went down the leafs of the trees fell along with about much of the water supply becoming poisoned, this chemical also destroyed 10% of the soil and even made the air poisonous up to 100 parts per billion (war legacies). When this chemical hit the trees some of it got to the crops and took out 500,000 acres of crop land. The American forces benefited from this because it made the Vietnamese weak which caused the war to end sooner. Monsanto the company who created agent orange was and is now an agricultural company helped create this chemical or as they called it …show more content…
The problem with the land was it had little to no recovery within the area agent orange was sprayed. Another big problem with the chemical was cancer with the troops. Some of these forms of cancer are Chronic B-cell leukemia, skin diseases, diabetes, liver diseases, heart disease, melanoma, prostate cancer, respiratory cancer, soft tissue sarcomas, and much more(public health VA). Many of these diseases cause death and disable some of the veterans without them even knowing they had these diseases. There is a big issue still that has to do with agent orange and that is child development issues. These could do with the bone structure, placement of body parts, having many deformed babies conjoined, and other health