Detailed Summary

Agent Orange Equity Act of 2008 - Includes as part of the Republic of Vietnam, for purposes of the presumption of service connection for diseases associated with exposure by veterans to certain herbicide agents while in Vietnam, such Republic's inland waterways, waters offshore, and airspace above.

Status of the Legislation

Latest Major Action: 7/22/2008: Referred to House committee. Status: Referred to the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs.

Points Against

Here is a scenario for discussion. This is based on a very liberal set of probabilities but is provided as a means to stimulate discussion.

An area of the South China Sea 20 miles by 800 miles would equal 16,000 square miles. This would extend from the shoreline to 20 miles out, an area that some claim is the operating range of many of the ships. This is smaller than the area actually occupied by US navy ships but is used to simplify the calculations and give the benefit to close in to shore ships. If we consider a larger area the concentration of dioxin would be even lower.

At an average depth of 200 feet (considering the slope of the seabed floor away from land, this would amount to 89,210,880,000,000 cubic feet of water. That equates to 669,081,600,000,000 gallons, or 5,687,193,600,000,000 pounds, of sea water by volume.

By the most speculative account available an estimated 1320 pounds of dioxin was sprayed and/or spilled during the entire 10 year period of defoliation operations.

An extremely liberal estimate would be that perhaps half of this total, or 660 pounds, ran off into the rivers and streams. Of that, an estimated 50 percent of that actually reached the South China Sea, an amount equal to 330 pounds total. Since dioxin is nearly insoluble it would have attached to sediment. There would certainly be significant sediment settling as the water moved downstream.

Of the 330 pounds that reached the sea an estimated one-half, or 165 pounds, of that would have been at a depth to be pulled into the water intakes, given that there would be further settling of the sediment that contained the dioxin after it reached the sea.

At the end of the 10 year period, if all the above were true and there was no loss of dioxin to other causes (an illogical assumption), the ratio of dioxin in the sea water pulled into the ship systems would be one part dioxin to 34,467,840,000,000 parts sea water. That's 1 part dioxin to 34.467 trillion parts water.

That is one ounce of dioxin in 34.467 trillion ounces of water at the end of the entire 10 year period. There is no sailor who claims to have been within 20 miles of the shore for the entire 10 year period and therefore no sailor would have been exposed to anywhere near this amount. Remember also, this is using the most liberal assumptions to make the calculations and not allowing for any other losses of dioxin content other that settling.

Some things to consider:

It is unlikely that half the total dioxin introduced during the 10 year period actually ended up in the rivers and estuaries. The current studies of the Vietnamese landscape indicate that a significant amount remains on land. The likely amount that actually drifted out to sea is much smaller but using this figure gives a greater benefit to the bluewater navy position.

There was certainly a larger loss of dioxin than just that allowed for from sediment settling. Current flow and other factors would certainly have added to the dilution of the total amount of dioxin in the area outlined.

Since the dioxin was actually introduced over a 10 year period, and we have no true measure of how much was introduced each year, it is impossible to say what the level of dioxin was in the South China Sea at any given time. However it would have certainly been considerably less than the one part in 34.467 trillion shown above as an estimated total for the 10 year period.

Points in Favor

Setting aside the flawed assumptions that the "Against" commenter bases his/her argument on (e.g., contrary to the "Against" commenter's assumption, the majority of US Navy ships came well within 20 miles of the coastline of Vietnam, often to within a few thousand yards or less and many of which anchored in its harbors), his calculations, even as tiny as the levels seem to be, do, in fact show that blue water Navy Vietnam veterans were exposed to potentially harmful levels of dioxen. Simply compare the "Against" commenter's exposure calculation of 1 part of dioxen to 34.467 trillion (12 zeroes) parts of water to the EPA safe level of 13 parts of dioxen to 1 quintillion (18 zeroes) parts of water. See the Agency for Toxic Subtance and Disease Registry:
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/NER/DIOXIN/dxn1996.html

And the blue water Navy Vietnam veterans exposure to dioxen was not a one-time event, since it was normal for each ship to spend many months in the Gulf of Tonkin, often within 3 miles or closer to shore, during which time the crews would have been constantly exposed - drinking and showering in the contaminated water which their ship's produced and eating food cooked in the contaminated water.

Finally, the "against" commenter's unstated assumption that the dioxen content of the water at 20 miles from shore is equivalent to the dioxen content at, for example, 3 miles from shore is fatally flawed.