If you or your parents served in Vietnam, on either side of the conflict, this information should interest you.

In 2004 the Institutes of Medicine report stated:

Sufficient evidence of an association with Agent Orange:
1 Chronic lymphocytic leukemia
2.Soft-Tissue Sarcoma
3.Non-Hoddgkins lymphoma
4 Hodgkins disease
5. Chloracne

LIMITED OR SUGGESTIVE EVIDENCE OF AN ASSOCIATION with Agent Orange:
Respiratory cancer (lung and bronchus, larynx, trachea)
Prostate cancer
Multiple myeloma
Early-onset transient peripheral neuropathy
Porphyria cutanea tarda
Type 2 diabetes mellitis
Spina bifida in offspring of exposed individuals

IOM's report, Veterans and Agent Orange, first came out in 1994; by law it must be updated every 2 years until 2014

In Science 12 January 2007 Vol. 315. no. 5809, pp. 176 - 179 a special article by writer Richard Stone explores some of what it now known from the study of Vietnam Veterans, and what is being learned from the many hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese who also experienced American Chemical Warfare. Get your hands on this summarization, visit your library, or institution of higher learning.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/315/5809/176

The United States and the South Vietnamese air forces, using primarily military transport planes, began spraying herbicides in the fall of 1962. Over the next decade, they unloaded some 77 million liters (roughy 77,000 metric tons) of herbicides on 2.6 million hectares of south and central Vietnam.

Whatever name applied, they were poisons.

For the first few years, the main herbicide was "Agent Purple."

Agent Purple was a mix of 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) and two forms of 2,4,5-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T). This mixture kills many grasses and many broadleaf plants, such as trees.

Then, in 1965, the military deployed "Agent Orange," a faster-acting defoliant consisting of 2,4-D and a single form (n-butyl ester) of 2,4,5-T.

In a painstaking reanalysis of herbicide use during the Vietnam War, Columbia University chemist, Jeanne Mager Stellman, and her colleagues estimated that over 6 years, 45 million liters (about 45,000 metric tons) of Agent Orange were sprayed.

http://www.vvvc.org/agntor.htm
http://www.usvetdsp.com/agentorange.htm

The veterans groups also furnished these names for the defoliant.

- Agent Orange: 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T; used between January 1965 and April 1970.
- Agent Orange II (Super Orange): 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T; used in 1968 and 1969.
- Agent Purple: 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T; used between January 1962 and 1964.
- Agent Pink: 2,4,5-T; used between 1962 and 1964.
- Agent Green: 2,4,5-T; used between 1962 and 1964.
- Agent White: Picloram and 2,4-D.
- Agent Blue: contained cacodylic acid (arsenic).
- Dinoxol: 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T; used between 1962 and 1964.
- Trinoxol: 2,4,5-T; used between 1962 and 1964.
- Diquat: Used between 1962 and 1964.
- Bromacil: Used between 1962 and 1964.
- Tandex: Used between 1962 and 1964.
- Monuron: Used between 1962 and 1964.
- Diuron: Used between 1962 and 1964.
- Dalapon: Used between 1962 and 1964.

Both Vietnamese and American ground forces were affected. and pilots and flight crews were affected and it continues now.

In fact there is very substantial epidemiologal evidence to support the claims of veterans that have been complaining about the illnesses now for nearly 40 years.

The protection of various manufactures of these deadly biological agents and of the military that used them and of the government that sent them to be used in war seems destined to outlast all the veterans, but will likely carry on to deny their affected children for the next half-century.

America has a long road ahead, dealing with both American soldiers and with the Vietnamese soldiers and their offspring. One thing that will greatly aid the recovery would be cleaning the chemical storage areas still polluted on the ground in Vietnam. Everyone seems to agree that has value.