More than 40 years after the end of the Vietnam War, children of the men and women who served say they are battling a new war for benefits as they grapple with the impact of toxic exposure to chemicals that have wreaked havoc on their lives.
Agent Orange is a term that is used to describe a series of odorless herbicides that were used by the U.S. military to defoliate hiding places, fields and rice paddies that were used by the Viet Cong for survival.
Dr. Michael Skinner, with Washington State University’s Center for Reproductive biology, has studied the transgenerational health effects of dioxin exposure using animals and says women who served in Vietnam and were exposed to Agent Orange could have passed the dioxin to children for at least 15 to 20 years after they returned home.
“The problem with dioxin or Agent Orange is that it stays in the system for a very long period of time.”
He also says through his research he’s seen dioxin passed through sperm to the offspring in animals. His concern is not with the veterans who returned home or their children but with their grandchildren.
“We have examples where there is no disease in the first generation but there’s huge numbers of disease and the third generation,” he said.