Tuesday, February 27, 2018
from Betty Mekdeci - our data on birth defects in Gulf War and Vietnam veteran's children
Our most recent report on birth defects and
disabilities in the childrenof Vietnam veterans shows the differences in
structural and functional birth defects in 1457 children of Vietnam
veterans compared to 3131 children of non-veterans in the registry.
This
link is to a presentation on Gulf War birth defects I made to the
Scientific Advisory Committee of the Veteran’s Administration.
You will find other information about our work on these issues on our Veterans Research page http://www.birthdefects.org/ve
I
am concerned that the new law does not seem to be supporting new
research. It appears that the NAS is just looking at the same studies
that have been deemed insufficient in years past.
Please let me know if I can answer any questions about our work.
With best regards,
Betty Mekdeci
Executive Director
Birth Defect Research for Children
Court Determines Military Burn Pits Caused Lung Disease in Troops
The thousands of U.S. military personnel and private
contractors whose health was compromised by the dense black smoke of
burn pits -- and who were then denied proper treatment -- may finally be
vindicated by a recent court ruling.
The decision marks a victory for the nearly 64,000 active service members and retirees who have put their names on a Burn Pit Registry created
by the Veterans Administration, bringing them one step closer to
getting adequate medical coverage, something that has never been
guaranteed. Private contractors who were also exposed to the burn pit
toxins also have been denied coverage.
"This case has legitimized the disease," former contractor Veronica
Landry of Colorado Springs, whose case was a part of the recent ruling,
told Fox News. "There are many people out there who are still not
getting the treatment they need.
"This ruling changes that."
Soldiers have fallen gravely ill or even died from exposure to burn
pits in Afghanistan and Iraq, but they are not the only ones who have
gotten sick. Civilian workers and private contractors like Landry are
also suffering an array of maladies including cancer, respiratory
problems and blood disorders and, like military victims, they say they
are being ignored.
But private employees don't even have the Veterans Administration to
lean on. Landry filed her case with the Labor Department for this very
reason.
Agent Orange — a humanitarian concern we can do something about
I first went to Vietnam in 1997,
three decades after I graduated from college, volunteered for the Peace
Corps and was assigned to teach high school in a remote village in
Nepal.
One day the
students asked me why we Americans were destroying the forests in
Vietnam. I couldn’t answer them. But when I arrived in Vietnam as the
head of the Ford Foundation office there, I found their assertion to be
distressingly true.
Moreover, the herbicides, collectively called Agent Orange, had been contaminated with dioxin, a chemical that is extremely toxic to humans in small amounts. Severe disabilities associated with Agent Orange/dioxin were occurring in generation after generation in Vietnamese families.
Tone-Deaf DAV Recognizes Thomas Murphy For ‘Outstanding’ Veterans Advocacy
In an act of total tone-deafness, DAV will award executive in charge
Thomas Murphy for his supposed role as a federal executive displaying
outstanding veterans advocacy in "fighting" for the rights of veterans
while simultaneously revoking their rights to speed up the disability
appeals backlog he is in part responsible for creating.
Thomas Murphy, a known Agent Orange denier, won the award “for his exemplary leadership and service to ill and injured veterans while serving as executive in charge…” of Veterans Benefits Administration.
Life on top of Ithaca's uncapped garbage dump
Several years ago on Mother’s Day, Esther Herkowitz,
tried to plant rose bushes in memory of her mother and grandmother.
Instead of soil, she hit cement, metal bits and rebar.
“That was when I found out that I bought a mobile home on an unkempt toxic dump,” she said.
Herkowitz
lives at Nate’s Floral Estates at 205 Cecil Malone Drive in Ithaca.
Today, the mobile home park residents must plant their fruits and
vegetables in raised beds, planters or pots. This requirement is
stipulated in the operating permit issued by the Tompkins County Health
Department.
Until 1970, the land under the trailer park was the city of Ithaca’s landfill, accepting wastes, for 30-32 years.
“This
site is the only uncapped toxic landfill in New York State with
hundreds of people living directly on top of the dump. It is a scandal
that this dump has never been cleaned up,” said environmental activist
Walter Hang. He is president of Toxics Targeting, a private firm using
government data to track environmental concerns.
Tuesday, February 20, 2018
Vietnam, US begin Agent Orange cleanup at former wartime air base
Bien Hoa Airport is the largest remaining dioxin hotspot in Vietnam.
Vietnam and the U.S. have kickstarted the process of cleaning up the
dioxin around Bien Hoa Airport, a heavily contaminated zone just outside
Ho Chi Minh City.
USAID will be working with the Vietnamese ministry to first design a
remediation program before implementing it over the next few years.
“The only way to begin a long journey is to take the first step. The
Memorandum of Intent is that first step, and the journey begins today,"
said U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Daniel J. Kritenbrink, who witnessed the
signing together with Senior Lieutenant General Nguyen Chi Vinh,
Vietnam's Deputy Minister of Defense.
"The United States looks forward to working with the Ministry of
National Defense on this important initiative, deepening our partnership
further, and building a prosperous future for both our countries.”
The campaign to decontaminate Bien Hoa is part of the two countries'
cooperation that started in 2000 to resolve humanitarian and wartime
legacies while continuing to strengthen their economic, cultural and
security ties.
It will also be the second time the U.S. has been directly involved in a
dioxin cleanup effort in Vietnam, following USAID and the defense
ministry's $110 million campaign that took five years to clean
dioxin-contaminated soil at Da Nang International Airport, which started
in 2012.
Women at war: The crucible of Vietnam
Highlights
Physical health of women deployed to Vietnam was influenced by warzone experiences.
Career military women Vietnam veterans are happier than women in general population.
Military and non-military Vietnam service women less likely to marry or have kids.
Paper provides insight to mostly unstudied lives of American women of Vietnam War.
ABSTRACT - Relatively
little has been written about the military women who served in Vietnam,
and there is virtually no literature on deployed civilian women
(non-military). We examined the experiences of 1285 American women,
military and civilian, who served in Vietnam during the war and
responded to a mail survey conducted approximately 25 years later in
which they were asked to report and reflect upon their experiences and
social and health histories.
Fetal exposure markers of dioxins and dioxin-like PCBs
ABSTRACT - Fetal exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polychlorinated-p-dibenzodioxins
(PCDDs), and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs) have been associated
with a number of adverse health outcomes. Although the placenta acts as
a barrier between the mother and the fetus, these contaminants transfer
through the placenta exposing the fetus. Several studies have
investigated placental transfer...KEEP READING
Thursday, February 15, 2018
AGENT ORANGE TOWN HALL MEETING SCHEDULE CHANGE
We update our meetings regularly on the Town Hall Meeting Calendar:
Change International Falls, Minnesota to May 12th
May 12, 2018
International Falls, Minnesota
Contact Carissa MacLean 218-283-1179
Maynard Kaderlik 507-581-6402
Food activists from Nevada County take on Biotech Goliath, Monsanto in court
Since her early days of activism
in the 1960s protesting the Vietnam War when she was an undergrad
student in Texas, Grass Valley resident Pamela Osgood has been arrested
150 times as a practicing "steward of the world."
Last
May, her loyalty to the health of the human race landed her in the
Woodland Jail after she and a small band of folks from Nevada County and
other parts of the state formed a blockade in front of Monsanto's
largest seed research center in the U.S.
Monsanto
is a Fortune 500, modern agricultural company that employs over 20,000
people globally in 69 countries, according to Monsanto's website.
Monsanto, acquired by Bayer Crop Science Ag in 2016, is known for its
biotech seeds like Roundup Ready Corn.
"The
work that is going on in there is really dreadful. We have to get
people educated about what Monsanto is doing. Monsanto is poisoning
everyone," Osgood said.
Osgood
and her sister (a grandmother) were among 10 environmental and human
rights activists known as the "Monsanto 10" arrested in the early
morning last spring when they tried to block Monsanto staffers arriving
to work at the 90,000-square-foot research facility in Yolo County. The
protest was one of more than 400 "Anti-Monsanto/Anti-GMO" demonstrations
held worldwide in 47 states and 52 countries on six continents.
Why Is Roundup Still Used In Hawaii?
We should make public the names of government officials who approve the use of such poisonous chemicals.
Despite the demands made by residents of
Hawaii to end the use of Roundup in the islands, the state continues to
spray in parks and public areas with this cousin of Agent Orange.
When the Honolulu Parks Department was
queried as to why it continues using a known carcinogen that’s been
banned in many cities in the United States and several countries around
the world and is involved in more than a dozen lawsuits, including a
class-action suit, the reply was that its use was state-approved.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s
3,000-acre Superfund cleanup site in Kunia on Oahu exists because a
“state-approved pesticide” was used for pineapple.
After reading a recent opinion piece titled Why Is Roundup Still Used In Hawaii? I wanted to correct some of the misinformation contained in the article.
Glyphosate is the active ingredient in
many Roundup-branded weed control products, as well as many other weed
control products marketed under different names by different companies.
It is used by homeowners, gardeners, farmers, businesses and government
agencies to control a lot of different weeds.
Weed control is important. Weeds can
cause farmers to lose yields, harbor insect pests, be invasive, create
hazard along roadways and be a pest in landscaping.
To be clear, glyphosate is not a “cousin” to Agent Orange, as the article stated. They are not chemically similar. Glyphosate has nothing to do with an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site in Kunia, as the piece seems to suggest.
Friday, February 9, 2018
AGENT ORANGE TOWN HALL MEETING SCHEDULE
We update our meetings regularly on the Town Hall Meeting Calendar:
February 10, 2018
Mesa, Arizona
Contact Chuck Byers 480-258-7105
February 24, 2018
Mitchell, South Dakota
Contact: Terry Mayer
605-830-2011
Maynard Kaderlik
507-581-6402
March 20, 2018
Cape Coral, Florida
Contact: Stuart Berman
239-220-2369
March 24, 2018
Portland, Oregon
Contact: Don Curtis 503-913-1787
Tom Owen
541-619-8187
April 7, 2018
Marshalltown, Iowa
Contact John Kost
515-212-0741
April 8, 2018
Stratford, New Jersey
Contact: Mike Eckstein
201-874-1664
April 21, 2018
Sanborn, New York
Contact:
Gordon L. Bellinger
716-625-4470
April 21, 2018
International Falls, Minnesota
Contact Carissa MacLean 218-283-1179
Maynard Kaderlik 507-581-6402
April 29, 2018
Mayetta, Kansas
Contact:Roland Mayhew 785-249-4517
Thomas Wabnum 785-554-5248
Vlas Ortiz 785-554-3949
Guam EPA: Agent Orange testing yet to start
More than a year after Gov. Eddie Calvo
instructed the Guam Environmental Protection Agency to test for traces
of Agent Orange, a hazardous defoliant, actual sampling and testing have
yet to take place but a work plan is now being developed.
Guam
EPA public information officer Nic Rupley on Friday said a contractor
hired by the military is now finalizing a work plan, which serves as a
guide for sampling, how the testing will be carried out and how the
outcome will be interpreted, among other things.
Rupley
said Guam EPA has been working with the Department of Defense on the
Agent Orange investigation. He said the military awarded a contract to
develop the work plan, but a contract for the field work, which includes
actual sampling and testing, has yet to be awarded.
Vice
Speaker Therese Terlaje wrote a Feb. 1 letter to Guam EPA Administrator
Walter Leon Guerrero, seeking an update on the Agent Orange
investigation that the governor asked the agency to conduct in January
2017.
"I
am hoping that we can shed light on this investigation in order to find
answers for our residents and veterans," Terlaje wrote. Local
residents, she said, have stated that family members who worked on
military properties have since died from cancer.
April 15 dicamba spraying ban in place for Arkansas
On Friday morning, the Arkansas Legislative Council (ALC) passed a
proposal to ban the spraying of dicamba in the state after April 15.
The passage was a quiet affair compared to a subcommittee hearing at
the capitol three days earlier, which came on the heels of a wintry
storm. At that hearing, lawmakers heard some three hours of impassioned
testimony from those wanting the April cutoff date and those wanting it
pushed into May or June. On a split vote, the subcommittee sent the
dicamba proposal package to the full ALC.
The cutoff proposal
first came to the legislature last fall following nearly 1,000
off-target dicamba drift complaints and numerous meetings of both the
Arkansas State Plant Board and a dicamba task force set up by the
governor.
Friday, February 2, 2018
AGENT ORANGE TOWN HALL MEETING SCHEDULE
We update our meetings regularly on the Town Hall Meeting Calendar:
February 10, 2018
Mesa, Arizona
Contact Chuck Byers 480-258-7105
February 24, 2018
Mitchell, South Dakota
Contact: Terry Mayer
605-830-2011
Maynard Kaderlik
507-581-6402
March 20, 2018
Cape Coral, Florida
Contact: Stuart Berman
239-220-2369
March 24, 2018
Portland, Oregon
Contact: Don Curtis 503-913-1787
Tom Owen
541-619-8187
April 7, 2018
Marshalltown, Iowa
Contact John Kost
515-212-0741
April 21, 2018
Sanborn, New York
Contact:
Gordon L. Bellinger
716-625-4470
April 21, 2018
International Falls, Minnesota
Contact Carissa MacLean 218-283-1179
Maynard Kaderlik 507-581-6402
April 29, 2018
Mayetta, Kansas
Contact:Roland Mayhew 785-249-4517
Thomas Wabnum 785-554-5248
Vlas Ortiz 785-554-3949