Representatives
from Shimizu Corporation and the ministry held a ceremony in Hanoi on Tuesday.
A ministry
official said resolving the issues deriving from Agent Orange is an urgent task
for the country, and the project will be highly significant.
The project
will begin in November at an airport in the southern city of Bien Hoa. 850,000
tons of soil at this site are believed to be polluted.
Shimizu will
use its technology to clean up the soil.
The company
says its method is more environmentally friendly and is cheaper than the
conventional method of incinerating tainted soil.
More than 3
million people are still suffering from health problems caused by Agent Orange,
which the US began using in 1961.
More than 4
decades after the war ended, high concentrations of dioxin are still being
detected at nearly 30 locations where the US military stored the agent.
The project
is attracting attention because the high cost of removing the pollutant has
hampered the efforts to clean up contaminated soil across Vietnam.
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