Cancer deaths from Vietnam era tests on Agent Orange in Australia

[Beaverhausen]

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/bspecial-investigationb-agent-orange-town/2008/05/18/1210765247617.html

Agent Orange town

Matthew Benns and Frank Walker
May 18, 2008


THE Australian Army tested chemical weapons on a town which now has deaths from cancer 10 times the state average.

Military scientists sprayed the toxic defoliant Agent Orange in the jungle that is part of the water catchment area for Innisfail in Queensland's far north at the start of the Vietnam War.

The Sun-Herald last week found the site where military scientists tested Agent Orange in 1966. It is on a ridge little more 100 metres above the Johnstone River, which supplies the drinking water for Innisfail.

Forty years later the site - which abuts farmer Alan Wakeham's land - is still bare, covered only in tough Guinea grass, but surrounded by thick jungle.

"It's strange how the jungle comes right up to this site and then just stops. It won't grow any further," Mr Wakeham said.

Agent Orange was sprayed extensively in Vietnam to defoliate the jungle and remove cover for North Vietnamese troops. It contains chemicals including the dioxin TCDD, which causes forms of cancer, birth defects and other health problems.

SNIP

Queensland Health Department figures show Innisfail, which has a population of almost 12,000, had 76 people die from cancer in 2005. That is four times the national rate of death from cancer and 10 times the Queensland average.

more at the link

[old mark]

1. Several people I knew in the military in the 1970's

are dead of verious kinds of cancer.Many served in Vietnam.
I wonder if there is anyone in our government keeping track of this stuf.
Stupid question-of course not.

mark