OUR VIEW: Herkimer County deserves answers
Lenarcic knows about dioxin. It was a key ingredient of the
herbicide Agent Orange, used widely as a defoliant during the Vietnam
War and later linked to birth defects and cancers, including
non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Through the years, Lenarcic’s work with Vietnam
veterans, their exposure to Agent Orange and its after-effects have
topped his list of concerns.
In the 1940s and
50s, the government experimented with Agent Orange at several sites
across the country, one being Fort Drum — then called Camp Drum.
According to the Agent Orange Record, in 1959, 1,035 acres of sugar
maples and other hardwoods at the army base near Watertown in Jefferson
County were sprayed in a test to see how effective the herbicides were
against foliage.
According to the Aspen
Institute, an educational and policy studies organization, several U.S.
communities at or near Agent Orange manufacturing or storage sites
continue to report dioxin levels above recommended safety standards.
Among them is Fort Drum. Lenarcic suggests that the dioxin possibly
worked its way into the aquifer that serves the Kuyahoora Valley area.
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