Agent Orange: The Cleanup Begins
Agent Orange: The Cleanup Begins
by
John Stapleton
Copyright 2013 John Stapleton,
All rights reserved.
A Sense of Place Publishing 2013.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-1503-1
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This short book is dedicated to the many victims both living and dead of dioxin, a manufacturing contaminant of Agent Orange which has damaged millions of lives.
Table of Contents
Agent Orange: The Cleanup Begins
Agent Orange: The Cleanup Begins
On the morning of the 9 August 2012, Americans in particular but people around the world were astonished to observe an historic event occurring at busy Da Nang airport in Vietnam.The lingering impacts of the infamous herbicide Agent Orange were finally to be addressed, 37 years after the end of the Vietnam War.
The former American military base at Da Nang was in a sparsely populated rural area outside a village at the time of the Vietnam War, which ended amidst chaotic scenes in 1975.
The aftermath of the war, impacting on millions of people, has continued in places like Da Nang to the present day.
Now in the heart of an urban area, Da Nang is adjacent to the sea and was a rest and recreation stop for American soldiers. It is now popular amongst many tourists.
The generation which grew up with peace demonstrations dividing their country now has the money to pursue their fascination with the first war to be played out on television before an audience of millions.
Many former Vietnam veterans travel to Vietnam to seek out the places where they served. By the end of the war American forces had utilized a total of 2,735 bases, although the remains of these for the most part are no longer to be seen.
In 2011 Vietnam received six million tourists. This was up one million from the previous year, perhaps due to political unrest in S.E. Asia’s tourism capital, ever popular Thailand.
Between 2012 and 2016 some 77,400 cubic metres of soil, 2.7 million cubic feet, are scheduled to be dug up from the Da Nang airport and treated.
The treatment involves heating the contaminated soil to a minimum temperature of 325 degrees centigrade, the temperature at which dioxin breaks down into harmless compounds.
The soil is then repeatedly tested until dioxin levels are negligible and it is then re-interred.
Dioxin is regarded as one of the most toxic, if not the single most toxic, of all the compounds ever synthesized by man.
It is dangerous at even “vanishing levels” - 10 parts per trillion or more. It is tested for in parts per quadrillion, an exercise compared to finding a coffee cup in Canada.
The technical capacity to do this accurately did not exist for some 20 years after the Vietnam War.
Seven parts per trillion, that is seven molecules of dioxin in an Olympic sized swimming pool, are believed to be the threshold level above which the probability of shortened life spans and birth defects increases.
The Vietnamese Red Cross estimates that around three million of their countrymen are suffering from the impacts of Agent Orange, with around 150,000 children born with birth defects.
As well thousands of American veterans and their families have been affected, as well as veterans from other which participated in the Vietnam War, including Australia.
While the science remains disputed, Dioxin is widely believed to have inter-generational effects.
Although dioxin is not water soluble, it can persist in soil for decades and this persistence increases the probability it will at some point move into nearby streambeds and pond bottoms and from there be taken up by fish, ducks, snails and thereby enter the food chain.
Many of those born with birth defects were born well after the close of the Vietnam War. Their parents were not participants in the conflict nor were they in the direct path of the spraying. Instead both mothers and fathers came to have high dioxin levels in their bloodstreams by consuming contaminated foods or by working in areas where there were high residue levels. Or by swimming in lakes and canals where the toxin had settled into silt.
Transporting the soil from Da Nang airport to be buried in another location was dismissed as an unviable option.
Its transportation would have endangered workers and its burial imperiled future generations if it were ever exposed by seismic or mining activity.
As Da Nang is operational gaping holes in the bustling airport would have also invoked additional costs.
Among the 18 commercially available technologies to destroy dioxin a number use heating soil as the means to break down the dioxin molecules. The particular technology the American and Vietnamese governments agreed to use at Da Nang is known as In-pile Thermal Desorption.
In front of a gathering of dignitaries from both America and Vietnam, the amelioration efforts to destroy the dioxin remaining in the Vietnamese environment and to treat those suffering from disabilities began.
The project is being run under the auspices of the Vietnamese Ministry of Defense and the United States Agency for International Development.
The U.S. Vietnam Dialogue Group on Agent Orange/Dioxin is a bi-national advocacy committee of private citizens, scientists and policy-makers working to draw greater attention to the issues and to mobilize resources in both countries. The Group has estimated the cost of cleaning up all the Agent Orange hotspots in Vietnam and providing substantial health/ disability programs at $450 million.
The United States Government had not as of October 2012 agreed to do more on than the environmental remediation than what they plan to do at Da Nang, costing $43 million over the four year operation, and an Environmental Impact Assessment at Bien Hoa north of Ho Chi Minh City. The U.S. has also announced plans for a three year $9 million health and disabilities program mainly directed to Da Nang.
Three studies conducted between 2004 and 2010 have confirmed high levels of contamination of dioxins in soils and sediments at a number of locations on Bien Hoa Airbase, making Bien Hoa Airbase a significant dioxin hotspot.
In 1970 a 7,500 US gallon spill of Agent Orange occurred at the air base.
The clean-up of dioxin at Bien Hoa is estimated to cost $US85 million, almost twice the cost of Da Nang.
Bien Hoa was the largest site in Vietnam in terms of the number of C-123 aircraft sorties and volume of herbicides used.
Dioxin contamination at Bien Hoa Airbase is the result of the storage, loading, spillage, and handling of Agent Orange and other herbicides, especially between 1965 and 1971.
Interim mitigation measures are currently being implemented at Bien Hoa to protect the local population from continued exposure to dioxins from the Airbase. Approximately 43,000 cubic metres of contaminated soils have been excavated and placed in a secure landfill by the Vietnamese Ministry of Defense. This work was completed in 2009.
A third serious dioxin hotspot lies at the coastal city of Phu Cat. The Ministry of Defense, UNDP and the Global Environmental Fund have collaborated on moving the 7,500 cubic meters of contaminated soil into a long term passive landfill on the base. The landfill will be monitored and maintained by the Ministry with technical support from the Czech Republic. The Government of Vietnam in August removed Phu Cat from the list of dioxin hotspots.
With the passage of time the former American military base of Bien Hoa is now located in a heavily populated district.
Over 900,000 people reside in the Bien Hoa area. Many of these local people have the potential to be exposed to dioxin residues.
Another $410 million needs to be raised to resolve Vietnam’s Agent Orange issues.
The Dialogue Group estimates that a total of $US107 million will be required for the cleanup of dioxin hotspots, including $US17 million to evaluate and clean up as needed about two dozen smaller known or suspected dioxin hotspots.
A further $US303 million is required for the provision of social and disability services.
But after decades of painfully slow progress developments have sped up significantly.
On June 16, 2010 the Dialogue Group published a ten year Declaration and Plan of Action to address the continuing environmental and human consequences of Agent Orange. In May 2012 the U.S.-Vietnam Dialogue Group on Agent Orange released its Second Year Report simultaneously in Washington and Hanoi.
The introduction noted:
“It should not surprise us that only now, nearly 40 years after the end of hostilities, are we on the cusp of resolving one of the troubling legacies of the war between the US and Vietnam -- the lasting effects of Agent Orange and other dioxin-contaminated defoliants on people, communities and ecosystems in Vietnam. Wars leave raw political and emotional wounds. Enduring concerns are poorly understood, and by definition, former enemies lack the trust and experience of collaboration on which a new strategic partnership can be built. The Vietnam-US relationship illustrates this truth all too clearly. It most likely holds lessons for other wars about the time that must pass before painful legacies can be fully resolved.
“And indeed, for decades little could be done about Agent Orange/dioxin. The science about its biological and ecological impacts was poorly understood. So was the extent of the problem; dioxin’s impact on US military personnel was contentious in the United States. And litigation in US courts on behalf of those in Vietnam who believed themselves to be victims brought fresh legal battles, controversy and wariness.
“But in the last five years, much has changed, in significant measure because of creative and compassionate interventions by public and private agencies. The concerns of US veterans are being addressed far more comprehensively than in past decades – though continued attention is needed.
“Lawsuits have slowed. The geography of the dioxin ‘hot spots’ in Vietnam is clear, along with estimates of clean-up costs. A remarkable start has been made towards cleaning up the first of the three major hot spots at the Da Nang airport. Rough estimates of the number of people with disabilities that may be linked to dioxin are available. Their needs – and those of their caregivers – are better understood. The cost and complexity of clean-up and care can now be estimated based on real lived experience.”
The Vietnamese Government has set the year 2020 as the target for completion of the work on cleaning up Agent Orange under a National Action Plan.
As it is impossible to determine which people are suffering disability as a direct result of Agent Orange or to differentiate them from those disabled through other causes, the money would be spent in a broadcast way by addressing the needs of all people with disabilities living in the vicinity ofidentified hot spots and in areas heavily sprayed during the war.
The Da Nang phase of the cleanup is not expected to be complete until 2016.
Da Nang is the starting point, not the end point.
The hotspot at the Bien Hoa airbase will shortly undergo a detailed evaluation in order to determine the best methods of containing and destroying the dioxin there.
There are some 25 to 27 further locations to be assessed, where dioxin is known or suspected to exist, albeit at significantly lower levels than at Da Nang, Phu Cat or Bien Hoa.
Proponents for resolving the Agent Orange legacy are hopeful USAID will now step in with funding and expertise to help complete the assessment of all suspected hotspots and the clean-up of dioxin in those remaining locations where dioxin exceeds acceptable levels.
Da Nang was one of the three worst spots for dioxin contamination in the whole of Vietnam. It was one of the major sites where American soldiers had decanted, mixed and re-loaded ton after ton of the herbicide transported to Vietnam during the early 1970s.
Agent Orange was then sprayed across the lush valleys, fields and forests of Vietnam.
Vietnamese experts suspect that there are a few areas in Vietnam where the dioxin has pooled in the sediment of upland ponds and reservoirs in heavily sprayed regions. According to the Forestry Inventory and Planning Institute (FIPI) analysis conducted in 2010, Bien Phuoc, Dong Nai, Quang Nam, Thua Thien Hue and TayNinh all have reservoirs in the sprayed regions. Some of the regions sprayed had large areas of rivers and ponds.
The infamous Agent Orange was named after the colour of the striped 55 US gallon barrels in which the herbicide was shipped.
It was the most widely used of the so-called "Rainbow Herbicides" or defoliants sprayed across Vietnam. There were also Agents Pink, Blue, Purple, Green and White.
Agents Pink, Green and Purple were all contaminated with dioxin.
A team of scientists at Columbia University have estimated that at least 366 kilograms of dioxin were sprayed across Vietnam, with some estimates placing it at 600 kilograms.
Nobody at the time realised just how dangerous the herbicide Agent Orange, or more precisely its contaminant dioxin, was. In a rush to meet the demands of the war effort in South East Asia, there was little if any concern by manufacturers or the soldiers doing the spraying of the danger Agent Orange represented. Agent Orange was conducted under a program called Operation Ranch Hand, which in turn was part of the broader spraying program called Operation Trail Dust. The program took place from January 1962 until February 1971.
In total, some 20 million US gallons of defoliant were sprayed from some 20,000 sorties.
The motto of “Ranch Handers” was: “Only you can prevent a forest”. This was a play on the anti-bushfire slogans plastered across the US Forestry’s Smokey Bear posters of the time.
Some 95 per cent of the herbicides were sprayed from the giant US cargo planes known as C-123s. Their call sign was “Hades” from the Greek word for hell or the underworld, the abode of the dead. The U.S. Chemical Corps and other allied forces sprayed the remaining five per cent of the herbicides from helicopters, trucks and by hand, mainly to clear brush around the perimeter of military bases.
The painful story of neglect and obfuscation surrounding the impacts of the herbicide Agent Orange begins in 1961.
In the long lead up to the War, the first test spraying of Agent Orange occurred on August 10 of that year, well before the Vietnam War’s official beginning with the deployment of combat troops in 1965.
In Vietnam August 10 has now been declared Agent Orange Day.
In the years following 1962 more than 43 million liters of Agent Orange was sprayed at up to 50 times the manufacturer’s recommended levels across 24 percent of southern Vietnam. Some five million acres of upland and mangrove forests and about 500,000 acres of crops were destroyed.
Of these areas, 34 percent were sprayed more than once; some of the upland-forests were sprayed more than four times. The aim was to deny the enemy both cover and food sources.
One studied found that 3,138 villages were in the path of the spray.
Parts of Laos and Cambodia near the Vietnam border were also sprayed.
The Americans ceased spraying Agent Orange in October, 1971, following concern over its side effects on the environment and studies demonstrating its carcinogenic effects. But the South Vietnamese military continued spraying various herbicides until 1972.
All the remaining barrels of the herbicide were shipped out of the country and destroyed. The production of Agent Orange was ended in the 1970s and remaining stockpiles incinerated. It is no longer produced.
Picture courtesy of The US Air Force.
Dioxin, a manufacturing defect from the production of Agent Orange, can still be accidentally produced to this day, most notably in the careless incineration of hospital waste.
The inappropriate combustion of plastic syringes for example produces the chemical.
Agent Orange was produced in numerous factories by several different manufacturers, including multi-billion dollar giants Monsanto and the Dow Chemical Company.
Other American manufacturers were: Hercules Incorporated, Thompson-Hayward Chemical Company, Diamond Alkali/Shamrock Company, the US Rubber Company, Thompson Chemicals Corporation, Agrisect Company and Hoffman-Taft Incorporated.
Only a minor temperature variation at above 200 degrees Celsius in the manufacturing or “cooking” of Agent Orange produced the contaminant dioxin.
There was comparatively little time between the development of Agent Orange and its deployment in the Vietnam War – and therefore little time for the peculiar health impacts of its then unknown byproduct dioxin to be fully understood.
In 1943 plant biologist Arthur Galston began studying the compound Triiodobenzoic acid as a plant growth hormone, in an attempt to adapt soybeans to a short growing season.
Galston found that excessive usage of the compound caused defoliation.
His colleague Ian Sussex later developed the family of herbicides used in Operation Ranch Hand.
Galston was concerned about the compounds side effects on humans and the environment.
Agent Orange was an approximate 50/50 mix of two herbicides: 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) and2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T).
While Agent Orange degraded within days or weeks of being sprayed, the problems were with its contaminant.
Dioxin carries the chemical name “2,3,7,8-tetrachloro-dibenzo-para-dioxin”, often abbreviated to TCDD.
TCDD is regarded as the most toxic of 419 similar toxic compounds.
In 1969 the American and Vietnamese publics first became aware that many of the adverse health impacts being experienced by veterans were correlated with exposure to Agent Orange.
Dioxin has now been officially classified as a known carcinogen by the American National Toxicology Program. It is associated with soft-tissue sarcoma,non-Hodgkin's lymphoma,Hodgkin's lymphoma andchronic lymphocytic leukemia.
In the years prior to 2012’s historic events investigators were horrified to discover that dioxin levels remained exceedingly high at Da Nang airport, some 350 times internationally accepted safety standards. The highest concentrations were on the site of the tarmac where the chemical had been decantedand reloaded onto spray planes after importation from America.
It could also be easily traced moving from the site.
Over the more than three decades since the war’s end rain and runoff had been steadily washing the chemical from the airport tarmac down into a popular picnic and fishing spot known as Sen Lake.
As it does not exist in nature, nobody knows exactly how long it takes for dioxin to break down to safe levels.
Estimates put it at 200 years plus.
While it does not dissolve in water, the dioxin settled into the mud at the bottom of the lake, where bottom feeding fish then consumed it.
Anyone who consumed fish caught in the lake was potentially ingesting dioxin.
Anyone wading with their feet on the bottom of the lake or swimming in the shallows, as many children did, was stirring up dioxin.
Over the years, adults and children had enjoyed swimming in the communal lake. Studies of blood dioxin levels of people near Sen Lake found dioxin at elevated levels in people earning their living from fishing in
Sen lake and people employed to clean weeds out of drainage ditches leading to it. That was until 2008, when a mass education program warned the populace of the dangers of a place they had once regarded as nothing but a pleasant location to relax and play.
The campaign involved house to house visits by public health volunteers who left behind posters which displayed safe and unsafe foods.
Fish from Sen Lake were not safe.
Fishing and swimming in the lake was banned.
The worst spots on Da Nang Airport were temporarily concreted over in 2007 to prevent any further movement of dioxin. “We locked it down with a six inch concrete cap to stop it being exposed to the elements,” Bailey recalls.
“By 2008 we had ended the public health threat to people in Da Nang.”
The current acceleration of efforts to resolve the Agent Orange/dioxin legacy in Vietnam is the result of many years of private efforts to address the problem. The leading private funding organisation to take on the task had been America’s Ford Foundation.
Carriage of the Agent Orange legacy is now being handled by the Aspen Institute, which is partly funded by the Ford Foundation. There has been a migration of some personnel to the Aspen Institute to carry on the project.
The Dialogue Group’s Second Year Report in the leadup to events at Da Nang in 2012 also noted that the involvement of government at the highest levels:
“Progress would not have been possible without the bold leadership of leaders in both societies. Former Presidents Nguyen Minh Triet and George W. Bush, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, and legislators from both countries have articulated a commitment to addressing the human costs of the dioxin legacy in partnership. Other leaders in both countries have expressed their wish to move beyond lingering war-related sensitivities. All are focused on the potential for deepening economic and strategic connections between our two countries.”
The Institute's President Walter Isaacson - better known as the biographer of visionary Chairman of Apple computers Steve Jobs - said the August
launch of Agent Orange amelioration at Da Nang Airport marked the culmination of efforts from multiple agencies in both America and Vietnam.
He described that Thursday morning ceremony as marking “the coming together of our two countries to achieve a practical solution to dioxin contamination. As important, the U.S. government is also devoting more resources to meeting the needs of people with disabilities in Vietnam, regardless of cause. This is a humanitarian issue we can do something about, and the Aspen Institute is proud of its role in helping to advance enduring responses to the Agent Orange legacy."
The historic events of August, 2012, owe much to the efforts of one man, Dr Charles Bailey.
His arrival in Hanoi as head of the Ford Foundations regional operations in 1997 marked the beginning of the shift from hand wringing, obfuscation, ignorance and fear towards action and the decisive results which began to become reality in 2012.
Bailey had spent the previous seven years in Nairobi as regional head for the Ford Foundation.
He says the offer to go to Hanoi came “out of the clear blue sky” but he embraced the opportunity to settle in such a fascinating part of the world. His two daughters grew up there.
In person Bailey provokes that old saying: “Never a finer gentleman could one wish to meet”.
Erudite, compassionate, intelligent and particularly well-connected after decades in the senior ranks of the Ford Foundation, Dr Bailey’s shock at the ignorance and lack of action over Agent Orange had repercussions in policy wonk circles back in Washington.
It took eight years of consistent campaigning before policy makers in Washington began to move on the story in 2006.
“I stumbled into the Agent Orange story,” Bailey recalls. “I had no inkling of this problem. I did not realize it was continuing and persistent, affecting the health of large numbers of Vietnamese.
“But I became puzzled as to why no one would talk about it.
“Agent Orange was a sensitive subject about which little was known. It was large, mysterious and scary. I was surprised and shocked I wasn’t getting any answers and discovered how deeply conflicted the subject was.
“I felt I had a responsibility to see what we could do about this.”
For Bailey, back in the late 1990s, the first step was to get a better understanding of how Vietnamese were coping; the second step was to try to quantify the problem.
Many Vietnam veterans and many people running disability institutions and orphanages had little doubt there was a legacy from Agent Orange.
Veterans have long complained of ill health; and veteran organisations of their members dying early and painful deaths.
Not all of these deaths were as a result of the post-traumatic stress that many veterans experienced or the difficulties they faced for decades after the war had ended.
The exploratory moves in the late 1990s were coming almost a quarter of a century after the end of the Vietnam War and 20 years after the American public first became aware there was a lingering problem with Agent Orange.
In 1978 a young American veteran Paul Rheutershan declared on the high rating Today Show: "I died in Vietnam, but I didn’t even know it."
Rheutershan formed a group called Agent Orange Victims International.
After protracted proceedings, in 1984 lawyers for Vietnam veterans made an out-of -court settlement with amongst others the industrial giants Dow Chemical and Monsanto, for $US180 million. More than $13 million was awarded to lawyers, with two law firms awarded $1.8 and $1.3 million respectively. Private groups that had funded attorneys were compensated while one lawyer said to be a passive investor was awarded $1700.
Veterans suffering major disability were awarded on average $12,000 spread across 10 years and lost a host of potential government benefits as a result. Wives and children were not included.
A widow who could prove – always a difficult exercise – that their husbands had died of Agent Orange would receive $3,700 in compensation.
The American veterans felt utterly betrayed.
In Waiting for an Army to Die, first published in 1989 with a second edition and a new introduction issued in 2011, academic Fred A. Wilcox recorded their anger over the failure of the American government to take their health complaints seriously.
Veterans were dismissive of claims by the US Defense Department that soldiers had not been sent into areas which had been sprayed for six weeks.
Wilcox records their response thus: “Six weeks?” scoffed Vietnam veterans. “Are you kidding me? More like six hours. Six minutes. What were we going to do, sit back and wait for the enemy to book? Drank water and ate food sprayed with Agent Orange. Slept on ground soaked with that shit.Got sprayed directly.Soaking wet. The government is lying. They can lie all they want but we know better. They weren’t there. We were. They’re not fooling anyone but themselves.”
Wilcox conducted numerous interviews with working class people who had made themselves experts on the impact of Agent Orange, their homes filled with filled with toxicology reports on animals and humans. They were angry with a government they had served and no longer trusted. “Their kitchen and dining room tables were stacked with materials that, normally, only those with PhDs in science or medical degrees, might read,” he recalls.
At first, Wilcox says, he could not understand why the American government was so dismissive of the veterans concerns.
He wrote: “In every home, café, bar, hearing room, where I met veterans, I asked them the same question: ‘Why do you think the government is treating you this way? The answer never varied. ‘Because,’ they replied, ‘the government is just waiting for us all to die.’”
Hence the title of his book: “Waiting for an Army to Die”.
In his 2011 introduction to the book’s second edition Wilcox maintains his outraged tone, concluding harshly that “the Vietnam veterans were a throwaway army; the Vietnam people were a throwaway people”.
One of the many problems flowing into the slow redress of the issue was that nobody knew quite what the problem was.
While American veterans campaigned with slogans such as “Sprayed and Betrayed”, the orphanages of Vietnam filled with grotesquely disabled inmates. High miscarriage and stillbirth rates in the Vietnamese population were also attributed to Agent Orange.
Bilateral relations between the United States and Vietnam were slow to improve following the Vietnam War and contributed to the slow response to the Agent Orange issue. Finally in 1994 the U.S. lifted its trade embargo on Vietnam, normalizing relations in 1995. The two countries exchanged ambassadors in 1997 and signed a Bilateral Trade Agreement in 2001.
With full diplomatic relations not being restored until 1995 and ungrounded fears over multi-billion dollar compensation payouts, successive American governments had blithely refused to buy into the argument, dismissed the issue as one of the mythologies of the Vietnam War.
Bailey says many policy makers now agree that Agent Orange is a humanitarian issue. Others see an Agent Orange initiative as important for geo-political reasons,” Bailey says.
America has long gone out of its way to befriend Thailand as a bulwark against the rising power of China.
The arc of the developing economic powers of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Burma now all fall within these considerations. With Vietnam’s economy growing at more than five per cent a year it cannot be ignored.
The Ford Foundation made their first grant on Agent Orange in 2000 to the Vietnamese Red Cross.
The foundation was well situated to negotiate its way through the thicket of conflicting interests because it was perceived as a neutral funding body rather than a U.S. government agency.
“My program at Ford ultimately put $17 million into this,” Bailey recalls.
“Both sides were skeptical. Our role was that of a neutral party working with both sides - the government of Vietnam and the government of the US. We brought people together who might not otherwise talk, we funded confidence building projects for which at the time there was no other donor, and we sought to mainstream this issue in the US.”
After the Foundation’s first grant to the Red Cross, the second step was a kind of scoping exercise, an effort to determine the extent of the problem.
The involvement of the Canadian government also provided a fortunate break in this regard.
The question of exactly why the Canadian governmentwas so willing to help at this juncture in the history of the aftermath of Agent Orange still raises curious eyebrows.
Since the 1980s Vancouver based environmental assessment company Hatfield has worked with regulatory and medical authorities in Vietnam to monitor trace residues of dioxin in fish, wildlife, human tissue and sediments not only in Vietnam, but also in Laos, Thailand and Cambodia.
From 1994 to 2009 Hatfield conducted an investigation of residual dioxin and other contamination around key former military sites while developing mitigation measures to help prevent the local population from future exposure.
Hatfield’s work was been funded by multiple donors, including the Canadian International Development Agency, Ford Foundation, United Nations Industrial Development Organization, Environment Canada, Health Canada, the Canadian Space Agency and numerous Vietnamese government agencies.
The Canadian government funded the original work of the Vietnamese Ministry of Health 10-80 Committee with technical assistance from Hatfield to investigate the dioxin status of the A Luoi valley in central Vietnam between 1994 and 1999. This was an area where Agent Orange was known to have been sprayed more than once and at concentrations 50 or more times the manufacturer’s recommendations.
The Canadian consortium conducted detailed studies in the ALuoi valley in central Vietnam.
As a result, the puzzle of Agent Orange only intensified.
The 10-80/Hatfield team found dioxin but at levels too low to require remediation under Canadian standards. The only place in the ALuoi valley where dioxin exceeded this standard was at the former U.S. military base at A So in the southern end of the valley.
This ultimately led to the hotspot hypothesis – that far from being widespread in the environment as had been feared, dioxin levels were only concentrated at former American military bases.
Following on from the work in the ALoui Valley Dr Bailey proposed to the 10-80 Committee that they extend the study methodology to cover all former U.S. military bases throughout central and southern Vietnam.
This study took place 2002-2005 and was funded by a Ford grant of $289,000.
At the beginning of 2006 the Vietnamese Ministry of Health’s 10-80 Committee and Hatfield produced their final report into dioxin hotspots in south Vietnam.
Using information originating from web-based research, the Vietnamese Ministry of Defense, anecdotal US and Vietnam veteran’s accounts and previous 10-80 Division/Hatfield dioxin sampling programs and reports, 18 sites in southern Vietnam with the highest potential for dioxin contamination, and the highest potential risk to the health of local people. The 18 sites served as the target locations for a field reconnaissance program completed in February/March 2004.
Following field reconnaissance activities, and using data obtained during the survey, seven bases were selected for further investigation: Da Nang, Pleiku airfield, Phu Cat airfield, NhaTrang airfield, Bien Hoa airfield, Can Tho airfield, and Tan Son Nhut airfield.
Soil/sediment samples were collected from each of the seven bases in March 2005. Sampling sites were selected downstream of suspected former Ranch Hand operations. Samples were shipped to Canada for laboratory analyses.
Da Nang, Phu Cat and Bien Hoa airfields were identified as significant hot spots on the basis of dioxin levels found in soils/sediments. The remaining airfields sampled were not considered significant hot spots.
Bien Hoa had the highest level of dioxin toxicity.
“Ultimately they narrowed the problem down to a handful of former American military bases,” Bailey recalls. “The process dispelled the fog of war.”
Agent Orange itself breaks down within a matter of days or weeks.
“If Agent Orange was just a herbicide, it would have destroyed the vegetation but there wouldn’t have been the direct and lingering impacts on US and Vietnamese soldiers,” Bailey says. “The problem lies in the manufacturing defect dioxin. It wasn’t invented, it wasn’t wanted, it was an accidental contaminant.
“Those affected, often living around former American military bases, have shorter life spans it appears a greater chance of their children having birth defects.”
Only 28 of the 2,735 former American military bases showed significant levels of dioxin.
All of them were sites where the chemical had been stored and mixed before being loaded onto cargo planes for aerial spraying.
Contributing to the push for action was photographer Philip Jones Griffiths’ 2003 book Agent Orange: Collateral Damage.
Griffiths, who passed away in 2008, had worked with the world’s leading photographic agency Magnum since 1966. He was president of the agency for a record five years.
In an article to mark the launch of the book, now on the website Digital Journalist, Griffiths records:
“When I was covering the war in Vietnam there were reports from Hanoi in 1967 claiming that millions of people had been victims of chemical warfare. Officials in Saigon dismissed these as crude propaganda and for us journalists in the South there was little opportunity to verify claims made by the North.
“In the summer of 1969 four Saigon newspapers ran stories with pictures of deformed babies born to women who had been sprayed with Agent Orange.
“The South Vietnamese government argued that the deformities were caused by venereal diseases and President Thieu closed down the papers for ‘interfering with the war effort.’ After such moves, tracking down any victims proved difficult.”
Griffiths goes on to record that by 1970 he was hearing stories and rumors that babies were being born without eyes and with such gross deformities they were being killed before the mother could see them.
Griffiths records that he visited as many places as he could to witness the phenomenon himself, but was denied access.
“By 1971, the word was out that the U.S. spraying had been officially stopped because of its harmful side effects,” he wrote. “There was a flurry of news stories, but no pictures. I left Vietnam in the summer of 1971 without ever seeing a victim.
“After the war was over I got back to Vietnam and saw my first affected child. The initial situation was a mother with two blind daughters, born with no retinas. Later I saw children with empty eye sockets and still others with no trace of eyes at all.
“Spending time with the affected children is never easy – 20-year-olds living in 10-year-old bodies. Some howling like animals, some giggling hysterically while others search with catatonic stares for meaning in the heavens. For the parents, their lives are never the same again. Giving birth becomes a game of roulette.”
Griffiths remembers meeting a Vietnamese mother who said: "I was so terrified by what I had seen happening around me, that the moment my child was born the first thing I asked was whether she had both arms and legs".
The photographer says he spent 22 years engrossed in his efforts to produce “Agent Orange: Collateral Damage” because he had been witnessing a staggering human tragedy unfold.
“In many ways the sad and terrible Vietnam War has become a war without end,” he wrote. “The parents of the afflicted are an inspirational group showering love and care on their children. Most are desperately poor and any compensation offered by America would make a huge difference to their lives.
“The US did not drop Agent Orange to produce deformed babies - it was simply meant to kill vegetation. The dioxin was an accidental by-product. This gives America a perfect excuse to be magnanimous towards the victims.”
It would be almost a decade on before such magnanimity became official government policy.
Griffiths says another reason for his obsession was because of the need to know more about dioxin. “Each and every person on the planet now has this deadly chemical in their bodies, mostly from industrial pollution and the embrace of plastics by society. Even the US Environmental Protection Agency declares that a quarter of all cancers in America are caused by dioxin.”
He says because North Vietnam was not sprayed while South Vietnam was, these genetically similar groupings provide the perfect control group for scientists to determine the truth of claims being made about the toxin.
Griffiths also records that in the political climate of the day getting a book
Agent Orange: Collateral Damage into print had not been easy.
The book is not light entertainment. But “to turn away and not see the photographs is to compound the crime".
In 2004 the US Environmental Protection Agency began technical discussions with its Vietnamese counterpart and provided laboratory equipment. Along with the US State Department the EPA spent $2 million on laboratory equipment and on technical assistance focusing on the Da Nang airport.
Three studies funded by the Ford Foundation and conducted by the Vietnam Ministry of Health’s 10-80 Committee in conjunction with Hatfield in 2003-2005, 2006 and 2009 collected a total of 410 samples—198 soils/ sediments, 41 fish and vegetation and 171 human blood and breast milk. The first two studies confirmed that the northern areas of Da Nang Airport were significant dioxin hotspots.
The real break in the policy logjam came in 2006 with a number of convergent factors.
The Vietnamese Foreign Minister officially invited the Ford Foundation to become more actively involved in finding a resolution to the Agent Orange issue.
Vietnam was entering the World Trade Organisation yet there was no information on one of the issues of major concern to exporters and
importers, the lingering impact or otherwise of Agent Orange and the potential contamination of food products.
As well President George Bush arrived in the country for an APEC meeting.
“The Agent Orange deadlock lasted from 1975 to 2006,” records Bailey. “It took a long time before the two governments could come to some kind of common understanding.”
During his November 2006 APEC visit Bush signed a Communiqué with Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet. It was the first official acknowledgement by the American government of the issue. Bush committed the US to help Vietnam clean up dioxin contaminated soil at former US military airports.
Prior to Bush’s visit, the influential newspaper The Washington Post ran several stories on Agent Orange.
“For the first time it came to everyone’s attention,” Bailey recalls.
Prior to Bush’s visit, the newspaper’s Anthony Faiola reported a little prematurely that America was about to address the dismal legacy of Agent Orange.
It would be almost six years before the first soil was excavated.
The story was accompanied by a graphic picture by photographer Travis Fox.
Pham Van Xong holds his son, Truc, 9, in An Trach, Vietnam. Local medical officials say Truc is a victim of the herbicide Agent Orange, sprayed by US forces during the war. Courtesy of the Washington Post.
Reporting from Da Nang Faola wrote: “For a stark reminder of the Vietnam War, people living near the airport in this central industrial city can still stroll along the old stone walls that once surrounded a US military base. But Luu Thi Nguyen, a 31-year-old homemaker, needs only to look into the face of her young daughter.
“Van, 5, spends her days at home, playing by herself on the concrete floor because local school officials say her appearance frightens other children. She has an oversize head and a severely deformed mouth, and her upper body is covered in a rash so severe her skin appears to have been boiled. According to Vietnamese medical authorities, she is part of a new generation of Agent Orange victims, forever scarred by the U.S.-made herbicide containing dioxin, one of the world's most toxic pollutants.”
Faola reported that United States and Vietnam officials were moving to address the environmental damage at Da Nang.
For decades, the United States and Vietnam have wrangled over the question of responsibility for the U.S. military's deployment of Agent Orange. But officials say they are now moving to jointly address at least one important aspect of the spraying's aftermath -- environmental damage at Vietnamese "hot spots" such as Nguyen's city, Da Nang -- that are still contaminated with dioxin 31 years after the fall of Saigon.
Although neither Nguyen nor her husband was exposed to the Agent Orange sprayed by U.S. forces from 1962 to 1971, Vietnam officials believed the couple genetically passed on dioxin's side effects after eating fish from contaminated canals.
"I am not interested in blaming anyone at this point," the young girl’s mother Nguyen said. "But the contamination should not keep doing this to our children. It must be cleaned up."
Estimates vary wildly on the number of people impacted.
In 2006 The Washington Post reported that officials believed there were more than four million suspected dioxin victims in Vietnam, the while the US maintained there were no conclusive scientific links between Agent Orange and the severe health problems and birth defects that the Vietnamese attribute to dioxin.
The most common estimates in 2012, including from the Red Cross and the Vietnamese Government, were that about three million people were living with the consequences of dioxin poisoning, and about one million directly suffering some sort of disability.
The 2006 Post story finished with the flourish: “After doctors told them their daughter, Van, was a dioxin victim, the Nguyens cemented over the small garden in their front yard and stopped eating fish from nearby canals. Even now, however, many of their neighbors remain unaware of the danger.”
Also in 2006 the Vietnam Public Health Association surveyed the food handling and eating habits of people living near the Bien Hoa Airport in southern Vietnam, one of the three most contaminated dioxin “hotspots” in the country and located in a densely populated urban area.
From the data collected from their surveys, the Vietnam Public Health Association prepared targeted messages and materials to increase people’s attention to food safety.
Bailey says that exposure to dioxin is linked with chronic ill health and with increased numbers of children born with severe multiple disabilities. “There is accumulating scientific evidence of a link between dioxin exposure and ill health and disabilities, as shown in the biennial review of the scientific
literature on this subject by the National Academy of Science Institute of Medicine.”
Bailey says the majority of those affected, estimated by the Vietnamese Government of Vietnam, to be three million people, appear to be descendants of those originally exposed in the 1960s.
“One should never underestimate the destructive power of physical and mental disability, both for the individual and for his or her family,” he says.
“This is especially true for women and children, who are the most vulnerable. Dioxin-associated disability places a heavy and often life-long financial, physical, social and spiritual burden on families.
“The fear of disability often prevents the formation of new families – stigma and discrimination can prevent a person considered an Agent Orange victim from finding a marriage partner.
“For expectant mothers, the fear of giving birth to a child with disabilities haunts them.”
Again in 2006, the Ford Foundation’s involvement in the Agent Orange issue was given official imprimatur when the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs invited the Ford Foundation to get more involved in searching for a resolution.
As a result an eminent person’s group which became known as the US Vietnam Dialogue Group on Agent Orange/Dioxin was formed to find a way forward.
This was a bi-national and non-partisan committee of prominent private citizens, scientists and policy makers working to clarify the issue and to mobilize resources. It was a rare example of successful private and government co-operation. “The Dialogue Group is useful to all stakeholders for two reasons: First, the members have conversations among themselves uninhibited by official positions. These conversations result in periodic reports to the public, beginning with the Dialogue Group’s five priorities in February 2007, which led to, the Declaration and Plan of Action in June 2010. The most recent report is the May 2012 Second Year Report of the Dialogue Group. Second, from its first meeting the Dialogue Group adopted a forward looking approach to solving the Agent Orange legacy through a
series of humanitarian response undertaken cooperatively between Vietnam and the U.S.”
The Dialogue Group is convened by former Ford Foundation President Susan Berresford.
President and Chief Executive of the Aspen Institute Walter Isaacson, and Vice-chair of the Vietnam National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs Committee Ambassador Ha Huy Thong are the two co-chairs.
Other US members are Christine Whitman, President of the Whitman Strategy Group, William Mayer, President of Park Avenue Equity Partners, Mary Dulan-Hografe, disability advocate and Dr Vaughan Turekian, Chief International Officer for the Advancement of Science.
On the Vietnamese side are Professor Vo Quy from the Vietnam National University, Dr Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuong from the Medical University of Ho Chi Minh City, Do Huoang Long, director of the People to People Relations Department and Lieutenant General Phung Khac Dang, Vice President of the Vietnam Veterans Association and member of the Vietnam National Assembly.
The Dialogue Group set the goal of resolving the Agent Orange/Dioxin legacy within the larger frame of improving the bilateral relationship between America and Vietnam.
The Group identified five priorities:
1. Expanded services to people with disabilities
2. Public education in the US
3. Dioxin remediation at Da Nang airport
4. Landscape restoration across Vietnam’s affected regions
5. Establishment of a high resolution Dioxin Laboratory
Following on from President Bush’s 2006 visit in May 2007 the US Congress appropriated an initial three million dollars for cleanup and health programs.
Another three million dollars was appropriated in March 2009.
The funds were tiny in contrast to the estimates of need. And the US government’s funds were slow to disburse. Vietnamese agencies had many relevant programs and competent staff who knew their subject well. But
Instead of funding these agencies though, the US government disbursed its funds only through US organizations.
Following the Ford Foundation funded studies around Da Nang airport interim mitigation measures were implemented, also in 2007.
These included halting all fishing and agricultural activities on Sen Lake, capping of soils at the Former Mixing and Loading Area; and construction of structures to filter water runoff and contain transported sediments. Finally a permanent fence was constructed between the highly contaminated Sen Lake and nearby residential areas. In 2009, in an address to the American Public Health Association, Dr Bailey ramped up the rhetoric in an attempt to force a clear resolution.
His speech, titled “The Agent Orange Legacy”, noted that “Agent Orange was brought to Vietnam by the US military during the war to destroy enemy food crops and places of concealment.
“Daily spraying over the course of a decade destroyed forests over an area about the size of Massachusetts,” he told the audience. “There are still large areas in the mountains where no useful trees or crops will grow. “Agent Orange is a growing domestic issue in Vietnam,” Bailey declared. “The Vietnamese people have increased pressure on the government to clean up dioxin where it is still in the soil and especially to provide better healthcare and support for people exposed to Agent Orange.
“The major pieces of any solution need a further and deeper commitment from the US government with funds and technical assistance. The US government needs to be more ambitious in its pursuit of a solution.”
Bailey also reported that an environmental and human population study at Da Nang Airport conducted in that same year provided a more complete picture of dioxin contaminated areas, exposure pathways and affected populations.
The study showed that there were significant quantities of dioxin in soil samples analyzed from the former mixing, loading and storage areas at the north end of Da Nang Airport. The levels of concentration exceeded all international standards and guidelines.
Tilapia, the most common fish harvested from ponds at the Da Nang Airport showed dioxin concentrations well above international standards.
There were also elevated concentrations of dioxin found in the blood samples from people living north, east and west of the airport.
Fishermen and those working around Sen Lake, as well as workers at the airport, also showed elevated concentrations of dioxin in their blood.
Among the Sen Lake Workers, those earning a living from fishing for Tilapia had the highest median concentrations.
The highest concentrations were found in a 42-year-old male who harvested fish and plants from Sen Lake.
Bailey concluded his speech on the Agent Orange legacy by saying the challenge was to focus funds and expertise to ensure that people with disabilities could live with self-confidence, self-respect and be provided opportunities to maximize their capabilities.
Bailey called for a multi-year legislated commitment to reducing and removing the Agent Orange legacy of the Vietnam War.
Alongside the environmental cleanup this would require a significant increase in US funding for healthcare and other social services for people with disabilities.
In September 2011 Rotary International provided a grant of $20,000 to complete the funding of the $70,000 Dong Son piped water project. Dong Son is the site of the A Shau airbase, a former U.S. military installation which in 1999 the 10-80 Committee of the Ministry of Health and Hatfield Consultants identified as contaminated with dioxin.
In October 2011 Rotary hosted a major conference on Agent Orange and Addressing the Legacy of the War in Vietnam at the University of California/ Berkeley. The 160 participants cover all aspects of the Agent Orange legacy, with emphasis on “Ten Things You Can Do to Make Agent Orange History”.
Just before Christmas of 2011 President Barak Obama signed the
Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2012, which allocated $20 million for Agent Orange in Vietnam.
Of this total, $15 million was intended to complete the funding of the full remediation of the Da Nang airport dioxin hotspot, and to start on remediation at Bien Hoa and possibly other hotspots.
The balance of $5 million is for health/disabilities programs in areas of Vietnam that were targeted with Agent Orange or remain contaminated with dioxin.
In the lead-up to that historic day in August, 2012, the US – Vietnam Dialogue Group issued a number of key recommendations and declared: “The next five years will determine if all parties are on a trajectory that can reach that objective.
“2012 is a key pivot year.
“The last five years of progress in finding and pursuing real solutions have brought us to this auspicious time.
“The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has set in motion the destruction of the dioxin contaminating the soil at Da Nang airport, after joint scientific and technical review by both governments.
“USAID has dramatically increased its commitment to addressing the needs of people with disabilities, without regard to the causes of those disabilities.
“Most significantly, the US Congress has directed USAID to consult with the State Department, the Government of Vietnam and other interested parties to develop a comprehensive multi-year plan to address the Agent Orange/Dioxin issue. The Dialogue Group believes that the comprehensive plan should cover all aspects of the Agent Orange legacy and be scaled to five years – long enough to show results and contribute to the ambitious goals that the Government of Vietnam has set for itself – and yet short enough to be realistic.”
The Dialogue Group listed three major objectives:
1) To clean up dioxin at all remaining contaminated sites. As the clean-up of the three major sites moves forward, the remaining locations need to be prioritized and neutralized. In some, full remedial action will be required and in others, soft measures may complete the job. Additional data on possible pooling of dioxin in ponds and reservoirs may create fresh priorities.
2) To upgrade social services for people with disabilities. Model programs will need to be tested and significantly expanded to reach those families most in need. Health care should include prenatal
information and services, a system for maternal surveillance and screening monitoring of child development and early childhood intervention.
3) To increase the productivity of damaged landscapes. Training courses for forest managers, technical staff and farmers should be greatly expanded in areas with severely degraded lands.
This was also an opportunity to advance disability rights, augment the professional managerial skills of local partners, conduct local research studies, create new funding mechanisms and enhance public awareness in both the US and Vietnam, the report argued.
It also suggested that $100 million should be spent on cleaning up dioxin contaminated soils and $200 million expanding services to people with disabilities over the following five years.
US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, on an official mid-year visit in 2012 preceding the Da Nang launch, was the first senior American politician to ever utter the words “Agent Orange” in public.
Clinton declared that she had “worked very hard to make sure that the United States is addressing the Agent Orange issue. It is a legacy issue that we are - we remain concerned about, and we have increased our financial commitment to dealing with it.”
The US Secretary of State also raised the issue of long term planning so both countries could address the issue in the following years; as well as the need to involve the private sector in remediation efforts.
Of Clinton’s acknowledgement of the Agent Orange issue Dr Bailey said: “This represented a change in US government approach from a problem to be managed to an opportunity to be grasped, to clean up hotspots, deal with damaged landscapes, deal with disabilities and put this behind us. Clinton’s speech marked quite a sea change in a relatively short time.
During the colourful ceremony at Da Nang airport two months later US Ambassador to Vietnam David Shear described that August day as an “historic milestone”. He said both America and Vietnam were “moving earth and taking first steps to bury the legacies of our pasts”.
“We’re cleaning up this mess,” he declared. “I look forward to even more successes to follow.”
Shear claimed that by the time the cleanup was finished in late 2016 the soil would be safe for industrial, commercial, and residential uses according to Vietnamese government standards as well as U.S. government standards for dioxin cleanup sites in the United States.
“Today’s milestone is both an acknowledgement of our painful past as well as, in the words of Secretary Clinton during her October 2010 visit to Vietnam, ‘a sign of the more hopeful future we are building together.’
“It demonstrates the astounding trajectory of cooperation our two countries have enjoyed since beginning diplomatic relations only seventeen years ago.
As these efforts move forward, resources and expertise from the private sector will be crucial to bolster this assistance. The work of private foundations like the Atlantic Philanthropies, Ford Foundation, Gates Foundation, and Rockefeller Foundation complements our work with UN agencies and foreign government partners.“
Dr Bailey said unlike many vaguely focused international projects, Agent Orange was a humanitarian story with a beginning, middle and end.
“Much progress has been made,” Bailey says. “We are a far cry from even five years ago. People are startled to learn that Agent Orange is a current problem, but there is a realization that America has a responsibility.
“Da Nang was particularly important and of interest to news reporters.
“It is a ground breaking joint effort.
“For Congress the estimated cost of $450 million cost is virtually a budgetary rounding figure,” he says. “I was taught as a child to clean up my own mess. We did not intend to create this problem but we have a responsibility as a nation to fix it. To do so is good for America, good, obviously, for Vietnam and good for the bilateral relationship.”
About Dr Charles Bailey
Charles Bailey is the Director of the Aspen Institute Agent Orange in Vietnam Program. He has worked on solving the lingering problems related to dioxin contamination in Vietnam for the last 14 years, from when he first went to Vietnam to head the Ford Foundation’s program there. The Aspen Institute's Agent Orange in Vietnam Program (AOVP) is a multi-year project to help Americans and Vietnamese address the continuing health and environmental impact of herbicides sprayed in Vietnam during the war. The program promotes dialogue on solutions to the continuing impact of the wartime use of herbicides in Vietnam. The program provides the U.S. secretariat for the bi-national US-Vietnam Dialogue Group on Agent Orange/Dioxin <http://www.aspeninstitute.org/policy-work/agent-orange/ us-vietnam-dialogue-group-agent-orange/dioxin> and manages the Agent Orange in Vietnam Fund supporting model projects benefiting people with disabilities in Vietnam.
Before coming to Aspen in May of 2011, Charles Bailey was one of the Ford Foundation's most experienced grant makers. Over three decades, he has worked in Asia, Africa and the United States, beginning with assignments in New Delhi, Cairo and Khartoum. Thereafter, he served in Dhaka as the Ford Foundation's representative for Bangladesh and in Nairobi as representative for Eastern and Southern Africa. He was representative for Vietnam and Thailand from 1997 to 2007. In 2011, he received the Vietnam Order of Friendship medal, the highest honor accorded by the government of Vietnam to non-citizens. This citation from the President of Vietnam recognizes his contributions during ten years as the Ford Foundation’s representative in Vietnam.
Charles Bailey has a PhD. in agricultural economics from Cornell University and a Master's degree in public policy from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. He received a bachelor's degree from Swarthmore College and then joined the Peace Corps in Nepal where he taught high school.
About the Author
The first money John Stapleton ever made out of writing was in 1972 when he was co-winner of Australia’s leading cultural celebration the Adelaide Arts Festival’s Short Story Competition. The amount of $75 seemed like a windfall at the time and opened his eyes to the fact he could make money out of what he liked to do the most – that is to write.
He graduated in1975 with a double major in philosophy and anthropology from Macquarie University and did post-graduate work in the Sociology Department at Flinders University.
His articles and fiction have appeared in a wide range of magazines, newspapers and anthologies Men Love Sex, a collection of short stories which briefly topped Australia’s bestseller lists, as well as Australian Politics, a collection of profiles and analyses by journalists from The Australian newspaper.
After a long period as either a contributor or doing casual shifts as a reporter, Stapleton joined the staff of The Sydney Morning Herald in the mid-1980s. He later joined the staff of The Australian.
As a general news reporter in Sydney John Stapleton, or “Stapo” as he was universally known, covered literally thousands of stories, from the funerals of bikies, children and dignitaries to fires, floods, droughts, from the demonstrations of inner-city worthies concerned over the plight of refugees to the sad and pointless deaths of youth in the city’s impoverished housing estates.
In 2000 he joined a small group of separated dads at the community radio station 2GLF in western Sydney as a volunteer, thereby helping to found Dads On The Air, now the world’s longest running radio program dedicated to fatherhood issues.
After finishing full time work, since 2010 Stapleton has been traveling in Asia. During the first few years following his retirement from the demands of day to day journalism he has written several books, a movie script and founded A Sense of Place Publishing.
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