The People vs. Agent Orange tracks ongoing activism against the aerial spraying of mutagenic herbicides over Oregon forests

Still from The People vs. Agent Orange documentary

In a new documentary, Dr. James Clary acknowledges in the first and only filmed interview he’s ever given that as a USAF officer and scientist in Vietnam “we knew” Agent Orange was toxic to humans. Film still by Dyanna Taylor

By Chuck Thompson. June 21, 2021. The toxic herbicide known as Agent Orange is most notoriously associated with the Vietnam War. Between 1962 and 1971, as part of Operation Ranch Hand, the U.S. Air Force sprayed as much as 20 million gallons over Vietnam and neighboring countries in an effort at mass deforestation and enemy food denial.

But the deadly, mutagenic poison “dioxin,” central to Agent Orange’s gruesome effectiveness, is still in wide use today, most indiscriminately by logging concerns as part of weed-killing herbicides sprayed over forests in Oregon, Washington and Idaho.

Meanwhile, chemical manufacturers such as Dow and Monsanto continue to evade criminal liability for the disease, birth defects and deaths their products spread.

This is the grim message of a powerful new documentary, The People vs. Agent Orange, which premiers June 28 (Monday) as part of PBS’ Independent Lens series.

 

“It’s a myth that the Agent Orange catastrophe is history,” say filmmakers Alan Adelson and Kate Tevarna. “Toxic herbicides are a pressing human health, environmental and civic challenge facing our society today.”

The film received the Organization of American Historians 2021 Erik Barnouw Award for outstanding programming.

Goliath still winning

The 90-minute documentary interweaves the story of two women central to citizen-led legal fights against chemical manufacturers of herbicides.

As a young woman during the Vietnam War, Tran To Nga was doused with Agent Orange; she’s suffered multiple horrific effects, including cancer and children with birth defects.

Still from The People vs. Agent Orange documentary

Oregon resident Carol Van Strum (left) and team scan thousands of chemical company documents collected over decades. They’re available on The Poison Papers and Toxic Docs websites. Photo by Risa F. Scott

Since the forests around her home in Lincoln County, Oregon, were continually sprayed with versions of the deadly toxin in the 1970s, Carol Van Strum has devoted her life to stopping the use of more than 750 herbicides the film says continue to spread the deadly legacy of Agent Orange around the Pacific Northwest and world.

Those who’ve been around Oregon long enough may be familiar with Van Strum’s story. She gained prominence in the 1970s and ‘80s as a founder of Citizens Against Toxic Spraying (C.A.T.S.), becoming the face of a legal battle that resulted in a dramatic but ultimately insufficient court victory over the U.S. government in a David and Goliath war Goliath continues to dominate.

“We have the right to protect all of our communities from being poisoned,” says Van Strum in a blunt summation of her work.

Both women have suffered unspeakable personal tragedies as a result of exposure to herbicides known as 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D, which when mixed form Agent Orange, so named for orange-colored markings on the barrels originally shipped to U.S. troops in Vietnam. The documentary lays out their stories in heartbreaking and sometimes graphic detail.

Yes, they’re still spraying

The People vs. Agent Orange is haunting. It’s impossible not to flinch from footage of severely deformed children in hospital wards.

Still from The People vs. Agent Orange documentary

This clandestine footage shot by a helicopter technician documents herbicide spraying on a rainy day in Oregon. The rain washes chemicals into nearby streams and a reservoir. Film still by Darryl Ivy

Undercover video of workers in 2015 spraying Oregon forests and watersheds with toxic herbicides is upsetting in a different way.

Timber companies employ helicopter pilots to spray herbicides on plantation forests to kill weeds, shrubs and other plants that compete with Douglas fir and other trees harvested by the industry.

At least according to court renderings, it’s been difficult for victims of herbicide spraying to establish a causal link between their maladies and the chemicals to which they were exposed against their will.

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Chemical makers have steadfastly denied culpability.

More maddening to litigants, institutions including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and even Oregon Sate University professors have consistently lined up with the corporations to testify that Agent Orange and its chemical spawn are “about as toxic as aspirin,” as one chemical industry flack smirkingly contends in the film.

It’d be nice to call The People vs. Agent Orange compelling history.

It’s partly that.

But as the opening scene of a group of contemporary picnickers at Douglas County, Oregon’s Swiftwater Park shows, the tragedy it documents is of a public that continues to be unwitting bystanders in a campaign of mass destruction that’s never actually ended.

The People vs. Agent Orange, June 28, PBS, Independent Lens

Chuck Thompson is editor of Columbia Insight.

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