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Agent Orange, high blood pressure linked Exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam may lead to high blood pressure in some veterans, but the evidence is limited and only suggestive, the Institute of Medicine said Friday. The IOM, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, has been studying the effects of the herbicide Agent Orange on veterans since the early 1990s, and is issuing its seventh update. Two recent studies of Vietnam veterans who handled Agent Orange and other defoliants indicated that these veterans have higher rates of high blood pressure, the report said. Hypertension affects 70 million American adults and is a major risk factor for heart attack and stroke. The new findings were consistant with other studiesthat looked at the health effects of herbicides. Howevere, a new environmental study and an earlier study of workers in a herbicide manufacturing plant did not find evidence of an association between herbicide or dioxin exposure and increased high blood pressure. Contaminated Milk in Vietnam If you drank milk in "Nam between 1965 and 1972 you ingested Agent Orange and a variety of other herbicide residues. As you may know, the Foremost Milk Company (now out of business in the US) based in Los Angeles held the DOD contract for the US military milk suplly in South East Asia. Before and after shipping packaged "finished milk' in its distinctive orange/white containers, Foremost shipped milk concentrate to 'Nam which was mixed with water. Unfortunately the water used was taken from the Saigon River which, DOD belatedly learned, was infested with herbicide drainage. Foremost USA went defunct sevarl years ago but Foremost Vietnam is still in operation. Milk became an essential export by the USG to Vietnam after 1967 after doctors in the States discovered they were treating large numbers of Vietnam vets suffering from gastroenteritis and other colon inflammatory illnesses due to lack of the enzyme used by the intestine to digest milk. If a person continues to drink milk their body will continue to produce the enzyme (kind of like a wet nurse who continues to manfacture breast mik for decades after giving birth as long as her milk continues to be suckled.) However, if a person stops drinking milk their body stops producing the enzyme. Because milk was not as available in 'Nam during America's early deployment thousands of Americans assigned to Vietnam gradually stopped producing the enzyme ... but when they returned back to The World the first thing they concumed in arge quantities was milk ... which made them sick because the could no longer adequately digest it. As a result, Foremost was contracted to ensure there was always a large supply of milk for GI's to consume. Unfortunately, the high demand resulted in its Vietnam production being mixed with tainted water. Hence, many American's who served in Vietnam but had no direct contact with herbicide distribution or deployed contracted the chemicals through the milk they drank. |
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