Book review: Dr. Alvin Young's "The History, Use, Disposition and Environmental Fate of Agent Orange"

 Dr. Jeannie Stellman strongly supported our argument that C-123 veterans were
exposed to Agent Orange residue in our aircraft. Besides her presentation at the
June 2014 Institute of Medicine hearing, she co-authored a scientific analysis of
the C-123 contamination. Here Dr. Stellman reviews Dr. Alvin Young's extensive
publication on Agent Orange.

Perhaps the best summary of his book is her simple, short sentence: "Science also
seems to have ended in the 1970s and early 1980s for Young."

Environ Health Perspect. 2010 Jun; 118(6): A266.

PMCID: PMC2898884

Book Review

The History, Use, Disposition and Environmental Fate of Agent Orange

Reviewed by Jeanne M. Stellman and Steven D. Stellman

By Alvin L. Young, New York:Springer, 2009. 339 pp. ISBN: 978-0-387-87485-2, $99  

Author information ► Copyright and License information ►

It has been nearly 50 years since the United States initiated a military operation that sprayed approximately 20 million gallons of phenoxy herbicides and arsenicals on South Vietnam including Agent Orange, a formulation that was contaminated with dioxin. Alvin Young has been a major player in measuring and monitoring these herbicides since the 1960s. Retired from the Air Force (AF) and now receiving support from the herbicide manufacturers Dow and Monsanto, Young remains a governmental spokesman in post-conflict remediation dealings with Vietnam. His “new” book on the issue—actually, a largely unacknowledged compilation of his and others’ writing and research—contains some valuable information. This value though, must be weighed against a number of serious deficiencies in scholarship.

Young’s book contains a gold mine of data on the herbicides, some of which have been out of public view until now. But caveat emptor: Page after page of text and many illustrations and photographs are taken directly from Young’s prior publications without proper citation. There are also many lengthy direct quotations from other authors that appear without quotation marks or indents. Setting aside issues of copyright, the difficulty for users who wish to cite this book’s contents will be the absolute requirement of locating all references to distinguish original from reproduced text.

A second caveat: Many quotations are taken out of context, emphasis has been added without acknowledgement, and other authors’ work has in some cases been misinterpreted. For example, Major General John Murray—who evaluated military records aspects of the now abandoned Agent Orange Study—is quoted as seeming to urge abandonment of all military records–based studies with Young’s emphasis-added, capitalized, and boldfaced “NOT.” A check in the source material, though, will show that Murray’s very next sentence reads “It is, of course, understood that eight (8) other studies which require determinations of the likelihood of Agent Orange exposure conducted by the Veterans Administration and for which the Joint Services Environmental Support Group will provide exposure determinations and military record abstractions will rigorously continue” (Murray JE. 1986. Report to the White House Agent Orange Working Group Science Subpanel on Exposure Assessment. Washington DC:Office of Science and Technology Policy). Palmer’s work is cited as supporting the notion that science cannot contribute to understanding health effects of Agent Orange, because there are too many “quality of life issues.” A check of source material (Palmer MG. 2005. The Legacy of Agent Orange: Empirical Evidence from Central Vietnam. Soc Sci Med 60:1061–1070) reveals that Palmer did not say this; further, the year of his paper is incorrectly cited.

More recently, Young has proposed a new theory to support his contention that no U.S. troops were directly sprayed upon. He asserts that because there were no reports of U.S. casualties resulting from attacks by the fighter planes that escorted the spray planes, no troops could have been in harm’s way, and he cites Flanagan, a retired AF pilot who wrote of his varied experiences in Vietnam. In fact, Flanagan’s description of a spray mission disparages the Army recordkeeping on which Young relies: “Failure was never recognized … friendly casualties could be failures, but they, too, were never identified” (Flanagan JF. 1992. Vietnam Above The Treetops: A Forward Air Controller Reports. New York:Praeger).

In the interest of full disclosure, Young describes our methodology for updating and correcting herbicide spray records as demonstrating a “woeful lack of understanding” of AF reporting procedures. We must point out in response that our work (Stellman JM, Stellman SD. 2003. Characterizing Exposure of Veterans to Agent Orange and Other Herbicides Used in Vietnam: Final Report. Washington, DC:National Academies Press) was performed in collaboration with the persons at the Department of Defense (DoD) who were the most knowledgeable about these procedures—the Center for Research on Unit Records—and co-authored by Col. Christian (retired), former director of the DoD Joint Services Environmental Support Group. Young discounts the ability of spray plane navigators to know where they were or pilots to accurately spray their targets—thereby dismissing the utility of the voluminous spray records available, despite much evidence to the contrary.

Some assertions in the book either are disingenuous or contradict Young’s earlier work.

C-123 Veterans Presentation to Institute of Medicine 16 January 2013

Fellow C-123 Veterans:

Opportunity: Friday I was informed by the Institute of Medicine, Agent Orange Committee (part of the National Academy of Sciences) that C-123 veterans have been scheduled for a brief afternoon presentation to the Committee to discuss C-123 Agent Orange contamination.

Background: Congress set up a process in which the VA must consider findings of the Institute of Medicine regarding Agent Orange issues. While their meeting on 16 January does not directly deal with our airplanes, it is our chance to bring the lingering contamination and the VA's stonewalling of our claims to their very public forum.

Under Secretary Allison Hickey

Many of the scientists who have weighed on to support us are well-known to the Committee. These scientists' letter of 29 November to the VA's Under Secretary for Benefits General Hickey firmly reenforced the basis for our VA claims, in particular the input from Dr. Jeanne Stellman, Professor Emerita at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.

Dr. Stellman has been a firm supporter of C-123 veterans for this past year, ever since her first independent expert review of the many Air Force tests on Patches and other aircraft. Although the young scientists assigned by the VA to refuse our claims have tried to dismiss Dr. Stellman's findings, the Institute of Medicine knows her very, very well. Her work is cited throughout many of their reports, she has appeared as an exert witness many times, and has also been contracted to do many research projects on Agent Orange as used during the Vietnam War. Conclusion: she knows her stuff and blows away the VA's wonks...they just don't know it! Interesting that none of the VA scientists are cited in these reports. On the other hand, Dr. Stellman and the other experts (from other federal agencies as well as numerous universities) are perfectly objective as scientists and physicians, they have studied the C-123 exposure issue, formed their opinions, which are in favor of the veterans, and they defend that position (and us!) mightily. The only possible response from the VA is to ignore the letter, of course. No surprise. One gets the impression the VA respects only those experts employed by them, whose job it is to construct barriers to veterans' claims. 

Request: We need a volunteer speaker!

We continue to seek venues such as this with the IOM to set right our unfortunate situation - we've been exposed and nothing will change that, yet our duty remains getting our veterans essential care for the typical Agent Orange ailments confronting us. Our Association is looking for one of our vets in the Irvine area to represent us at the University of California meeting on January 16, 2013. If we don't find a "volunteer", I'll do it, flying there from Denver where we're vacationing with our kids. If one of you airline-types can still fit onto a jump seat, want to take this on and save me the airfare? I'll do an outline if you wish, and even text the entire presentation - the IOM has offered to print and distribute to the Committee for us, and place it into their conference records.

Let me know...I have to get my flight and hotel reservation if nobody signs up to volunteer.

Christmas suddenly and horribly changed for so many Connecticut families in Newtown. God bless and keep them all. 

Peace.

USAF C-123 Report Disputed! Key Evidence Reexamined!

USAFSAM C-123 Report

The May 2012 USAF School of Aerospace Medicine (USAFSAM) C-123 report, completed after several months of C-123 literature review and focused on the Agent Orange contamination so much of concern to veterans, has several fatal flaws.

Basically the report failed to confirm whether the C-123 contamination left veterans exposed. For some reason and without further foundation, the report then went on to state veterans were very unlikely to have been exposed.

Veterans who've been insisting we were exposed aboard the C-123 were quick to note that the report tried to focus on the 1994 Porter/Weisman toxicological survey of Tail #362 (Patches) at the Air Force Museum which the veterans had held up as proof of our exposure. That survey seemed quite clear - "heavily contaminated on all surfaces." The survey also directed that all personnel wear HAZMAT protection, so severe was the threat of dioxin exposure. These points and others seemed, to the veterans, adequate proof that Patches and the other C-123s were contaminated. These points were adequate proof that, since we flew in NOMEX flight suits and not HAZMAT protection from the dioxin,  we were in fact exposed.

Not so, said the report. In a twisted effort to prevent allowing the veterans to claim exposure, the USAF School of Aerospace Medicine insisted that Weisman/Porter applied to museum restoration workers only. USAFSAM insisted that the tasks of museum restoration workers could lead to dioxin exposure but somehow - the work of aerial port, maintenance and aircrew wouldn't.

So, the veterans looked at the kind of work done by restoration workers, and even sought advice about such activities from experts at the Museum of the United States Air Force and restoration workers at the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville Oregon, home of the famous Spruce Goose and dozens of other aircraft.

But the tasks are virtually identical! Grinding, loading, unloading, painting, welding, scraping, corrosion control. assembly, disassembly, and so forth. The veterans did many more activities, all of which further exposed them to the C-123 dioxin residue. In fact, the Porter/Weisman report clearly proves that veterans were exposed! And remember - veterans were exposed much longer than restoration workers who finished their tasks quickly, and veterans were exposed to dioxin which was far "fresher" during our decade of flight than in 1994 when Porter/Weisman was completed. Several senior NCOs and officers provided sworn statements that effect.

The questions must arise - why was the USAFSAM report seemingly so thorough, yet so flawed?

 1. The first obvious answer is that the Air Force, having discovered a situation in 1994 concerning exposure of veterans 1972-1982, had failed to inform the veterans we'd been exposed. Instead, in 1996 and just two years after the Museum survey, the Air Force Office of Environmental Law directed all information about C-123 Agent Orange contamination be kept "in official channels only, 

2. The second answer is that some C-123s had already been sold to Walt Disney Films, and the Air Force would have been embarrassed with that becoming widely known. 

3. The third answer is that many contaminated C-123s had been sold by the Air Force Security Assistance Center to Thailand and South Korea, thus potential embarrassment  to the USAF and the State Department.  Contemporary memos stressed the political implications and the need to minimize publicity about the contamination.

4. The USAF and Office of Secretary of Defense were sensitive to the public concern raised by an article by Prof Ben Quick which addressed the C-123 contamination.  The USAF and Office of Secretary of Defense corresponded frequently about the need to destroy the stored C-123s and do do so quietly, with carefully worded press releases in the event the destruction became known, because C-123 veterans might learn about their exposure and seek VA benefits. It is highly inappropriate for the government to take any such action which would in any way keep veterans from seeking VA service-connected medical care. The words "cover up" come to mind but clumsy would be a better description of the secret C-123 destruction issue.

 5.  Learning of the C-123 dioxin contamination, the USAF acted to cancel private sales but already planes had been sold. Dr. Ron Porter, a USAF toxicology expert had to testify in a federal court to confirm the "hazardous" surfaces and the need for personnel to wear HAZMAT protection in the USAF Museum. Dr. Ron Porter testified under oath confirming the dioxin contamination of the C-123 was, as per his Porter/Weisman survey, hazardous to the public. He made no reference as to his survey applying only to USAF museum staff.

6.  The USAFSAM C-123 report report failed to reference many current documents and opinions, such as from Dr. Jeanie Stellman, Dr. Ron Porter, Dr. Joe Goeppner and others. The  USAFSAM report cited, in several cases, research reports over thirty years old.

7. In an incredulous statement, USAFSAM reported that, even if the C-123 was contaminated, veterans weren't likely to be exposed. That statement is doubly-flawed. In all previous situations government agencies have basically concluded that measurable contamination equals exposure via one or more of the exposure pathways (ingestion, inhalation, dermal contact). In this report, however, USAF implies a point above which exposure occurs and at that point and below, no harm results from that exposure. The statement is further flawed in concluding veterans weren't exposed, and fails to weigh properly the Army TG312 and the CDC/ATSDR findings that the aircraft contamination of dioxin exceeded both US domestic as well as international standards. The C-123 was also contaminated past the safe reentry standards set by the State of New York, relied on throughout all levels of government as a "gold standard."