Agent Orange in Ontario
From the Toronto Star Feb 17 > http://tinyurl.com/48lpr5u
Agent Orange "soaked" Ontario teens
Quotes:
Aerial spraying programs were considered a cheap, fast and effective way to alter the landscape of Ontario's forests for maximum profit. Timber companies and the government worked together to increase the output of money-making trees like white and black spruce while culling nearly everything else that got in their way.
In the mid-1960s, Spruce Falls held about 4 million acres of forest land under lease from the Ontario government and owned an additional 180,000 acres. The incomplete documents don't provide a total number of acres sprayed.
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"We can acknowledge that a mixture of 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T under various brand names were used in Ontario," ministry spokesman Greg MacNeil wrote the Star in an email.
"If it's got 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D as a mixture, it's Agent Orange and it has dioxin - I guarantee it," said Dwernychuk, who recently retired as chief scientist from Vancouver-based Hatfield Consultants.
Medical studies have determined the type of dioxin found in Agent Orange latches on to fat cells and can remain in the body for decades. Exposure may lead to skin disorders, liver problems, certain types of cancers and impaired immune, endocrine and reproductive functions.
The U.S. military stopped using Agent Orange in 1970 after a study for the National Institutes of Health showed that the dioxin-tainted 2,4,5-T caused birth defects in laboratory animals. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs now recognizes more than 50 diseases and medical conditions associated with exposure.
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[Former forestry worker] David Buchanan always wondered what was inside the 45-gallon oil drums he worked with as a 15-year-old at Spruce Falls Power and Paper Company in 1964.
"Even then, it didn't seem right," said Buchanan, now a 61-year-old dentist in Sackville, N.S., who has suffered from a series of illnesses doctors couldn't diagnose. Body-covering hives. Persistent bouts of dizziness. A sperm count so low he couldn't have children.
Noah - no escape from Agent Orange for the forestry industry workers in Ontario!! They were holding helium balloons on fishing line, used as markers for the airplanes. They were soaked in the stuff.
Agent Orange causes over 50 "diseases and medical conditions". The ones used to determine compensation in the New Brunswick cases [the US military tested Agent Orange there in the 1960s] include:
chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL)
soft tissue sarcoma
non-Hodgkin's lymphoma
Hodgkin's disease
chloracne
respiratory cancer (of the lung/bronchus, larynx or trachea)
prostate cancer
multiple myeloma
early onset transient peripheral neuropathy
porphyria cutanea tarda
type 2 diabetes
spina bifida
bladder problems
Agent Orange also causes various birth defects.
When it comes to health effects from man-made chemical toxins the authorities do not admit anything until the facts go public.
So this is good news that the use of Agent Orange in Canada is being admitted, finally. We are starting to get the facts now. The link between man-made chemical compounds and health problems is being made.
There are a lot of health problems that have not been easily linked to a cause. "Modern illnesses", things that were never issues 100 years ago, or never seen until recently, are possibly ALL due to man-made chemical toxins. The human race has produced about 80,000 new chemical compounds in the past 100 years, most of them never tested for health effects.
Denials, or accusations of "it is all in your head", have been working well for the chemicals and medical industries to deny their responsibility to treat victims so far. [the medical industry is closely associated with the chemicals industry in that pharmaceuticals are mostly man-made chemical compounds].
I can see why nobody relied - it is not contentious.... but I can make it so:
"Anyone with the typical symptoms of pesticide poisening, and who are disabled by those symptoms, should be compensated for the lost wages they would have otherwise earned, and for their suffering"
Of course, that would amount to a lot of money and would break the chemical companies, or the government, whoever pays it.
But it would be fair.
New Democrats push for federal action on Agent Orange
“I have spoken with family members of hydro and forestry workers who have suffered cancers, miscarriages and birth defects from exposure to Agent Orange in Northern Ontario,” said Timmins-James Bay MP Charlie Angus. “We now learn that between 1955 and 1974, while working at rural and regional airports in Northern Ontario, employees were expected to mix and spray the chemicals without protective clothing. “
During question period in the House of Commons today, New Democrat Carol Hughes (Algoma-Manitoulin-Kapuskasing) joined Angus in asking the federal government to release all documents pertaining to the use of Agent Orange at federal airports and other federal operations.
“The fact that government officials have been aware that workers, families and entire communities were poisoned and yet have chosen to keep silent is devastating,” said Hughes. “The government must tell the truth. We need to know where, when and how much of this dangerous chemical was used.”
Feds still not adequately compensating the victims of Agent Orange use by the Department of National Defence, says Angus.
"Adequate compensation" is a difficult figure to arrive at. Lifetime earnings lost I suppose, but what do we give for pain and suffering in Canada? Loss of health is not worth it at any price, absolutely not - you can earn the money back but deteriorating health from toxins is a one way street pretty much.
There is also the "bank busting precedent" concern. A lot of people have been exposed to chemicals, and some of them are disabled, many do not know WHY for sure. If we ever learn to diagnose toxin-related illness instead of deny it exists, the numbers of claimants could be huge.
It was everywhere...
In the countryside in Alberta in summer the farmer's herbicide drift is hitting pretty well everyone outside the city.
I worked a few summers on County and Provincial crews putting up fenceline, and there would be spraying going on here and there. A dozen boys from our little town did.
City [town] crews were spraying the empty lots, everyone got some!!
Drift - where the airborn droplets do not fall on the target area but land somewhere else - was never much of a concern in the 60s and 70s - allowable wind speed for spraying has been going down over the years - they didn't realise how far just a 10 mile and hour wind will take some of the spray.
Back in the day, some of that spray used by government crews and farmers to control weeds and kill vegitation might have been pretty similar to AO, and most of the pesticides and herbicides used to do big jobs have similar health concerns anyhow.
Some cases are pretty obvious - they were made ill by herbicides. Others, not so easy to say.
If the stoogeaucracy drags their feet long enough, and our two oldest political parties wrote the book on doing just that, victims will die off saving government all kinds of money that could be put to better use, like corporate welfare handouts to profitable companies and banks. Tories and Liberals tend to act PDQ when it comes to doling out billions of dollars to rich friends of the party. But they generally have to be dragged kicking and screaming when it comes to compensating victims of their own corporate stoogery.
Like Ottawa's tainted blood scandal, I think Canadian victims of agent orange poisoning are in a race against time. They've prolly got number crunchers figuring out when would be the cheapest time to act if at all, and even then only at a bare minimum. The longer they wait the more they will be guilty of murder and gross dereliction of duty as so-called leaders of the country. They needed cleaning out of Ottawa about 75 years ago.
So right Fidel. Today I read that Revenue Canada is going to forgive $20 million in taxes owing by a tobacco company known as "GVA". On the other hand, I am sure there will be plenty resistance to giving compensation to people harmed by the use of Agent Orange in Canada.
Meanwhile, there is more news on AO, Agent Orange: "Airports in northern Ontario were using AO from 1955 to 1974."
The NDP is asking the federal government to release all information they have on Agent Orange use in Canada at federal airports and other facilities. [The Red Neck Right still believes that "approved chemicals" cannot harm anyone, but they still resist any investigations into it.]
The fact is that "family members of hydro and forestry workers who have suffered cancers, miscarriages and birth defects from exposure to Agent Orange in Northern Ontario". The evidence is too obvious to deny anymore.
[note - "Agent Orange" is just a brand name, and it was not specifically the brand of this particular chemical mix that was used in Canada, but for sure it is the same stuff chemically]