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If it wasn’t bad enough to spend a million taxpayer dollars per minute on instruments of death, the US military is also in a league by itself when it comes to pollution. Lethal weapons from start to finish. “The U.S. Department of Defense is the largest polluter in the world, producing more hazardous waste than the five largest U.S. chemical companies combined,” writes Lucinda Marshall, founder of the Feminist Peace Network. “The types of hazardous wastes used by the military include pesticides and defoliants like Agent Orange.”
Jacob Silverman of HowStuffWorks.com adds: “In war, sometimes the greatest tragedies come long after hostilities cease. So it goes with Agent Orange, a potent herbicide used as a defoliant during the Vietnam War. The U.S. military deployed almost 20 million gallons of herbicides from 1962 to 1971. Among these substances, Agent Orange was the most used herbicide, around 11 million gallons deployed from January 1965 through April 1970.
Agent Orange has been linked to many health problems in Vietnam veterans and Vietnamese civilians.” “In the U.S., one out of every ten Americans lives within ten miles of a military site that has been listed as a Superfund priority cleanup site,” says Marshall. “The health problems that have been documented as being attributable to these various toxins in military use include miscarriages, low birth weight, birth defects, kidney disease and cancer. Military pollution most directly affects those who are targeted by our weapons, soldiers and anyone living near a military base, both in the U.S. and abroad.”
Related Posts:
Green Glossary: Gulf War Syndrome
Military Base Harmed By Own Bullets
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