Maine questions safety of Agent Orange testing at Gagetown base

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Canada created a $95.6 million fund in 2007 to compensate its soldiers who may have been exposed to Agent Orange when American forces tested the product on a small scale at the Gagetown base. (File photo)

The Canadian Press

The Maine legislature has called for a new investigation into the&#x27 The use of herbicides, including Agent Orange, in the 1960s on a military base in southern New Brunswick, calling the Canadian study that did not ;#x27;found no risk to human health.

Potential links between health issues and use of Agent Orange at Gagetown base must be re-evaluated , says a report released in January by the ten-member Gagetown Harmful Chemicals Study Commission.

Report says new survey would help U.S. veterans access medical care if they worked in Gagetown where, in 1966 and 1967, the Army American has tested defoliants.

Herbicides such as Agent Orange were widely used in the 1960s by the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War to destroy the crops of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese.

The Maine commission's report says the data and analysis in the Canadian study are incorrect, biased and based, in some cases, on incomplete data and poor study design – sometimes exacerbated by the speed with which these reports had to be produced and published.

Furthermore, the reports and their underlying data are not widely available and accessible, compromising their scientific credibility and usefulness, the report reads .

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In addition, the study reports were published more 15 years and significant new knowledge about these chemicals, scientific methods, and human health related to Base Gagetown has since emerged and expanded.

The United States Department of Veterans Affairs has since recognized that some cancers are associated with exposure to herbicides such as & #x27;Agent Orange. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization, has classified one of the chemicals in Agent Orange as known to be carcinogenic to the human.

The Canadian government opened an investigation in 2005 into the effects of the use of Agent Orange in Gagetown between 1966 and 1967. Kened Sadiku, spokesperson for the Department of National Defense, says that the ;#x27;study, published in 2006, found that the levels of herbicides used at the base posed no risk to human health.

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Agent Orange, a highly toxic pesticide, was used on the Gagetown military base in New Brunswick in the 1960s. (File photo)

The results of this study concluded that, aside from the two trials conducted in 1966 and 1967, all herbicides used at the Gagetown base were regulated and used in accordance with all regulations federal and provincial governments and the scientific policies of the time, indicated Kened Sadiku in a written statement. Given the exhaustive nature of this report, no additional investigation is planned at this time.

However, as compensation for possible exposure to unregistered US herbicides at the Gagetown base, the Government of Canada paid eligible individuals $20,000.

A follow-up investigation was conducted in 2018 on behalf of the Canadian Armed Forces, near a former military site. Gagetown Base Waste Disposal. The site, approximately the size of 182 football fields, had been identified as an area of ​​interest by a retired military officer.

These results agree with those of previous investigations and confirm that this sector is not a former barrel landfill site and that none barrel of Agent Orange has been found to date at the Gagetown base, this follow-up investigation concluded.