U.S.-Vietnam dioxin effort progresses

By Grant McCool

HANOI (Reuters) - Vietnamese military technicians have capped an area of a former U.S. military airport with concrete to stop dioxin or "agent orange" contaminating a lake, part of a joint project to deal with a bitter war legacy.

The measures taken in recent months at Danang in central Vietnam were temporary, but an important milestone, a group of prominent Vietnamese and Americans said on Friday.

Danang airport is one of three "hot spots" identified by scientists as having dioxin levels hundreds of times higher than would be accepted elsewhere. The others are Phu Cat in south-central Binh Dinh province and Bien Hoa in southern Dong Nai province.

"The rainwater is no longer taking dioxin from that soil and putting it into the lake where people are fishing," Walter Isaacson, president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, told a news conference in Hanoi.

Isaacson, a member of the U.S.-Vietnam Dialogue Group on Agent Orange/Dioxin which visited the site on Thursday, described a system of channels, filters and sediment tanks, and a carbon filter that takes dioxin out of the water.

The compound of dioxin is a component of "agent orange" toxic herbicides sprayed during the 1960s and 1970s war.

Its impact on human health is controversial. The U.S. maintains there is no scientifically proven link between the wartime spraying and the more than 3 million people Vietnam says were disabled by dioxin over three generations.

HIGHLY TOXIC