page_title: Rainbow Herbicides
section_title: Use
hierarchical_section_title: Rainbow Herbicides / Use
caption_attribution_description: English: Ho Chi Minh. Professor Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuong, at Tu Du Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital is pictured with a group of handicapped children, most of them victims of Agent Orange.Tiếng Việt: Bác sĩ Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Phượng cùng với những trẻ em nhiễm chất độc da cam, được chăm sóc tại Bệnh viện Phụ sản Từ Dũ.
context_page_description: The Rainbow Herbicides are a group of "tactical use" chemicals used by the United States military in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Success with Project AGILE field tests with herbicides in South Vietnam in 1961 and inspiration by the British use of herbicides and defoliants during the Malayan Emergency in the 1950s led to the formal herbicidal program Trail Dust. Herbicidal warfare is the use of substances primarily designed to destroy the plant-based ecosystem of an agricultural food production and/or to destroy foliage which provides the enemy cover.
context_section_description: In Vietnam, the early large-scale defoliation missions (1962-1964) used 8,208 gallons of Agent Green, 122,792 gallons of Pink, and 145,000 of Purple. These were dwarfed by the 11,712,860 gallons of Orange (both versions) used from 1965 to 1970. Agent White started to replace Orange in 1966; 5,239,853 gallons of White were used. The only agent used on a large scale in an anti-crop role was Blue, with 2,166,656 gallons used. The bombardment occurred most heavily in the area of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
  The Rainbow Herbicides damaged the ecosystems and cultivated lands of Vietnam, and led to buildup of dioxin in the regional food chain. About 4.8 million people were affected.
  In addition to testing and using the herbicides in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, the US military also tested the "Rainbow Herbicides" and many other chemical defoliants and herbicides in the US, Canada, Puerto Rico, Korea, India, and Thailand from the mid-1940s to the late 1960s.  Herbicide persistence studies of Agents Orange and White were conducted in the Philippines.  The Philippine herbicide test program which was conducted in cooperation with the University of the Philippines, College of Forestry and was also described in a 1969 issue of The Philippine Collegian, the college's newspaper. 
  Super or enhanced Agent Orange was tested by  representatives from Fort Detrick and Dow chemical in Texas, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii and later in Malaysia in a cooperative project with the International Rubber Research Institute.  Picloram in Agent White and Super-Orange was contaminated by Hexachlorobenzene (HCB) a dioxin-like carcinogen. The Canadian government also tested these herbicides and used them to clear vegetation for artillery training.
  A 2003 study in Nature found that the military underreported its use of rainbow herbicides by 2,493,792 U.S. gallons.
caption: Professor Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuong, at Từ Dũ Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital is pictured with a group of handicapped children, most of them victims of Agent Orange.
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