Agent Green

Agent Green is the code name for a powerful herbicide and defoliant used by the U.S. military in its Herbicidal Warfare program during the Vietnam War. The name comes from the green stripe painted on the barrels to identify the contents. It was one of the so-called "rainbow herbicides" that included the more infamous Agent Orange. Agent Green was only used between 1962 and 1964, during the early "testing" stages of the spraying program.

Agent Green was mixed with Agent Pink and used for crop destruction. A total of 20,000 gallons of Agent Green were procured.

Agent Green's only active ingredient was 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T), one of the common phenoxy herbicides of the era. It was later learned that a dioxin, 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-para-dioxin (TCDD), is produced as a side effect of the manufacture of 2,4,5-T, and was thus present in any of the herbicides that used it. Owing to Agent Green's consisting entirely of 2,4,5-T, along with the similar Agent Pink, it contained many times the level of dioxin found in Agent Orange.

The fungus Fusarium oxysporum is also referred to as Agent Green. “Agent Green” is a phrase currently used to refer to at least two different fungi, called “mycoherbicides.” The United States government wants to use these fungi in its “War on Drugs.” What they have in common is that they are both being promoted by the US-led United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP) as part of a global plan for the eradication of illicit crops. This plan is known by the name SCOPE (Strategy for Coca and Opium Poppy Elimination). In 1998 the UN General Assembly explicitly rejected SCOPE, but the UNDCP continues to support research into these biological agents with US financing.

The US denies the categorization of these organisms as “biological weapons,” preferring to call them “biological controls” and noting that under the United Nations’ Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention, they are legitimate if they are approved by the government of the land in which they are used.

The chemicals, such as “Agent Green” were used most infamously in Vietnam as a part of “Operation Ranch Hand.” Millions of people were effected and are being effected today. It is estimated that over a half of a million Vietnamese children have been born with birth defects that can be directly attributed to dioxin poisoning, dioxin being a prime contaminant of “Agent Green.”

During much of the fighting in the Vietnam War, chemical agents were used by the United States to defoliate the landscape. Although many different chemical agents were used, the most infamous was most decidedly “Agent Orange,” one of the “Rainbow Herbicides.”

See also

• Fusarium oxysporum
• Smilex