I've attached the abstract from the webiste below this article. The full version cannot be accessed without a password If anyone can send us the PDF version, I would be happy to reposte it to others. Vern

Subject: [vnnews-l] Agent Orange: New Geographic Information System Tracks Military Herbicides

sent to vnnews-l by Stephen Denney sdenney@OCF.Berkeley.EDU

Copyright 2003 AScribe Inc. AScribe Newswire

March 18, 2003 Tuesday 9:16 AM Eastern Time

LENGTH: 644 words HEADLINE: New Geographic Information System Tracks Military Herbicides Used in Vietnam; System Studies Health Effects of Agent Orange 30 Years After Use by Modeling Military and Civilian Populations, Environmental Exposures BODY: NEW YORK, March 19 [AScribe Newswire] -- Between 1961 and 1971 U.S. military forces dispersed over 19 million gallons of herbicidal agents, including over 12 million gallons of Agent Orange, in the Republic of Vietnam. Millions of Vietnamese and a large number of the 3.2 million American men and women who served in the armed forces in Vietnam in areas defoliated by herbicides such as Agent Orange were exposed, but the health effects still are not fully known. Now, under contract to the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health have developed a geographic information system [GIS] to estimate these exposures by analyzing the relationships between herbicide spraying, geography, population, and troop location. Researchers now have a tool to pursue epidemiologic and environmental studies of exposed individuals, military units, and other entities whose health might be affected by spraying activities. Co-lead investigators of the study Jeanne M. Stellman, professor of clinical health policy and management, and Steven D. Stellman, professor of clinical epidemiology, both at the Mailman School, developed the powerful GIS tool that will allow researchers to generate a quantitative measure and, therefore, estimate and assign herbicide exposure opportunity scores to troops, locations, and individuals -- critical tools for epidemiologic investigations of health outcomes. What this means for individuals is that now both Vietnam veterans and residents can determine their proximity to herbicide sprays. With its unique user-friendly software package, called the Vietnam Herbicide Exposure Assessment System at the Mailman School, the relational GIS database system provides the ability to do otherwise complex exposure model calculations with rapid, straightforward arithmetic procedures. According to Dr. Jeanne Stellman, "In the case of exposure to herbicides in Vietnam -- which began 40 years ago and ended 30 years ago -- no other reliable measure is available for large scale epidemiologic studies. While Vietnam was not uniformly sprayed, patterns we see are sufficient to justify these studies on military and civilian populations as well as studies of environmental and ecologic damage." Dr. Steven Stellman observes, "Lack of data and exposure models no longer need to be the major impediments they have been in the past to research the health of Vietnam veterans and the Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian people." The complete findings of the study will be published in the March issue of Environmental Health Perspectives and summarized in the Environews Section. You can access the abstract online at http://ehponline.org/orange2003/ or at http://dx.doi.org/ via doi: 10.1289/ehp.5755 . The National Academy of Sciences, as contractors of the research, will be issuing a report to the Veterans Administration in late March 2003 with recommendations for next steps and continuing epidemiologic research on the effects of Agent Orange. About the Mailman School of Public Health The only accredited school of public health in New York City, and among the first in the nation, Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health provides instruction and research opportunities to more than 800 graduate students in pursuit of masters and doctoral degrees. Its students and over 200 multi-disciplinary faculty engage in research and service in the city, nation, and around the world, concentrating on biostatistics, environmental health sciences, epidemiology, health policy and management, population and family health, and sociomedical sciences. About EHP EHP is the journal of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. More information is available online at http://www.ehponline.org/.

CONTACT: Stephanie Berger, 212-305-4372, 212-305-5635; sb2247@columbia.edu

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A Geographic Information System for Characterizing Exposure to Agent Orange and Other Herbicides in Vietnam

Jeanne Mager Stellman,1 Steven D. Stellman,2,3 Tracy Weber,1 Carrie Tomasallo,1 Andrew B. Stellman,4 and Richard Christian, Jr.5

1Department of Health Policy and Management and 2Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA; 3Institute for Cancer Prevention, Valhalla, New York, USA; 4Foundation for Worker, Veteran, and Environmental Health, Inc., Brooklyn, NY, USA; 5Lt. Col. U.S. Army (retired) and former Director U.S. Army and Joint Services Environmental Support Group, Washington DC, USA

Abstract

Between 1961 and 1971, U.S. military forces dispersed more than 19 million gallons of phenoxy and other herbicidal agents in the Republic of Vietnam, including more than 12 million gallons of dioxin-contaminated Agent Orange, yet only comparatively limited epidemiologic and environmental research has been carried out on the distribution and health effects of this contamination. As part of a response to a National Academy of Sciences' request for development of exposure methodologies for carrying out epidemiologic research, a conceptual framework for estimating exposure opportunity to herbicides and a geographic information system (GIS) have been developed. The GIS is based on a relational database system that integrates extensive data resources on dispersal of herbicides (e.g., HERBS records of Ranch Hand aircraft flight paths, gallonage, and chemical agent), locations of military units and bases, dynamic movement of combat troops in Vietnam, and locations of civilian population centers. The GIS can provide a variety of proximity counts for exposure to 9,141 herbicide application missions. In addition, the GIS can be used to generate a quantitative exposure opportunity index that accounts for quantity of herbicide sprayed, distance, and environmental decay of a toxic factor such as dioxin, and is flexible enough to permit substitution of other mathematical exposure models by the user. The GIS thus provides a basis for estimation of herbicide exposure for use in large-scale epidemiologic studies. To facilitate widespread use of the GIS, a user-friendly software package was developed to permit researchers to assign exposure opportunity indexes to troops, locations, or individuals. Key words: Agent Orange, cacodylic acid, defoliants, 2,4-dichlorophenoxy acetic acid, exposure opportunity, geographic information system, GIS, herbicides, military, picloram, 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxy acetic acid, Vietnam. Environ Health Perspect 111:321-328 (2003). doi:10.1289/ehp.5755 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 1 November 2002]

Address correspondence to S.D. Stellman, Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, 630 West 168th Street - PH-18, New York, NY 10032 USA. Telephone: (212) 305-4911. Fax: (212) 305-9413. E-mail: sds91@columbia.edu

We gratefully acknowledge the efforts of D. Hakenson and the U.S. Armed Services Center for Research of Unit Records in development of many of the data resources, F. Benjamin for her assistance with military records, and N. Heim for illustrations. J.M.S. and S.D.S. contributed equally to the manuscript.

This work was supported by the National Academy of Sciences (subcontract NAS-VA-5124-98-001) and by U.S. Public Health Service grants CA-17613 and CA-68384.

Received 6 May 2002; accepted 26 July 2002.

Last Updated: February 19, 2002