WASHINGTON — The health of some U.S. Air Force reservists could have been put at risk from the residue left in planes that sprayed Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, the Institute of Medicine reported Friday.
There's not much data about the level of contamination, but limited testing years later make it plausible that some reservists exceeded guidelines for exposure to the toxins in the defoliant, the report concluded.
At issue are 24 C-123 planes that, after the military stopped spraying Agent Orange, went on to be used by Air Force reserve units for such things as medical and cargo transport. About 1,500 to 2,100 personnel trained and worked on them between 1972 and 1982. Later, some reservists blamed cancer and other illnesses on residues left in the planes, but they were denied disability claims if they did not serve in Vietnam.
Friday's report, requested by the Department of Veterans Affairs, did not address disability policy but could influence future claims.
A committee of the institute, an independent agency that advises the government on health, examined the results of some air and surface tests taken for dioxin and herbicides in the planes between 1979 and 2009. The report stressed that there's little data, and little information about the reservists' activities on the planes.
But because chemical residues were found on interior surfaces, the reservists had some exposure, the committee decided, rejecting assertions that the dried material couldn't have spread. Some levels were in a range that international guidelines say merits "cautionary consideration," the panel said.
"Levels at the time of their exposure would have been at least as high as the taken measurements, and quite possibly, considerably higher," committee chairman Robert Herrick of the Harvard School of Public Health said in a statement Friday.
Put together, the available data "supports the expectation that the health of some of the personnel was adversely affected," the report said.
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