View spraying missions in Vietnam by date and location
U.S. troops, Vietnamese nationals exposed to dangerous chemicals
By Jason Grotto, Chris Groskopf, Ryan Mark, Joe Germuska and Brian Boyer | Tribune staff
Dec. 4, 2009
The map below can be used to see defoliant spraying missions by U.S. and South Vietnamese forces over Vietnam, as well as Laos and Cambodia. The missions began in summer 1961 and ended more than a decade later, in spring 1971.
Clicking and dragging on the timeline at the bottom of the map lets you view the spraying missions as they took place over months and years. You also can zoom in on a particular town or area by entering its name in the search box. Once you have found the spraying missions you are looking for, you can click on the lines on the map to get more details about the missions, such as the number of legs, or runs, the number of gallons and the type of defoliant.
Read the Tribune series on Agent Orange and its toxic legacy.
Please note: Lines rendered on the map represent spraying runs, many of which are part of multi-run spraying missions. The quantity of herbicide listed in the map descriptions are per mission. Line width on the map is not an indicator of spray distribution. Herbicide quantity is not available for some missions.
This interactive map is based on the Herbicide Exposure Assessment-Vietnam database developed by Jeanne Stellman, professor emeritus at Columbia University's school of public health, and Columbia epidemiology professor Steven Stellman. They cleaned data from a 1974 National Academy of Sciences database and supplemented the records with documents from the National Archives. The database is considered the most comprehensive available on spraying missions. The effort was funded by a contract from the National Academy of Sciences to build an exposure model that could be used to assess the defoliants' health impact on U.S. veterans who served in Vietnam. The model has been evaluated twice by the Institute of Medicine, which recommended that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs use it to evaluate the chemicals' health impact. The VA has been testing the exposure model since 2003.