SILENT SPRING – DEADLY AUTUMN OF THE VIETNAM WAR - Synopsis Shortly after I had returned home from the Vietnam War, my father urged me to file a disability claim with the DVA for medical problems I had been experiencing. I began the process without much enthusiasm and quickly abandoned the effort. Little did I know that I wouldn’t re-visit my disability claims until over forty years later, when I watched President Barack Obama give a speech on the horrors of the Vietnam War and resolved to conduct extensive research into the health effects of tactical pesticides and the actions of the US government surrounding the use of these chemicals. My post-service medical problems began mildly enough, but these issues were soon followed by ulcerative colitis. In a few short years, I underwent multiple abdominal surgeries and suffered additional health problems and complications that led to my reluctant retirement from the police force in 1999. When I began my research in 2012, I would learn that Agent Orange, among several other military pesticides, was capable of impacting every system in my body and could very well be linked to my wide-ranging ailments. Exposure of Vietnam veterans to toxic chemicals was not limited to experiences abroad. Pesticide and toxic chemical pollution is a widespread problem within countless military bases. Although there have been numerous clean-up efforts over the years in response to appalling levels of contamination, current military and federal laws do not require rigorous, practical testing for hazardous chemicals found in many commonly used pesticides. After discussing various domestic and international exposure incidents, I present a breakdown of the main components, formulations, toxicity levels, and wide-ranging health effects of some of the most commonly used hazardous substances during the Vietnam War, including extensive discussions of rainbow insecticides and herbicides. Despite the uniqueness of Vietnam veterans and the extremely diverse range of hazardous chemicals to which they were exposed, the DVA insists on assessing our illnesses on the basis of civilian epidemiological studies, resulting in appallingly inadequate standards for evaluating toxic exposures during the war. By outlining the risk probability assessment process used by the EPA to evaluate Vietnam veterans' increased risk of health problems, I tie data outlined earlier in the book into a powerful argument that there is an extremely high probability that multiple pesticide exposures during the war have caused (and are continuing to cause) irreparable damage to veterans. I later discuss how government organizations and their affiliates, including the National Academy of Science (NAS), have long insisted that there is "inadequate or insufficient evidence" for a causal link between tactical pesticide exposure and health problems. I follow this with an explanation of the systemic effects of dioxin, one of the most significant toxins found in tactical pesticides used in the Vietnam War. A discussion of numerous cover-up efforts follows, revealing the extent of the outright negligence and self-serving denial demonstrated by the US government and chemical companies as they attempted to conceal the harmful effects of tactical pesticide components. I then discuss evidence that the research that has been conducted on these chemicals is no where close to representative of the effects of the noxious pesticide and chemical soups to which Vietnam veterans were exposed. The mountain of evidence presented in this book points to one common sense conclusion: Exposure to the tactical pesticides used in the Vietnam War is injurious to human health, and all of the personnel who served in-country at Cam Rahn and in many other areas of Vietnam were exposed to these chemicals. Despite this, the government still places the burden of proof on veterans who claim that they are suffering as a result of exposures during their service. This makes the Vietnam War "the largest unstudied environmental disaster in the world," in the words of Dr. Jeanne Stellman.