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Air Force reservists possibly exposed to Agent Orange from planes

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Between 1,500 and 2,100 U.S. Air Force reservists who trained and worked on C-123 cargo planes that were used during the Vietnam War to spread the toxic defoliant Agent Orange may have been exposed to potentially dangerous levels of the carcinogenic chemical, according to a new Institute of Medicine (IOM) report.

The IOM’s findings may influence how the Veterans Administration handles health and disability claims from the reservists, who worked on the planes between 1972 and 1982.

“Levels at the time of their exposure would have been at least as high as the taken measurements, and quite possibly, considerably higher,” said Robert Herrick, senior lecturer on industrial hygiene at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and chairman of the IOM committee that produced the report, in a Jan. 9, 2015 Associated Press article.