Short Takes

Five million dollars for research to develop definitive methodologies to describe the exposure of Vietnam veterans to Agent Orange and other herbicides used in Vietnam has been awarded to Columbia School of Public Health (CSPH) by the National Academy of Sciences’ institute of Medicine. CSPH associate Professor Jeanne Mager Stellman, Ph.D., a scientist and occupational and environmental health expert with a long-time interest in veterans’ exposure to Agent Orange, will be the principal investigator.

Involved in the Agent Orange issue for more than two decades, Stellman’s three-year study of patterns of herbicide exposure in Vietnam will take her from database to laboratory. The research, five projects in all, will range from gathering data that will pinpoint troop and spraying locations to analyzing blood serum for the presence of dioxin biomarkers, the “fingerprints” of exposure left by the chemical.

“We’re tremendously excited about the opportunity to link military records, veterans’ recall and even tissue samples from Vietnam citizens, which we can obtain through the French-based international Agency for Research on Cancer. We’ve been proposing this project for years and we are so pleased that the National Academy of Sciences has determined that the work should be done,” said Stellman, who has collaborated for many years on this work with her husband, epidemiologist Steven Stellman, Ph.D.

Estimating the exposure of Vietnam veterans is particularly difficult because individual experiences, and the potential for exposure to herbicides like Agent Orange, might vary according to job assignment, military unit of service, rank and branch of service and even local food consumption. The Stellman methodology should help overcome these obstacles.

“This study promises to make a major contribution to resolving what has been a poorly understood problem among Vietnam veterans. Accurately characterizing veterans’ exposure to Agent Orange may help researchers understand which groups of veterans are most at risk for health problems,” said CSPH Dean Allan Rosenfield, M.D.

The study was prompted by a finding in the 1994 National Academy of Sciences report “Veterans and Agent Orange” that the severe lack of information about the wartime exposure of Vietnam veterans to herbicides had hampered attempts to study the effects of that exposure on veterans’ health. Under a grant from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the Academy convened a panel of exposure assessment experts who reviewed research proposals addressing the issue submitted by interested scientists. That panel unanimously concluded that the proposal developed by Stellman and her research team merited funding. “Our committee was impressed by Dr. Stellman’s proposal and looks forward to seeing the results of her work,” said panel chair David Hoel, Ph.D., of the Medical University of South Carolina.