Skip to content What Agent Orange was
Agent Orange was one of several herbicides sprayed from US aircraft over Vietnam in Operation Ranch Hand, which ran from 1962 to 1971. The aim was to strip leaves from the forest that hid enemy troops and to destroy crops. It was named for the orange band on the drums that held it. The mixture was contaminated with dioxin (TCDD), a by-product of manufacturing that is toxic, persists for decades in soil and moves up the food chain through fish and animals.
The commonly cited total is about 20 to 21 million US gallons (roughly 76 to 79 million litres) of herbicides, sprayed over Vietnam, eastern Laos and Cambodia, with the heaviest spraying in 1967 to 1969. About 12 per cent of South Vietnam’s land area was sprayed. The war is covered on our Vietnam War page, and the other great hazard it left, unexploded bombs, is on the unexploded ordnance page.
Health effects
Dioxin has been linked to cancers, diabetes, skin disease and other illnesses in people exposed at high levels. The US treats a list of conditions as presumed to be linked to Agent Orange for its own veterans, who have been compensated since the 1991 Agent Orange Act.
For Vietnam, the numbers are contested. The Vietnamese government says about 4 million people were exposed and about 3 million have suffered illness as a result, including children born with birth defects across generations, and the Vietnamese Red Cross estimates up to 1 million people with disabilities or health problems. Scientists agree that exposure is harmful but disagree over how many of those cases dioxin explains, since the records from the war are poor and other causes exist. Wherever the figure falls, families caring for disabled relatives in affected provinces are visible, and the disability support funded by the US and Vietnamese agencies is real.
Where the dioxin remains
Most of the contamination that remains today is not the result of spraying over forest but of spills at the places where the herbicide was stored, mixed and loaded onto aircraft. The three best-known hotspots are the former US air bases at Da Nang, Phu Cat and Bien Hoa. Dioxin from those sites washed into ponds and drains, and fish and other food from nearby ponds carried it into the local diet.
Da Nang
The US and Vietnam treated the soil and sediment at Da Nang airport, the first big hotspot to be tackled. The project was completed by 2018 at about US$110 million, the first full cleanup of a major hotspot.
Bien Hoa
Bien Hoa air base lies in Dong Nai province, north-east of Ho Chi Minh City (the area is now part of Dong Nai city). It is the largest remaining hotspot, and cleanup began in 2019 as a joint project of Vietnam’s defence ministry and USAID, with the US contribution rising over time. The funding paused briefly in early 2025 when the US cut USAID, and resumed.
On 23 September 2026 the US and Vietnam signed a limited-scope agreement in Hanoi raising the US funding to US$430 million, which includes US$91 million for support to people with disabilities in affected provinces. The project aims to finish treating about 500,000 cubic metres of contaminated soil by 2031. About 41 hectares had been certified as cleaned by the date of the announcement.
Justice and compensation
The courts have not given Vietnamese victims what American veterans received. Cases against the chemical manufacturers in the US were dismissed. In 2009 a people’s tribunal in Paris, with no legal force, found that the US military’s use of the herbicides was a war crime and called for compensation and cleanup. A Franco-Vietnamese woman, Tran To Nga, sued the manufacturers in France. French courts dismissed her case, with an appeal rejected in 2024, and her lawyers said they would continue.
Today most of the help comes as cleanup and as aid for people with disabilities, from the US and Vietnamese governments and from charities. The US has paid for cleanup and health programmes at a scale of hundreds of millions of dollars, which Vietnam welcomes, though it has long asked for more.
What visitors can see
The War Remnants Museum in District 3 of Ho Chi Minh City has a room on Agent Orange, with photographs of affected children and adults. It is one of the museum’s more difficult sections, and some images are graphic. Take your time and think about whether to bring children. Our page on the museums of Saigon covers the museum and its neighbours, and the Cu Chi tunnels show how forest cover mattered to the war.
If you want to help, check an established charity’s record before donating.
For practical matters on the same trip, see health and safety and Vietnam’s other war legacy, unexploded ordnance. If you are arriving at Tan Son Nhat, our airport transfers cover pickups with a fixed price.