Agent Pink
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Agent Pink is the code name for a powerful herbicide and defoliant used by the U.S. military in its Herbicidal Warfare program during the Vietnam War. The name comes from the pink stripe painted on the barrels to identify the contents. It was one of the so-called "rainbow herbicides" that included the more infamous Agent Orange. Agent Pink was only used during the early "testing" stages of the spraying program, and was no longer used after 1964.
Agent Pink's only active ingredient was 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T), one of the common phenoxy herbicides of the era. It was later learned that a dioxin, 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-para-dioxin (TCDD), is produced as a side effect of the manufacture of 2,4,5-T, and was thus present in any of the herbicides that used it. Due to Agent Pink consisting entirely of 2,4,5-T, along with the similar Agent Green, it contained many times the level of dioxin found in Agent Orange.
[edit] See also
|
|||||
