VOL. 23, NO. 24	JUNE 12, 1998

cientists at the School of Public Health have been awarded $5 million to study veterans’ exposure to Agent Orange and other herbicides during the Vietnam War.

  The grant was awarded by the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine. Associate Professor Jeanne S. Stellman, 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 issue for more than two decades, Stellman’s 3-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,” said Stellman, who has collaborated for many years on this work with her husband, epidemiologist Steven Stellman. “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.”

  The total number of U.S. military personnel exposed to herbicides is not known but estimates of the number who served in Vietnam during this period vary from 2.6 to 3.8 million. Estimating the exposure 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 Dean Allan Rosenfield.