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Originally Posted by ghrocketman
2,4,5-T (Silvex) was responsible for the problems in Agent Orange.
Agent Orange was a 50/50 mix of 2,4-D (Still widely used in products like Weed-B-Gon) and 2,4,5-T.
The problem with 2,4,5-T is that it has been found that it cannot be produced without producing TCDD (Dioxin) as a side-reaction and it is always present as a contaminant on the 2,4,5-T.
Hence 2,4,5-T was banned.
I know someone that still has several cans of the "old" formula "Weed-B-Gon" that is exactly the same as Agent Orange. That stuff was discontinued in like 1978 once they figured out the issue with 2,4,5-T and Dioxin contamination.
Now Weed-B-Gon is just largely 2,4-D with some other additives.
Naturally Enviro-WHACKOS want to ban 2,4-D as well as almost all other useful chemicals.
By the way, I LIIIIIKE both Hydrazine and Aniline.
Aniline makes an amazing octane-raising effect in Gasoline.
My Corvette likes Klotz Octane Booster Concentrate which is Aniline based. 1 pint in 18 Gallons of 93 octane makes it 103 octane.
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There is also an extra-strength, very fast-acting "industrial-type" wasp and yellow jacket killer spray (its name escapes me, but telephone and electric utility companies use it) that contains a much-diluted amount of the VX nerve agent that was--and may still be--used in chemical weapons. My mother once got an aerosol spray can of it from a brother-in-law of mine who works at Southern Bell, and it killed cockroaches in five seconds, from pushing the button to the roach lying legs-up on the floor--with *no* "reflex-wriggling" of even one leg. Also:
I was exposed to Agent Orange in 1997. It's a long story, but the front and back yards of a late friend's home in Miami, where I stayed for a few weeks before I moved here to Fairbanks, Alaska, was sprayed--using a large, shoulder-carried pump sprayer--by his nephew, in order to kill the 10' tall sawgrass (the kind that grows in the Everglades swamp) that had "taken over" both yards. We all couldn't avoid exposure to it once it was sprayed, and the Agent Orange quickly killed the sawgrass--and every other plant that grew on that lot, leaving lifeless brown soil instead, and:
Not long afterward, my multiple diseases (ankylosing spondylitis, lymphedema, and cirrhosis [whose origin wasn't due to any variety of hepatitis--I was tested for all of them--or drinking, because I never did; one mixed drink every 2 -3 years or so is hardly a drinking habit]) began to appear, and quickly. My late friend's nephew, and his friend--who'd brought that "one last bottle of Agent Orange" from a pesticide warehouse where he worked--became afraid, after I told them about my sudden onset of the diseases. The cirrhosis wasn't discovered until I had my gallbladder removed in 2014 (the astonished surgeon showed me fiber-optic bore-scope-taken color photos of my "white polka-dotted" liver the next day, and ordered tests), but an odd liver function deficiency, which taking a magnesium supplement compensated for, had showed up some years before then in routine blood work, not long after I'd moved here, so:
As you've likely surmised, I'm not exactly thrilled about that reagent relic of the era of "Better living through chemistry," and the distinction that you related above is, to me, indistinct... I know Vietnam veterans who have the same health problems that I do as a result of exposure--often just a single one--to Agent Orange (I'm relatively lucky, as I haven't [yet] developed diabetes and/or cancer as many of them did as a result of their exposures [developing either one would mark my personal "GAME OVER" point, *already* having all of the other pains, debilitating problems, and never-ending treatments that I must deal with constantly]), and:
I have read that the Vietnamese people will be affected by that infernal concoction for up to *ten generations*, and that even the map of the country itself has been altered by Agent Orange, because whole areas--where grasses will no longer grow--have been eroded away. It causes numerous birth defects (fused eyelids are a particularly horrible one) and diseases such as diabetes and cancers. Regarding noxious and toxic rocket propellants:
Even China, where industrial pollution and its attendant health effects are abundantly manifest, is, like Russia, transitioning away from the toxic hypergolic liquid propellants to the much cleaner LOX/kerosene and LOX/LH2 combinations. (China's new kerolox-powered Long March 6 even uses hydrogen peroxide/kerosene to power its third and final stage; this is a clean yet powerful propellant combination which is storable--including its HTP [High-Test Peroxide] oxidizer--for more than long enough to comfortably complete multi-final stage burn missions when necessary). In addition:
While "green" alternatives exist, I have no problems with upper stages and spacecraft using the old, usually toxic, but effective, powerful, and storable bi-propellant (UDMH/WFNA, Aerozine 50/IRFNA, Aerozine 50/N2O4) and mono-propellant (H2O2, MMH [Mono-Methyl Hydrazine]) systems, because the quantities involved are small and because they are "self-consuming" if something goes wrong during launch. Ruptured lower stages, with their much larger tanks, can and do disperse large amounts of hypergolic fuel and/or oxidizer that don't come in contact with their "opposing reactants" (the spectacular "powered Proton prang" left a big reddish cloud of dinitrogen tetroxide in the air, which prompted the spectators' bus's drivers to load them up and leave before the cloud could reach them), while upper stages' and spacecraft's propellants don't spread far and soon contact and react with each other (that Delta II/Navstar [GPS] satellite blow-up video from some years back shows this happening immediately after the vehicle exploded).