The project is co-sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Atlantic Philanthropies.

The international-standard lab will be active in studying and mitigating the consequences from organic substances that damage the environment.

Construction of the dioxin lab would help raise Vietnam’s capacity to analyse dioxin to evaluate toxic levels in the air, land and water, as well as its environmental management capacity, the diplomat said. 

An estimated 4.8 million people were exposed to the toxic chemical between 1961 and 1971 as a result of the U.S. military spraying the defoliants onto battlefields, with roughly three million directly affected by the chemical.

By Thuy Dung