Editing Malayan Emergency (section)

====Agent Orange====
{{Further|Agent Orange}}

During the Malayan Emergency, Britain became the first nation in history to make use of [[herbicides]] and [[defoliants]] as a military weapon. It was used to destroy bushes, food crops, and trees to deprive the guerrillas of both food and cover, playing a role in Britain's food denial campaign during the early 1950s.<ref name=Hay82>{{cite book |last1=Hay |first1=Alastair |url=https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4899-0339-6 |title=The Chemical Scythe: Lessons of 2, 4, 5-T, and dioxin |date=1982 |publisher=[[Springer Nature|Plenum Press / Springer Nature]] |isbn=9780306409738 |location=New York |pages=149–150 |doi=10.1007/978-1-4899-0339-6 |quote=It was the British who were actually the first to use herbicides in the Malayan 'Emergency'...To circumvent surprise attacks on their troops the British Military Authorities used 2,4,5-T to increase visibility in the mixed vegetation |author-link=Alastair Hay |s2cid=29278382}}</ref><ref name=JaWa21>{{cite book |last1=Jacob |first1=Claus |url=https://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/12189 |title=Ethics of Chemistry: From Poison Gas to Climate Engineering |last2=Walters |first2=Adam |date=2021 |publisher=[[World Scientific]] |isbn=978-981-123-353-1 |editor-last1=Schummer |editor-first1=Joachim |location=Singapore |pages=169–194 |chapter=Risk and Responsibility in Chemical Research: The Case of Agent Orange |doi=10.1142/12189 |editor-last2=Børsen |editor-first2=Tom |s2cid=233837382}}</ref> A variety of herbicides were used to clear [[lines of communication]] and destroy food crops as part of this strategy. One of the herbicides, was a 50:50 mixture of butyl esters of [[2,4,5-T]] and [[2,4-D]] with the brand name Trioxone. This mixture was virtually identical to the later Agent Orange, though Trioxone likely had a heavier contamination of the health-damaging dioxin impurity.<ref name="NewScientist">{{cite magazine |date=19 January 1984 |title=How Britain Sprayed Malaya with Dioxin |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I_lWnBp1GUMC |magazine=New Scientist |volume=101 |pages=6–7 |issn=0262-4079 |number=1393}}</ref>

In 1952, Trioxone and mixtures of the aforementioned herbicides, were sprayed along a number of key roads. From June to October 1952, {{convert|1,250|acre|abbr=off|order=flip}} of roadside vegetation at possible ambush points were sprayed with defoliant, described as a policy of "national importance".{{citation needed|date=June 2023}} The experts advised that the use of herbicides and defoliants for clearing the roadside could be effectively replaced by removing vegetation by hand and the spraying was stopped.<ref name="NewScientist" /> However, after that strategy failed,{{citation needed|date=June 2023}} the use of herbicides and defoliants in effort to fight the guerrillas was restarted under the command of  [[Gerald Templer]] in February 1953 as a means of destroying food crops grown by communist forces in jungle clearings. [[Helicopters]] and [[fixed-wing aircraft]] despatched [[sodium trichloroacetate]] and Trioxone, along with pellets of [[(2-Chlorophenyl)thiourea|chlorophenyl]] [[N,N-Dimethyl-1-naphthylamine|N,N-dimethyl-1-naphthylamine]] onto crops such as [[sweet potatoes]] and [[maize]]. Many Commonwealth personnel who handled and/or used Trioxone during the conflict suffered from serious exposure to dioxin and Trioxone. An estimated 10,000 civilians and guerrilla in Malaya also suffered from the effects of the defoliant, but many historians think that the number is much larger since Trioxone was used on a large scale in the Malayan conflict and, unlike the US, the British government limited information about its use to avoid negative global public opinion. The prolonged absence of vegetation caused by defoliation also resulted in major [[soil erosion]].<ref>{{cite book |title=Pesticide Dilemma in the Third World: A Case Study of Malaysia |publisher=Phoenix Press |year=1984 |page=23}}</ref>

Following the end of the Emergency, [[US Secretary of State]] [[Dean Rusk]] advised [[US President]] [[John F. Kennedy]] that the precedent of using herbicide in warfare had been established by the British through their use of aircraft to spray herbicide and thus destroy enemy crops and thin the thick jungle of northern Malaya.<ref name="USE">{{cite book |author=Bruce Cumings |title=The Global Politics of Pesticides: Forging Consensus from Conflicting Interests |publisher=[[Earthscan]] |year=1998 |page=61}}</ref><ref name="Pamela Sodhy 1991 284–290" />