Former soldiers are rejecting it outright, but a new report released Tuesday says residents living near a New Brunswick military base where Agent Orange and other potent herbicides were tested in the 1960s do not face increased health risks.
The community health risk study found that mortality and cancer rates for both men and women living near Canadian Forces Base Gagetown are similar to the overall provincial rates.
"For most of the specific disease outcomes, there were few differences between the Gagetown study region and the province of New Brunswick as a whole for both mortality and cancer incidence,'' the report states.
Further, men in the Gagetown study region, which covered the city of Fredericton, were found to have a slightly lower risk of dying from cancer than the rest of the province.
The report found a slightly higher incidence of breast cancer and nose and throat cancers in women in the study region, but did not draw a link to herbicide spraying.
The report is the last in a series that have consistently shown minimal health risks for people in the area and those working on the base.
An earlier report by Cantox Environmental, hired by the federal government to look at the issue, found that only those directly involved in applying defoliants or clearing treated brush were at risk of long-term health problems.
In 1966 and 1967, the U.S. military tested a number of defoliants at CFB Gagetown, including Agent Orange.
Additionally, since the base opened in the mid-1950s, commercially available herbicides were used to clear foliage.
High concentrations of dioxin-laden chemicals have been linked to health problems, including chronic lymphocytic leukemia, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and Hodgkin's disease.
The comparison study was led by Dr. Judith Guernsey of the epidemiology department at Dalhousie University in Halifax.
She admitted there were some shortcomings in the methodology used, including the rare nature of some of the diseases they were tracking.
"That is one of the challenges of doing descriptive epidemiologic studies on what would be considered a smaller population of 100,000 people, because these cancers are so rare that they don't show up very often."
The study's authors also noted that many of the people who once worked at the base have long since moved away.
Some veterans and other local residents have claimed for years that their health was harmed because of the defoliants.
Angry former soldiers rejected the report's findings, saying they're inaccurate and incomplete.
"All the people that were here on the base that have moved to different provinces, that have moved back to Germany, moved back to Europe, moved back to the States... these people are excluded out of (the study)," said retired soldier John Chisholm. "All this here study included was the people that are in the province of New Brunswick now."
"The population that's here now is not reflective of those that were there in the 60s and 70s, and it's as simple as that," added retired soldier Grant Payne.
The former soldiers fear the findings will limit compensation packages from the federal government, expected to range between $20,000 and $24,000 per person.
The study authors suggest that a "nested study" of the health histories of people directly involved in the spraying programs would be worthwhile.
"The comparisons that would result from this study might yield patterns of herbicide health effects associations related to the experience at CFB Gagetown,'' says the report.
But the authors also warn that a nested study could take up to five years to complete, with no guaranteed results.
With files from The Canadian Press and a report from CTV Atlantic's Andy Campbell in Gagetown
