For about two decades, ending in 1971, a former Monsanto chemical plant in West Virginia produced the herbicide 2,4,5-T which was used in "Agent Orange" — the defoliant the military sprayed over Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.
Now, Monsanto faces a class-action lawsuit, filed on behalf of people living where the herbicide was manufactured in Nitro, W.Va.
Nitro became a town during World War I , named after the type of gunpowder workers produced there. Later private companies like Monsanto manufactured other chemicals in Nitro, employing thousands of people. It's always been a chemical town.
"If you ever drove over the I-64 bridge at Nitro, you really got an odor back in the '60s and '70s," says Nitro Mayor Rusty Casto. But now the plants are gone.
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