Many Commonwealth personnel who handled herbicides and defoliants during, and in the decades after, the conflict suffered from serious exposure to dioxin, which also led to soil erosion in areas of Malaysia. Roughly 10,000 civilians and insurgents in Malaysia also suffered from the effects of the defoliant, though many historians argue the true number was higher given that herbicides and defoliants were used on a large scale in the Malayan Emergency; the British government manipulated data and kept its deployment of herbicidal warfare secret in fear of a diplomatic backlash.[5][6][7]