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Horror Of Depleted Uranium Not
Limited To Iraq
By James Denver
"I'm horrified. The people out there - the Iraqis, the media and the
troops - risk the most appalling ill health. And the radiation from depleted
uranium can travel literally anywhere. It's going to destroy the lives of
thousands of children, all over the world. We all know how far radiation can
travel. Radiation from Chernobyl reached Wales and in Britain you sometimes get
red dust from the Sahara on your car."
The speaker is not some alarmist doom-sayer. He is Dr. Chris
Busby, the British radiation expert, Fellow of the University of Liverpool in
the Faculty of Medicine and UK representative on the European Committee on
Radiation Risk, talking about the best-kept secret of this war: the fact that,
by illegally using hundreds of tons of depleted uranium (DU) against Iraq,
Britain and America have gravely endangered not only the Iraqis but the whole
world. For these weapons have released deadly, carcinogenic and mutagenic,
radioactive particles in such abundance that-whipped up by sandstorms and
carried on trade winds - there is no corner of the globe they cannot
penetrate-including Britain. For the wind has no boundaries and time is on
their side: the radioactivity persists for over 4,500,000,000 years and can
cause cancer, leukemia, brain damage, kidney failure, and extreme birth defects
- killing millions of every age for centuries to come. A crime against humanity
which may, in the eyes of historians, rank with the worst atrocities of all
time.
These weapons have released deadly, carcinogenic and mutagenic,
radioactive particles in such abundance that there is no corner of the globe
they cannot penetrate - including Britain.
Yet, officially, no crime has been committed. For this story is a
dirty story in which the facts have been concealed from those who needed them
most. It is also a story we need to know if the people of Iraq are to get the
medical care they desperately need, and if our troops, returning from Iraq, are
not to suffer as terribly as the veterans of other conflicts in which depleted
uranium was used.
A Dirty Tyson
'Depleted' uranium is in many ways a misnomer. For 'depleted'
sounds weak. The only weak thing about depleted uranium is its price. It is
dirt cheap, toxic, waste from nuclear power plants and bomb production.
However, uranium is one of earth's heaviest elements and DU packs a Tyson's
punch, smashing through tanks, buildings and bunkers with equal ease,
spontaneously catching fire as it does so, and burning people alive. 'Crispy
critters' is what US servicemen call those unfortunate enough to be close. And,
when John Pilger encountered children killed at a greater distance he wrote:
"The children's skin had folded back, like parchment, revealing veins and
burnt flesh that seeped blood, while the eyes, intact, stared straight ahead. I
vomited." (Daily Mirror)
The millions of radioactive uranium oxide particles released when
it burns can kill just as surely, but far more terribly. They can even be so
tiny they pass through a gas mask, making protection against them impossible.
Yet, small is not beautiful. For these invisible killers indiscriminately
attack men, women, children and even babies in the womb-and do the gravest harm
of all to children and unborn babies.
A Terrible Legacy
Doctors in Iraq have estimated that birth defects have increased
by 2-6 times, and 3-12 times as many children have developed cancer and
leukaemia since 1991. Moreover, a report published in The Lancet in 1998 said
that as many as 500 children a day are dying from these sequels to war and
sanctions and that the death rate for Iraqi children under 5 years of age
increased from 23 per 1000 in 1989 to 166 per thousand in 1993. Overall, cases
of lymphoblastic leukemia more than quadrupled with other cancers also
increasing 'at an alarming rate'. In men, lung, bladder, bronchus, skin, and
stomach cancers showed the highest increase. In women, the highest increases
were in breast and bladder cancer, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma.1
On hearing that DU had been used in the Gulf in 1991, the UK
Atomic Energy Authority sent the Ministry of Defense a special report on the
potential damage to health and the environment. It said that it could cause
half a million additional cancer deaths in Iraq over 10 years. In that war the
authorities only admitted to using 320 tons of DU-although the Dutch charity
LAKA estimates the true figure is closer to 800 tons. Many times that may have
been spread across Iraq by this year's war. The devastating damage all this DU
will do to the health and fertility of the people of Iraq now, and for
generations to come, is beyond imagining.
The radioactivity persists for over 4,500,000,000 years killing
millions of every age for centuries to come. This is a crime against humanity
which may rank with the worst atrocities of all time.
We must also count the numberless thousands of miscarried babies.
Nobody knows how many Iraqis have died in the womb since DU contaminated their
world. But it is suggested that troops who were only exposed to DU for the
brief period of the war were still excreting uranium in their semen 8 years
later and some had 100 times the so-called 'safe limit' of uranium in their
urine. The lack of government interest in the plight of veterans of the 1991
war is reflected in a lack of academic research on the impact of DU but
informal research has found a high incidence of birth defects in their children
and that the wives of men who served in Iraq have three times more miscarriages
than the wives of servicemen who did not go there.
Since DU darkened the land Iraq has seen birth defects which would
break a heart of stone: babies with terribly foreshortened limbs, with their
intestines outside their bodies, with huge bulging tumors where their eyes should
be, or with a single eye-like Cyclops, or without eyes, or without limbs, and
even without heads. Significantly, some of the defects are almost unknown
outside textbooks showing the babies born near A-bomb test sites in the
Pacific.
Doctors report that many women no longer say 'Is it a girl or a
boy?' but simply, 'Is it normal, doctor?' Moreover this terrible legacy will
not end. The genes of their parents may have been damaged for ever, and the
damaging DU dust is ever-present.
Blue on Blue
What the governments of America and Britain have done to the
people of Iraq they have also done to their own soldiers, in both wars. And
they have done it knowingly. For the battlefields have been thick with DU and
soldiers have had to enter areas heavily contaminated by bombing. Moreover,
their bodies have not only been assaulted by DU but also by a vaccination
regime which violated normal protocols, experimental vaccines, nerve agent
pills, and organophosphate pesticides in their tents. Yet, though the hazards
of DU were known, British and American troops were not warned of its dangers.
Nor were they given thorough medical checks on their return-even though
identifying it quickly might have made it possible to remove some of it from
their body. Then, when a growing number became seriously ill, and should have
been sent to top experts in radiation damage and neurotoxins, many were sent to
a psychiatrist.
Over 200,000 US troops who returned from the 1991 war are now
invalided out with ailments officially attributed to service in Iraq-that's 1
in 3. In contrast, the British government's failure to fully assess the health
of returning troops, or to monitor their health, means no one even knows how
many have died or become gravely ill since their return. However, Gulf
veterans' associations say that, of 40,000 or so fighting fit men and women who
saw active service, at least 572 have died prematurely since coming home and
5000 may be ill. An alarming number are thought to have taken their own lives,
unable to bear the torment of the innumerable ailments which have combined to
take away their career, their sexuality, their ability to have normal children,
and even their ability to breathe or walk normally. As one veteran puts it,
they are 'on DU death row, waiting to die'.
Whatever other factors there may be, some of their illnesses are
strikingly similar to those of Iraqis exposed to DU dust. For example, soldiers
have also fathered children without eyes. And, in a group of eight servicemen
whose babies lack eyes seven are known to have been directly exposed to DU
dust.
They too have fathered children with stunted arms, and rare
abnormalities classically associated with radiation damage. They too seem prone
to cancer and leukemia. Tellingly, so are EU soldiers who served as
peacekeepers in the Balkans, where DU was also used. Indeed their leukemia rate
has been so high that several EU governments have protested at the use of DU.
The Vital Evidence
Despite all that evidence of the harm done by DU, governments on
both sides of the Atlantic have repeatedly claimed that as it emits only 'low
level' radiation DU is harmless. Award-winning scientist, Dr. Rosalie Bertell
who has led UN medical commissions, has studied 'low-level' radiation for 30
years. 2 She has found that uranium oxide particles have more than enough
power to harm cells, and describes their pulses of radiation as hitting
surrounding cells 'like flashes of lightning' again and again in a single
second.2 Like many scientists worldwide who have studied this type of
radiation, she has found that such 'lightning strikes' can damage DNA and cause
cell mutations which lead to cancer.
Moreover, these particles can be taken up by body fluids and
travel through the body, damaging more than one organ. To compound all that,
Dr. Bertell has found that this particular type of radiation can cause the
body's communication systems to break down, leading to malfunctions in many
vital organs of the body and to many medical problems. A striking fact, since
many veterans of the first Gulf war suffer from innumerable, seemingly
unrelated, ailments.
In addition, recent research by Eric Wright, Professor of
Experimental Haematology at Dundee University, and others, have shown two ways
in which such radiation can do far more damage than has been thought. The first
is that a cell which seems unharmed by radiation can produce cells with diverse
mutations several cell generations later. (And mutations are at the root of
cancer and birth defects.) This 'radiation-induced genomic instability' is
compounded by 'the bystander effect' by which cells mutate in unison with
others which have been damaged by radiation-rather as birds swoop and turn in
unison. Put together, these two mechanisms can greatly increase the damage done
by a single source of radiation, such as a DU particle. Moreover, it is now
clear that there are marked genetic differences in the way individuals respond
to radiation-with some being far more likely to develop cancer than others. So
the fact that some veterans of the first Gulf war seem relatively unharmed by
their exposure to DU in no way proves that DU did not damage others.
The Price of Truth
That the evidence from Iraq and from our troops, and the research
findings of such experts, have been ignored may be no accident. A US report,
leaked in late 1995, allegedly says, 'The potential for health effects from DU
exposure is real; however it must be viewed in perspective... the financial
implications of long-term disability payments and healthcare costs would be
excessive.'3
Clearly, with hundreds of thousands gravely ill in Iraq and at
least a quarter of a million UK and US troops seriously ill, huge disability
claims might be made not only against the governments of Britain and America if
the harm done by DU were acknowledged. There might also be huge claims against
companies making DU weapons and some of their directors are said to be
extremely close to the White House. How close they are to Downing Street is a
matter for speculation, but arms sales makes a considerable contribution to
British trade. So the massive whitewashing of DU over the past 12 years, and
the way that governments have failed to test returning troops, seemed to
disbelieve them, and washed their hands of them, may be purely to save money.
The possibility that financial considerations have led the
governments of Britain and America to cynically avoid taking responsibility for
the harm they have done not only to the people of Iraq but to their own troops
may seem outlandish. Yet DU weapons weren't used by the other side and no other
explanation fits the evidence. For, in the days before Britain and America
first used DU in war its hazards were no secret.4 One American study in 1990
said DU was 'linked to cancer when exposures are internal, [and to] chemical
toxicity-causing kidney damage'. While another openly warned that exposure to
these particles under battlefield conditions could lead to cancers of the lung
and bone, kidney damage, non-malignant lung disease, neuro-cognitive disorders,
chromosomal damage and birth defects.5
A Culture of Denial
In 1996 and 1997 UN Human Rights Tribunals condemned DU weapons
for illegally breaking the Geneva Convention and classed them as 'weapons of
mass destruction' 'incompatible with international humanitarian and human
rights law'. Since then, following leukemia in European peacekeeping troops in
the Balkans and Afghanistan (where DU was also used), the EU has twice called
for DU weapons to be banned.
Yet, far from banning DU, America and Britain stepped up their
denials of the harm from this radioactive dust as more and more troops from the
first Gulf war and from action and peacekeeping in the Balkans and Afghanistan
have become seriously ill. This is no coincidence. In 1997, while citing
experiments, by others, in which 84 percent of dogs exposed to inhaled uranium
died of cancer of the lungs, Dr. Asaf Durakovic, then Professor of Radiology
and Nuclear Medicine at Georgetown University in Washington was quoted as
saying, 'The [US government's] Veterans Administration asked me to lie about
the risks of incorporating depleted uranium in the human body.' He concluded,
'uranium does cause cancer, uranium does cause mutation, and uranium does kill.
If we continue with the irresponsible contamination of the biosphere, and
denial of the fact that human life is endangered by the deadly isotope uranium,
then we are doing disservice to ourselves, disservice to the truth, disservice
to God and to all generations who follow.' Not what the authorities wanted to
hear and his research was suddenly blocked.
During 12 years of ever-growing British whitewash the authorities
have abolished military hospitals, where there could have been specialized
research on the effects of DU and where expertise in treating DU victims could
have built up. And, not content with the insult of suggesting the gravely
disabling symptoms of Gulf veterans are imaginary they have refused full
pensions to many. For, despite all the evidence to the contrary, the current
House of Commons briefing paper on DU hazards says 'it is judged that any
radiation effects from possible exposures are extremely unlikely to be a
contributory factor to the illnesses currently being experienced by some Gulf
war veterans.' Note how over a quarter of a million sick and dying US and UK
vets are called 'some'.
The Way Ahead
Britain and America not only used DU in this year's Iraq war, they
dramatically increased its use-from a minimum of 320 tons in the previous war
to at minimum of 1500 tons in this one. And this time the use of DU wasn't
limited to anti-tank weapons-as it had largely been in the previous Gulf
war-but was extended to the guided missiles, large bunker busters and big
2000-pound bombs used in Iraq's cities. This means that Iraq's cities have been
blanketed in lethal particles-any one of which can cause cancer or deform a
child. In addition, the use of DU in huge bombs which throw the deadly
particles higher and wider in huge plumes of smoke means that billions of
deadly particles have been carried high into the air-again and again and again
as the bombs rained down-ready to be swept worldwide by the winds.
The Royal Society has suggested the solution is massive
decontamination in Iraq. That could only scratch the surface. For decontamination
is hugely expensive and, though it may reduce the risks in some of the worst
areas, it cannot fully remove them. For DU is too widespread on land and water.
How do you clean up every nook and cranny of a city the size of Baghdad? How
can they decontaminate a whole country in which microscopic particles, which
cannot be detected with a normal geiger counter, are spread from border to
border? And how can they clean up all the countries downwind of Iraq-and,
indeed, the world?
So there are only two things we can do to mitigate this crime
against humanity. The first is to provide the best possible medical care for
the people of Iraq, for our returning troops and for those who served in the
last Gulf war and, through that, minimize their suffering. The second is to
relegate war, and the production and sale of weapons, to the scrap heap of
history-along with slavery and genocide. Then, and only then, will this crime
against humanity be expunged, and the tragic deaths from this war truly bring
freedom to the people of Iraq, and of the world.
References
1. The Lancet volume 351, issue 9103, 28 February 1998.
2. Rosalie Bertell's book Planet Earth the Latest Weapon of War was
reviewed in Caduceus issue 51, page 28.
3. www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabl1. htm#TAB L_Research Report
Summaries
4. www.wagingpeace.org/articles/02.01/020117moret.htm The secret official
memorandum to Brigadier General L.R.Groves from Drs Conant, Compton and Urey of
War Department Manhattan district dated October 1943 is available at the
website www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2003/Leuren-Moret-Gen-Groves21feb03.htm
5. www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_iitab11.htm#tab L_research report summaries
..........................................................................................
Further information
The Low Level Radiation Campaign hopes to be able to arrange a limited
number of private urine tests for those returning from the latest Gulf war. It
can be contacted at: The Knoll, Montpelier Park, Llandrindod Wells, LD1 5LW.
01597 824771. Web: www.llrc.org
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James Denver writes and broadcasts internationally on science and
technology.
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