IRAQ: Experts Warn of Radioactive Battlefields
Katherine Stapp, Interpress Service News Agency
09/12/2003
http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=20113

NEW YORK, Sep 12 (IPS) - Concerns are growing about the presence of depleted
uranium and other toxins in Iraq following a rash of illnesses among U.S.
troops and the discovery by a reporter that radiation levels in parts of Baghdad
are extremely elevated.

So far, according to figures obtained by the 'Washington Post', more than
6,000 soldiers have been pulled out of Iraq for medical reasons since the start
of the war. About 1,400 of them were injured in combat or non-combat incidents,
such as vehicle accidents, meaning the majority were evacuated for various
physical or psychological illnesses.

No further breakdown has been released. In July, the U.S. Army announced that
two soldiers had died of severe pneumonia and more than 100 were hospitalised
for the illness. The deaths are still being investigated.

While experts discount a single cause for these illnesses, some remain
concerned that neither the troops stationed in Iraq nor the civilian population is
being adequately protected from toxic residues left over from the war.

These fears were heightened when a correspondent for the 'Christian Science
Monitor' took a Geiger counter to parts of Baghdad that had been subjected to
heavy shelling by U.S. troops. He found radiation levels 1,000 to 1,900 times
higher than normal in residential areas where children were playing nearby.

One explanation is the presence of depleted uranium (DU), the trace element
left over when uranium is enriched and the most radioactive types have been
removed for use as nuclear fuel or nuclear weapons. DU munitions vaporise on
contact, dispersing particles over wide areas, where they settle as dust that can
be inhaled or ingested.

The Pentagon has portrayed DU munitions as indispensable in giving U.S.
soldiers an edge on the battlefield. The high density of DU shells allows them to
punch through walls and armoured vehicles.

But some see a more cynical reason for their popularity: the United States is
the largest generator of DU in the world, with a stockpile of 700,000 tonnes
and growing. Since the supply is controlled by the Department of Energy, it is
readily available and free of charge. Transforming DU into weaponry has the
added advantage of easing the DOE's burden to safely store the spent nuclear
fuel.

DU munitions made their debut in the 1991 Gulf War, and were later deployed
in Bosnia and Kosovo. It is almost certain that DU was used in Afghanistan in
2001, but information on the exact amount remains unavailable.

Precise data is similarly hard to come by for the most recent U.S.-led
invasion of Iraq, but based on preliminary reports, experts estimate that at least
200 tonnes of DU were released during combat.

While some studies on the effects of DU have been inconclusive, others
determined that it raises the risk of childhood cancers, birth defects and other
long-term health damage.

''The Pentagon's own published studies have shown adverse health effects,''
said Charles Sheehan-Miles, executive director of the Nuclear Policy Research
Institute, which published an analysis of the available scientific research on
DU in July.

''That's what so bizarre about their stance on this.''

NPRI and other groups are now calling on Washington to immediately halt the
use of DU, initiate a plan for cleaning up contaminated areas, and to support
further studies.

''The research that's been done -- the little and flawed research that's been
done -- has focused on adults,'' Sheehan-Miles added in an interview. ''No
one today has ever done any study on children that are exposed to it. We know
from other research that children are much more sensitive to toxicity..''

His concerns appear to be well founded. Two Iraqi doctors visiting Japan
recently reported a ten-fold increase in the number of cancer cases diagnosed in
and around the southern region of Basra since 1988.

Dr. Janan Ghalib Hassan, a neo-natalogist at the Women and Children's
Hospital in Basra, said that in 2001, 611 babies were born with no limbs, no eyes or
other birth defects, compared with 37 such cases in 1990. The area where the
children were born was subjected to heavy shelling with DU munitions in the
first Gulf War.

A recent analysis of already available data by the U.N. Environment Programme
(UNEP) concluded the latest invasion has ''undoubtedly'' worsened the serious
environmental problems that have accumulated in Iraq over the past two
decades, dating back to the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.

''Given the overall environmental concerns during the conflict, and the fact
that the environment of Iraq was already a cause for serious concern prior to
the current war, UNEP believes early field studies should be carried out,''
said UNEP administrator Klaus Toepfer in a statement.

''This is especially important to protect human health in a post-conflict
situation.''

A spokesperson for UNEP told IPS that, ''we will conduct a full on-the-ground
study once the security situation allows, but there's no telling when that
might be.''

The White House and Pentagon have repeatedly denied that DU munitions pose
any threat to human health. One recent State Department report titled 'Apparatus
of Lies' has a section called ''The Depleted Uranium Scare'', which accuses
the Iraqi government of exaggerating the toxicity of DU in order to generate
international sympathy.

''In recent years, the Iraqi regime has made substantial efforts to promote
the false claim that the depleted uranium rounds fired by coalition forces have
caused cancers and birth defects in Iraq. Iraq has distributed horrifying
pictures of children with birth defects and linked them to depleted uranium,''
the report says.

''But scientists working for the World Health Organisation (WHO), the U.N.
Environmental (sic) Programme, and the European Union could find no health
effects linked to exposure to depleted uranium,'' it concludes.

However, according to a WHO monograph issued in 2001, ''DU munitions were
used in conflicts only relatively recently and the science has not yet thoroughly
addressed this exposure situation''.

''What we need is a credible, independent assessment of what the actual
effects are,'' says Steve Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War
Resource Centre.

''Obviously, the U.S. military needs to allow civilian health agencies and
monitoring teams into the war zone to conduct a large-scale epidemiological
survey and rule it in or rule it out,'' he told IPS.

''If these weapons have a so-called ''after-killing'' effect, that is clearly
prohibited under the Geneva Conventions." (END)

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