Horror Of Depleted Uranium Not Limited To
Iraq
James
Denver | April 30 2005
"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
