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DU Story
Hi radsafers
With your ongoing DU discussion, thought you might be interested in this:
>
> http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/95178_du12.shtml
>
> Tuesday, November 12, 2002
>
> Iraqi cancers, birth defects blamed on U.S. depleted uranium
>
> By LARRY JOHNSON
> SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER FOREIGN DESK EDITOR
>
> SOUTHERN DEMILITARIZED ZONE, Iraq -- On the "Highway of Death," 11 miles
> north of the Kuwait border, a collection of tanks, armored personnel
> carriers and other military vehicles are rusting in the desert.
>
> They also are radiating nuclear energy.
> Paul Kitagaki Jr. / P-I Six-year-old Fatma Rakwan, being held by her
> mother at the Basra Hospital for Maternity and Children, was recently
> diagnosed with leukemia.
> In 1991, the United States and its Persian Gulf War allies blasted the
> vehicles with armor-piercing shells made of depleted uranium -- the
> first time such weapons had been used in warfare -- as the Iraqis
> retreated from Kuwait. The devastating results gave the highway its
> name.
>
> Today, nearly 12 years after the use of the super-tough weapons was
> credited with bringing the war to a swift conclusion, the battlefield
> remains a radioactive toxic wasteland -- and depleted uranium munitions
> remain a mystery.
>
> Although the Pentagon has sent mixed signals about the effects of
> depleted uranium, Iraqi doctors believe that it is responsible for a
> significant increase in cancer and birth defects in the region. Many
> researchers outside Iraq, and several U.S. veterans organizations,
> agree; they also suspect depleted uranium of playing a role in Gulf War
> Syndrome, the still-unexplained malady that has plagued hundreds of
> thousands of Gulf War veterans.
>
> Depleted uranium is a problem in other former war zones as well.
> Yesterday, U.N. experts said they found radioactive hot spots in Bosnia
> resulting from the use of depleted uranium during NATO air strikes in
> 1995.
>
> With another war in Iraq perhaps imminent, scientists and others are
> concerned that the side effects of depleted uranium munitions -- still a
> major part of the U.S. arsenal -- will cause serious illnesses or deaths
> in a new generation of U.S. soldiers as well as Iraqis.
>
> THE DANGERS
>
> Depleted uranium, known as DU, is a highly dense metal that is the
> byproduct of the process during which fissionable uranium used to
> manufacture nuclear bombs and reactor fuel is separated from natural
> uranium. DU remains radioactive for about 4.5 billion years.
>
> Uranium, a weakly radioactive element, occurs naturally in soil and
> water everywhere on Earth, but mainly in trace quantities. Humans ingest
> it daily in minute quantities.
> Paul Kitagaki Jr. / P-I Dr. Khajak Vartaanian, a radiation expert,
> holds a Geiger counter next to a hole in an Iraqi tank destroyed by
> depleted uranium weapons in the Persian Gulf War in 1991. The shell
> holes show 1,000 times the normal background radiation level.
> DU shell holes in the vehicles along the Highway of Death are 1,000
> times more radioactive than background radiation, according to Geiger
> counter readings done for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Dr. Khajak
> Vartaanian, a nuclear medicine expert from the Iraq Department of
> Radiation Protection in Basra, and Col. Amal Kassim of the Iraqi navy.
>
> The desert around the vehicles was 100 times more radioactive than
> background radiation; Basra, a city of 1 million people, some 125 miles
> away, registered only slightly above background radiation level.
>
> But the radioactivity is only one concern about DU munitions.
>
> A second, potentially more serious hazard is created when a DU round
> hits its target. As much as 70 percent of the projectile can burn up on
> impact, creating a firestorm of ceramic DU oxide particles. The residue
> of this firestorm is an extremely fine ceramic uranium dust that can be
> spread by the wind, inhaled and absorbed into the human body and
> absorbed by plants and animals, becoming part of the food chain.
>
> Once lodged in the soil, the munitions can pollute the environment and
> create up to a hundredfold increase in uranium levels in ground water,
> according to the U.N. Environmental Program.
>
> Studies show it can remain in human organs for years.
>
> The U.S. Army acknowledges the hazards in a training manual, in which it
> requires that anyone who comes within 25 meters of any DU-contaminated
> equipment or terrain wear respiratory and skin protection, and states
> that "contamination will make food and water unsafe for consumption."
>
> Just six months before the Gulf War, the Army released a report on DU
> predicting that large amounts of DU dust could be inhaled by soldiers
> and civilians during and after combat.
>
> Infantry were identified as potentially receiving the highest exposures,
> and the expected health outcomes included cancers and kidney problems.
>
> The report also warned that public knowledge of the health and
> environmental effects of depleted uranium could lead to efforts to ban
> DU munitions.
>
> But today the Pentagon plays down the effects. Officials refer queries
> on DU munitions to the latest government report on the subject, last
> updated on Dec. 13, 2000, which said DU is "40 percent less radioactive
> than natural uranium."
>
> The report also said, "Gulf War exposures to depleted uranium (DU) have
> not to date produced any observable adverse health effects attributable
> to DU's chemical toxicity or low-level radiation. . . ."
>
> In response to written queries, the Defense Department said, "The U.S.
> Military Services use DU munitions because of DU's superior lethality
> against armor and other hard targets."
>
> It said DU munitions are "war reserve munitions; that is, used for
> combat and not fired for training purposes," with the exception that DU
> munitions may be fired at sea for weapon calibration purposes.
>
> In addition to Iraq and Bosnia, DU munitions were used in Kosovo and
> Serbia in 1999.
> Paul Kitagaki Jr. / P-I Hamdin and his brother Amhid are receiving
> follow-up treatment after being treated successfully for leukemia two
> years ago at the Basra Hospital for Maternity and Children.
> Also in 1999, a United Nations subcommission considered DU hazardous
> enough to call for an initiative banning its use worldwide. The
> initiative has remained in committee, blocked primarily by the United
> States, according to Karen Parker, a lawyer with the International
> Educational Development/Humanitarian Law Project, which has consultative
> status at the United Nations.
>
> Parker, who first raised the DU issue in the United Nations in 1996,
> contends that DU "violates the existing law and customs of war."
>
> She said there are four rules derived from all of humanitarian law
> regarding weapons:
>
> •Weapons may only be used in the legal field of battle, defined as legal
> military targets of the enemy in war. Weapons may not have an adverse
> effect off the legal field of battle.
>
> •Weapons can only be used for the duration of an armed conflict. A
> weapon that is used or continues to act after the war is over violates
> this criterion.
>
> •Weapons may not be unduly inhumane.
>
> •Weapons may not have an unduly negative effect on the natural
> environment.
>
> "Depleted uranium fails all four of these rules," Parker said last week.
>
> On Oct. 17, 2001, Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., introduced a bill
> calling for "the suspension of the use, sale, development, production,
> testing, and export of depleted uranium munitions pending the outcome of
> certain studies of the health effects of such munitions. . . ."
>
> More than a year later, the bill -- co-sponsored by Reps. Anibal
> Acevedo-Vila, Puerto Rico; Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.; Dennis Kucinich,
> D-Ohio; Barbara Lee, D-Ca.; and Jim McDermott, D-Wash. -- remains in
> committee awaiting comment from the Defense Department.
>
> THE STUDIES
>
> Gulf War veterans faced a wide array of potentially toxic materials
> during the war: smoke from oil and chemical fires, insecticides,
> pesticides, vaccinations and DU.
>
> Of the 696,778 troops who served during the recognized conflict phase
> (1990-1991) of the Gulf War, at least 20,6861 have applied for VA
> medical benefits. As of May 2002, 159,238 veterans have been awarded
> service-connected disability by the Department of Veterans Affairs for
> health effects collectively known as the Gulf War Syndrome.
> Paul Kitagaki Jr. / P-I The woman in the foreground shares a room with
> four other cancer patients at the Saddam Teaching Hospital in Basra. The
> patient lying on the bed behind died earlier in the day on which this
> photograph was taken.
> There have been many studies on Gulf War Syndrome over the years, as
> well as on possible long-term health hazards of DU munitions. Most have
> been inconclusive. But some researchers said the previous studies on DU,
> conducted by groups and agencies ranging from the World Health
> Organization to the Rand Corp. to the investigative arm of Congress,
> weren't looking in the right place -- at the effects of inhaled DU.
>
> Dr. Asaf Durakovic, director of the private, non-profit Uranium Medical
> Research Centre in Canada and the United States, and center research
> associates Patricia Horan and Leonard Dietz, published a unique study in
> the August issue of Military Medicine medical journal.
>
> The study is believed to be the first to look at inhaled DU among Gulf
> War veterans, using the ultrasensitive technique of thermal ionization
> mass spectrometry, which enabled them to easily distinguish between
> natural uranium and DU.
>
> The study, which examined British, Canadian and U.S. veterans, all
> suffering typical Gulf War Syndrome ailments, found that, nine years
> after the war, 14 of 27 veterans studied had DU in their urine. DU also
> was found in the lung and bone of a deceased Gulf War veteran.
>
> That no governmental study has been done on inhaled DU "amounts to a
> massive malpractice," Dietz said in an interview last week.
>
> THE ACTIVIST
>
> Dr. Doug Rokke was an Army health physicist assigned in 1991 to the
> command staff of the 12th Preventive Medicine Command and 3rd U.S. Army
> Medical Command headquarters. Rokke was recalled to active duty 20 years
> after serving in Vietnam, from his research job with the University of
> Illinois Physics Department, and sent to the Gulf to take charge of the
> DU cleanup operation.
>
> Today, in poor health, he has become an outspoken opponent of the use of
> DU munitions.
>
> "DU is the stuff of nightmares," said Rokke, who said he has reactive
> airway disease, neurological damage, cataracts and kidney problems, and
> receives a 40 percent disability payment from the government. He blames
> his health problems on exposure to DU.
>
> Rokke and his primary team of about 100 performed their cleanup task
> without any specialized training or protective gear. Today, Rokke said,
> at least 30 members of the team are dead, and most of the others --
> including Rokke -- have serious health problems.
>
> Rokke said: "Verified adverse health effects from personal experience,
> physicians and from personal reports from individuals with known DU
> exposures include reactive airway disease, neurological abnormalities,
> kidney stones and chronic kidney pain, rashes, vision degradation and
> night vision losses, lymphoma, various forms of skin and organ cancer,
> neuropsychological disorders, uranium in semen, sexual dysfunction and
> birth defects in offspring.
>
> "This whole thing is a crime against God and humanity."
>
> Speaking from his home in Rantoul, Ill., where he works as a substitute
> high school science teacher, Rokke said, "When we went to the Gulf, we
> were all really healthy, and we got trashed."
>
> Rokke, an Army Reserve major who describes himself as "a patriot to the
> right of Rush Limbaugh," said hearing the latest Pentagon statements on
> DU is especially frustrating now that another war against Iraq appears
> likely.
>
> "Since 1991, numerous U.S. Department of Defense reports have said that
> the consequences of DU were unknown," Rokke said. "That is a lie. We
> warned them in 1991 after the Gulf War, but because of liability issues,
> they continue to ignore the problem." Rokke worked until 1996 for the
> military, developing DU training and management procedures. The
> procedures were ignored, he said.
>
> "Their arrogance is beyond comprehension," he said. "We have spread
> radioactive waste all over the place and refused medical treatment to
> people . . . it's all arrogance.
>
> "DU is a snapshot of technology gone crazy."
>
> BIRTH DEFECTS IN IRAQ
>
> At the Saddam Teaching Hospital in Basra, Dr. Jawad Al-Ali, a
> British-trained oncologist, displays, in four gaily colored photo
> albums, what he says are actual snapshots of the nightmares.
>
> The photos represent the surge in birth defects -- in 1989 there were 11
> per 100,000 births; in 2001 there were 116 per 100,000 births -- that
> even before they heard about DU, had doctors in southern Iraq making
> comparisons to the birth defects that followed the atomic bombings of
> Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WWII.
>
> There were photos of infants born without brains, with their internal
> organs outside their bodies, without sexual organs, without spines, and
> the list of deformities went on and on. There also were photos of cancer
> patients.
>
> Cancer has increased dramatically in southern Iraq. In 1988, 34 people
> died of cancer; in 1998, 450 died of cancer; in 2001 there were 603
> cancer deaths.
>
> On a tour of one ward of the hospital, doctors pointed out boys and
> girls who were suffering from leukemia. Most of the children die, the
> doctors said, because there are insufficient drugs available for their
> treatment.
>
> There was one notable exception, a young boy whose family was able to
> buy the expensive drugs on the black market.
>
> Al-Ali said it defies logic to absolve DU of blame when veterans of the
> Gulf War and of the fighting in the Balkans share common illnesses with
> children in southern Iraq.
>
> "The cause of all of these cancers and deformities remains theoretical
> because we can't confirm the presence of uranium in tissue or urine with
> the equipment we have," said Al-Ali. "And because of the sanctions, we
> can't get the equipment we need."
>
> To learn more ...
> •For earlier stories on the P-I's trip to Iraq, go to
> seattlepi.nwsource.com/iraq2002/
> OTHER LINKS
>
> •U.S. Department of Defense: www.defenselink.mil/
>
> •The National Gulf War Resource Center, Inc.: www.ngwrc.org/
> Dulink/du_link.htm
>
> •Uranium Medical Research Centre: www.umrc.net/
>
> Dr. Doug Rokke, a U.S. Army health physicist assigned to help clean up
> depleted uranium after the Persian Gulf War, will speak in Seattle on
> Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m. at University Baptist Church, Northeast 47th
> Street and 12th Avenue Northeast. Rokke is on a six-state speaking tour
> sponsored by The Interfaith Network of Concern for the People of Iraq,
> and co-sponsored by the Traprock Peace Center in Deerfield, Mass.
>
> P-I foreign desk editor Larry Johnson can be reached at 206-448-8035 or
> larryjohnson@seattlepi.com
>
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--
Coalition for Peace and Justice and the UNPLUG Salem Campaign; 321 Barr Ave., Linwood, NJ 08221; 609-601-8583 or 609-601-8537;
ncohen12@comcast.net UNPLUG SALEM WEBSITE: http://www.unplugsalem.org/ COALITION FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE WEBSITE:
http://www.coalitionforpeaceandjustice.org The Coalition for Peace and Justice is a chapter of Peace Action.
"First they ignore you; Then they laugh at you; Then they fight you; Then you win. (Gandhi) "Why walk when you can fly?" (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
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