Depleted Uranium in Iraq

UNEP releases first toxic hot spot survey

CADU 22: December 2005

 

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has released the findings of its first survey of environmental ‘hot spots’ in Iraq.

 

A list of 50 sites was presented by the Iraqi Ministry of the Environment for consideration and selection. The report points out that the country ‘has a significant legacy of contaminated and derelict industrial and military sites.’ It also warns that the destruction of the Iraqi military arsenal is creating new contamination and hazardous waste problems at scrap yards and munitions dumps, which could be better managed through better working practices and basic planning.

 

There are also recommendations covering the oil industry’s contaminated sites and one for the establishment of a hazardous waste treatment facility. Overall, close to $40 million is needed to meet the report’s recommendations in full.

 

Klaus Toepfer, UNEP’s Executive Director, said: “Wars, conflicts, instability and the poor environmental management of the previous regime have the left their scars on the Iraqi people and the Iraqi environment. If the country is to have a brighter and less risky future it is incumbent on the international community to help the authorities there deal with these pollution hot spots.”

 

The assessment of the sites was conducted in April 2005 and funded by a contribution from the Japanese government.

 

The analysis included the Ouireej Military Scrap Yard. Ouireej, a planned residential area situated 15km south of Baghdad, became the main dumping and processing site for military scrap and destroyed Iraqi weapons. It once held hundreds of potentially hazardous items including tanks and missiles containing unexploded ordnance and chemicals. DU rounds used by the US and UK have contaminated many of the tanks and personnel carriers with depleted uranium oxides. The UNEP team recommended that contaminated military vehicles be separated out from the general scrap at the site.

 

 

Researchers Claim Birth Defects Rising Across Southern & Central Iraq

CADU 21: August 2005

 

In the wake of the 2003 attacks on Iraq, the anticipated rise in birth defects has begun, according to IRIN News. After analysing records from public hospitals around the country, researchers from Baghdad University have shown that the long-documented rise in deformities in the southern region of the country has spread to the capital, Baghdad.

 

According to Dr Nawar Ali, at the University of Baghdad, who works in the newborn babies research department: “There have been 650 cases in total since August 2003 reported in government hospitals - that is a 20 percent increase from the previous regime. Private hospitals were not included in the study, so the number could be higher,” he said.

 

Dr Ali blamed the rise on polluted groundwater, contaminated with radiation from depleted uranium used in the two Gulf Wars. Other health professionals in Iraq share Ali’s opinion. “In my experiments we have found some cases where the mother or father were suffering from pollution from weapons used in the south and we believe that it is affecting newborn babies in the country,” said Dr Ibraheem al-Jabouri, a scientist at Baghdad University.

 

The type of deformities found in newborn babies are characterised by multiple fingers, unusually large heads, unilateral lips or no arms or legs. High levels of birth malformations have been reported from the southern region of Iraq since the mid-Nineties, but this is the first report of similar conditions spreading to the capital. Following the first Gulf War, Basra was particularly badly hit; now the phenomenon is moving north from Najaf to Baghdad.

 

Other contributory factors have been looked at. Dr Lamia’a Amran, a paediatrician at the Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS) hospital in the capital, told IRIN that inter-marriages were also to blame and that some cases of deformed babies were from poor families in the southern region. “Most of the women who have deformed babies in our hospital are married to relatives and have no idea that a common blood factor can also cause such problems,” said Amran. The IRCS hospital sees at least four cases of deformities every week. During April, 15 cases were reported, according to the hospital spokesman, a number considered high for a short period of time.

 

However, Amran added that 60 percent of the cases were not related to blood factors, but due to other causes. She explained that after studying family history of couples with deformed babies, they concluded that radiation and pollution were the main causes of the deformity.

 

But most of the cases reported do not survive for more than a week, doctors said. Nearly 90 percent of such cases at the Central Teaching Hospital for Paediatrics in Baghdad do not survive, according to Wathiq Ibrahim, director of the hospital.

 

Fatima Hussein, a 34-year-old patient at the hospital, told reporters: “My two children were born with deformities and today I had my third one with the same problem. The doctors say pollution is the cause and now my husband wants to divorce me claiming that I am not capable of bringing healthy children into the world,”

 

Health officials have asked the Iraqi Government to begin an urgent study into the problem.

 

 

Iraqi Child Leukemia Victim Dies in Japan

CADU 20: March 2005

 

A 6-year-old Iraqi boy who returned to Iraq last October after undergoing treatment for leukemia for nearly 10 months in Japan, has died after his condition suddenly deteriorated.

 

Abbas A-Ali Al-Malky, who is believed to have contracted leukaemia from depleted uranium used in the Iraq war, died shortly after being taken to hospital, said Mariko Ono, representative of the Nagoya group Save the Iraqi Children. The boy developed a fever the night before his death.

 

Save the Iraqi Children had sponsored his stay and treatment in Japan.

 

 

 

 

Depleted Uranium as a Weapon of War

by Rosalie Bertell, Ph.D., GNSH

IICPH ,August 1999

 

I am an epidemiologist, with 30 years of experience in studying the health effect of exposure to ionizing radiation. I would like to call the attention of the UN Human Rights Tribunal to the use of depleted uranium (DU) weapons against Iraq in the Gulf War, and by NATO in Bosnia and the Kosovo-Yugoslavian war. DU is radioactive waste, and it attains special deadly properties when it is fired in battle. Because of its density and the speed of the missile or bullet (up to 5 mach) containing it, DU bursts into flame on impact. It reaches very high temperatures, and becomes a ceramic aerosol which can be dispersed 100 km from the point of impact.

 

 

Because the radiation dose to the person depends on the strength of the source of radiation, and the time duration of the exposure, this ceramic aerosol formation is important. Ceramic (glass) is highly insoluble in the normal lung fluid, and when inhaled, this ceramic particulate will remain for a long time in the lungs and body tissue before being excreted in urine. The

Rand report, which was commissioned by the US government in response to criticisms of the use of DU in weapons, failed to note this nasty form of insoluble DU which distinguishes it from the uranium dust in the mining or milling experience. This property means the uranium and its decay products will remain inside the body longer, thereby increasing the local alpha particle radiation dose to tissue.

 

Much of the ceramic DU aerosol is in respirable sized particles -10 micrometer and less in diameter. It stays in the lungs for upwards of two years. The uranium oxide, which was discussed in the Rand report, had a one-year half-life in lungs. Most natural uranium contamination in the human body comes via food and to a lesser extent from drinking water, not via the lungs. Ingested uranium is excreted in feces, basically never entering into the human blood and lymph system. In contrast, the DU ceramic aerosol released in war entered directly into lymph and blood through the lung-blood barrier and circulated throughout the whole body. All internal contamination is excreted through either sweat or urine.

 

DU is a very powerful alpha particle emitter, with each particle carrying a force of about 4.2 MeV (million electron volts). It requires only 6 to 10 eV (electron volts) to break the DNA or other large molecules in the body. This long stay of DU from weapons within the body can now be demonstrated through 24-hour urine analysis. The presence of DU eight years after the Gulf War exposure, means that the internal organs: lung, lymph glands, bone marrow, liver, kidney, and immune system have experienced significant localized radiation damage. Testing of urine for both veterans of the Gulf War and citizens of Iraq has confirmed this long-term exposure to DU.

 

Women (because of their radiation sensitive breast and uterine tissue) and children (because their bones are growing, thus able to pick up more DU than adults, and because they have a long expected life-span in which the cancers with long latency periods can develop) will be most at risk from the delayed DU weapon action.

 

The Military Toxics Project (MTP) asked me, in the Fall of 1997, to take initiative in investigating the effect of DU on the Gulf War veterans. I tried several clinical approaches in order to determine, if possible, the extent of this problem. Among the most successful approaches was

that of the 24 hour urine analysis. Dr. Hari Sharma, a nuclear chemist at the University of Waterloo in Canada, was at first asked to determine the presence or absence of DU in the urine of the veterans. He took a sample from the veteran's total 24-hour urine output, 50 to 200 ml, and calculated the amount of U238 and U235. He gave results as the amount of each isotope per litre of urine rather than per 24 hour sample, since the fact of contamination was at the time more important than the amount of contamination. The amount can still be ascertained from the original data, and will be included in a final report.

 

Since no DU occurs naturally, all uranium found in urine should be natural uranium unless there is a specific exposure to depleted or enriched uranium. From the two isotopic measurements, one can tell whether or not DU is present in the total sample of uranium by the following method:

 

Samples: Micrograms U235 Micrograms U238 Ratio U235/U238

Natural Uranium 0.72 99.28 0.0073

Enriched Uranium 4.00 96.00 0.0417

Depleted Uranium 0.20 99.80 0.0020

Pure U238 0.00 100.00 0.0000

 

 

 

Allowing for some variation in measurement, any observed ratio below 0.0073 is

considered to be a mixture containing depleted uranium.

 

This first approximation indicated that DU was present in the urine of both the Gulf War veterans and some of the Iraqi people, in quantities ranging from 0 to 10 micrograms. The radiation dose evaluation based on the biological half life for insoluble uranium oxide of 500 days, suggested by ICRP, shows that there is significant radiological hazard from this DU inhalation. DU is also a heavy metal, and is chemically toxic to humans. The true (observed) biological half-life of this ceramic uranium appears likely to be more than 10 years, and this presents an even more enhanced chemical and radiological hazard. For example, the magnitude of the individual hazard for fatal cancer may be as high as 3% to 5% for some veterans.

 

Dr. Sharma also undertook an analysis of some veteran's second urine sample, taken one year after their first sample was analyzed, in order to get some idea of the rate at which the DU was being excreted from the body in urine. Knowing this rate of excretion, one can mathematically reconstruct the amount likely to have been present in the body in 1991. This would be helpful in determining the total radiation dose which the person would receive from this exposure over the 50 years following that exposure. It is this quantity which would be needed to estimate total detriment to the individual due to the exposure.

 

Such excretion rate estimates also will enable Dr. Sharma to approximate the observed biological half-life of the specific ceramic uranium mixture inhaled in the Gulf War. All of these theoretical results require tedious calculations, and they are not yet ready for general distribution. However, they will be important for any future claims of any veterans or civilians. Since the nature of the exposure was common to all participants or spectators in the Gulf War, all will be able to use these results both for medical and legal purposes.

 

 

Radiation dose to the individual depends on the length of time the DU was in the body. Knowing these common theoretical parameters makes the individual measurements more meaningful. Simply measuring the amount of DU in one urine sample does not allow one to estimate the dose which the person has or will receive from the original exposure. It is these complex measurements which require time, and which we note, the main users of DU, have failed to provide to the medical community.

 

More accurate laboratory techniques have now been used by Dr. Sharma, with some financial help from others and some of his own money, and the uranium isotopic measurements are now accurate to 0.1%. With this accuracy, it will in the future be possible to estimate quite accurately the proportion of the uranium excreted in urine which is DU, and the quantity of DU excreted per 24 hour period. Together with the other theoretical parameters, this quantity can then be converted into an estimate of the original exposure in 1991, and the integrated radiation dose expected. Any estimate of health effects requires this dose estimation.

 

The more general conclusion, namely that the internal DU contamination of veterans, still evident eight years after their exposure in the Gulf War, is quite firm now.

 

Dr. Sharma will organize details of the methodology and findings for publication by the end of this year. The process of publication in a peer review journal might take another year. It might be possible after that to undertake individual measurements in a well-organized program for the veterans. However, this will require outside funding. It should be possible to demand that the Governments in various countries where DU exposure occurred provide this service to their people. It should also be possible to train other laboratories to undertake these measurements.

 

The Precautionary Principle should dictate an even faster response: an immediate stoppage of the use of DU and care for the detoxification of veterans and civilians suspected of having had exposure. Methods of detoxification need also to be developed and tested for efficacy.

 

It is important that the soil in Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo and Yugoslavia be tested for DU. Like land mines, DU will continue to affect people long after the war is over. The aerosol can be resuspended in wind or when disturbed by traffic and inhaled by people. Ecological studies on the long-term behaviour of DU in the environment need to be undertaken. Some of the shrapnel left from the war may also be radioactive and it needs to be removed by competent radiation protection personnel.

 

Two points need to be stressed: veterans and civilians in these wars WERE exposed to DU; and this inhaled DU represents a seriously enhanced risk of damaged immune systems and fatal cancers. This type of radiological and chemical warfare should be banned.

From the IICPH Resource Centre www.iicph.org

 

 

 

New Paper from Dr. Rosalie Bertell

As her testimony to the Hiroshima World Tribunal on Iraq the wonderful Dr Rosalie Bertell has written a new paper "The Use of DU Weapons in War". It is available from the CADU website and in paper form from the office

 

Page last updated: 2nd September 2004

 

BBCF Home

Rosalie Bertell Speaks Out

by Terry Wolfwood

 

This article was written in 1999 after Rosalie Bertell spoke in Victoria. In September 2001, Dr. Bertell received the Sean McBride Peace Prize, the first North American to be so honoured.

 

Last year the chief and a few band members of a Dene community from Great Bear Lake, NWT went to Hiroshima to apologize to the victims of the first atom bomb. Radium had been mined in their area in the 1920's. In the 1940's uranium mining started and produced the material to make the Hiroshima bomb. For years, the Dene people carried the sacks to barges for transport to the south. In that community now, there are no male elders - they died young of cancer - and many people have severe health problems. Yet when these Dene learned of their own part in the atom bomb, they went to Japan to say they were sorry. No other participants in that bombing have apologized.

 

With the poignant story, Dr, Rosalie Bertell began her talk at a public meeting on Hiroshima Eve, August 5, 1999.  

 

Dr. Bertell, an internationally-respected scientist, has researched nuclear environmental, health and military issues for decades. She is the recipient of many honorary doctorates, and the Right Livelihood Award. She has written many articles, spoken all over the world, an is the author of No Immediate Danger: Prognosis for a Radio-active Earth, and Planet Earth: The Latest Weapon of War. In 1985, Dr. Bertell, Bishop Remi de Roo, Mel Hurtig, General Leonard Johnson, and Terry Wolfwood formed the panel at the People's Inquiry into the Implications of Canadian Forces Maritime Experimental Test Range (CFMETR) in Nanaimo.  

 

Her talk coincided with the public hearings on objections to the Federal Government's expropriation of the BC Provincially-owned sea bed in Nanoose Bay. CFMETR is maintained at a cost of over $10 million by the Canadian Military so that the USA military can test it's underwater missiles and detection systems.

 

She told the audience that many objections at the public hearing focused on the danger of a nuclear accident in the Georgia Straits. USA nuclear-powered vessels, probably nuclear-armed (it is USA policy to neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons on its ships) visit the Esquimalt navy base near Victoria and make frequent stays at Nanoose Bay to test their weapon systems. Dr. Bertell warned that we have no viable emergency preparedness for a nuclear accident and that, judging from the lack of international response to the Chernobyl disaster, "we would get neither help nor sympathy" in case of an accident. She said that test missiles contain depleted uranium as it most closely simulates the properties of nuclear warheads. The MX missile tested in the South Pacific and the Cruise missile tested in Canada in the '80s both carried depleted uranium. So-called conventional weapons used in Yugoslavia and Iraq by US and UK forces also contain depleted uranium.

 

Dr. Bertell spoke out on CBC TV recently, condemning the Canadian Navy and its use of DU for 'exercises" in the Atlantic, dumping six tonnes of slugs with DU near fish spawning grounds. The Navy says it used DU in ammunition for the Phalanx guns with permission of the departments of fisheries and environment, beginning at the time of the Gulf War. Claiming there is no danger from radiation to fish or environment, the Navy has no intention to clean up its dumping. However it also says it stopped using DU a year ago because of its radioactivity! A brief mention on CBC TV of DU dumped off Vancouver Island has activists here researching for details. Canada is committed to not produce uranium for weapons, but under the Defense Production Sharing Agreement it sends uranium to the USA for enrichment. If we do not ask for it to be returned within 30 days, it becomes US property! Then it can be used freely for weapons and depleted uranium is given away for use in missile warheads and for as the USA navy says, " as mass for test and evaluation purposes."

 

Depleted uranium is really radioactive waste. When uranium is mined only one percent is weapons grade uranium 235, the rest, containing U238 , is called "waste"; this waste is radioactive and, like lead and cadmium and other heavy metals, it is chemically toxic. So much waste or depleted uranium is produced in the USA that, in the 1970s, there was a plan to use it in stove, car and bike manufacture. Protests stopped that, so it is now given to weapons and bullet makers. Depleted uranium is also used as ballast in large commercial airplanes and cruise ships. Dr. Bertell said that depleted uranium is also preferred over expensive, imported tungsten because of its impact properties. The friction of impact on hard objects like coral reefs, tanks and ships, hardens uranium. According to the Pentagon, uranium goes through its target like "a knife through butter", but tungsten "mushrooms". She explained that uranium ignites on impact and produces glass-like respirable-size radioactive particles that can travel for 100 km. and enter lungs and then travel through organs and blood systems and warned that if a test missile at Nanoose Bay hit a hard underwater target, these radioactive particles could be released over a large populated area of BC. Along with others, Dr. Bertell believes that depleted uranium is responsible for the "Gulf War Syndrome" in over 100,000 US veterans. Their symptoms include immune-deficient infections, an AIDS-like syndrome, new kidney and liver diseases, leukemia, and other cancers. Their children also suffer birth deformities and defects.

 

Similar conditions have been found by Dr. Siegwart-Horst Gunther, president of the Austrian Yellow Cross, in Iraqi children. Over half a million children have died in Iraq of war-related causes since 1991. Now the same strange diseases are found in Yugoslavian children. Parallels are being drawn with studies of Chernobyl victims, but detailed verifiable data are hard to find.  The World Health Organization, the UN agency about which Dr. Bertell says, "we have warm, fuzzy feelings", has an agreement requiring it to submit all data about the health effects of nuclear accidents to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the global nuclear booster, for pre-approval before disclosure and that it will never release information detrimental to IAEA. Bertell said that in May, 2000, the WHO Board, the World Health Assembly of health ministers of UN member nations will meet, and that there is an active campaign we can support to have WHO end this agreement.

 

Dr. Bertell also alerted us to a UN General Assembly resolution which will call, this fall, for the end of the IAEA mandate, as it calls on IAEA both to promote nuclear power and to protect people from its effects--clearly a powerful conflict of interest!

 

Focusing on the greater implications of the use of Nanoose Bay, Dr, Bertell said there may a connection to the USA plans for war in space in the Arctic. The USA is still developing "Stars Wars" technology. Recently as part of the so-called Kodiak, Alaska, in an attempt to intercept them by other missiles launched from northern California. It has also tested interception over the south Pacific in September this year. She said that the impact of two depleted uranium-carrying missiles near BC could spray aerosol radioactive particles over our coastal communities. The possibility of using Nanoose for sea-launched missiles in this program, as well as a tracking station in the BMD, makes Nanoose important to the increased USA military buildup.

 

According to Senator Doug Roche, Canada will participate in the BMD, to be deployed in 2005, and will contribute $6.6 billion to the scheme. This plan violates Anti-ballistic Missile treaties and makes Canada a complicit part of a complex system of surveillance and communication technologies that link to USA war making capacity and its intent to be the militarily dominant nation of the 21st century at any cost. USA military claim that they are going to fight in space and fight from space in blatant violation of the Outer Space Treaty and international law.

 

Dr. Bertell went on to talk about a little known project called High-frequency Active Auroral Research Project (HAARP), which is being developed in Alaska. This ionospheric heater can cause major changes in the ionosphere which protects the earth for radiation from space. She referred to Angels don't Play this HAARP by Begish and Manning. They explain how HAARP manipulates the Electrojet, a powerful direct current electricity belt that circles the globe from pole to pole with more electricity than all human-made systems on earth. HAARP will convert this to alternating current to create an antenna that will communicate with submerged submarines. HAARP can also cause major weather disturbances (it may be responsible for Hurricane Mitch--its main area of effect is the Caribbean), major disruption of power and communication systems and emit extremely low frequency waves that can effect the health of people and animals. Dr. Bertell said USA funding for this project is supposedly directed to earth-interior mapping, to detect oil and gas reservoirs, and weapon caches.  In case of major communication system breakdown, the Ground Wave Emergency Network (GWEN) is being built in the USA and Australia to provide USA military an underground communication system.

 

The Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN ) is a radar system that collaborates with HAARP. Operated remotely from John Hopkins University, Maryland, it monitors ionosphere modification. SuperDARN stations are located in the USA, Iceland, Finland, Antarctica and Saskatoon, Kapuskasing and Goose Bay in Canada. A new site with 20 radar towers is in Prince George. Dr Bertell quotes the USA funding proposal, "Our Canadian SuperDARN colleagues are actively pursuing funding for a Companion Radar to be located in western Canada. They are seeking support from their national funding agencies, the international SuperDARN community and Canadian power companies whose facilities can be affected by space weather effects." The Canadian scientist promoting SuperDARN is G. Sofko of the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon.

 

Dr. Bertell pointed out that Nanoose Bay, where USA submarines are often in port, would be a possible site to aim the alternating current antenna of HAARP. All participation of Canadian territory and military in USA war preparations makes us a target in any global conflict the USA enters if world domination is being challenged. Canada, is already deeply committed to USA militarism in NATO , the NATO war in Yugoslavia, and the UN/US war on Iraq. 

 

The USA intends to remain the world's dominant military power. This has never been stated as clearly as in NATO in the Balkans by Clark et al, published by the International Action Center, USA. The authors quote the Pentagon Defense Planning Guide of 1992, "...the US must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they not need to aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests....fundamental importance to preserve NATO ... the channel for USA influence and participation in European security affairs ... the world order is ultimately backed by the USA...the USA should be postured to act independently when collective action cannot be orchestrated."

 

Dr. Bertell said that the world is operating on an ecological deficit that has gone from 125% of replaceable resources annual use in 1992, to 133% in 1997. If human population grows and consumes at the present rate, but stops militarization, the deficit would end and we would not use more resources than the earth can replenish. She emphasized that the northern world did not demobilize after the WW II and the war machine has grown unabated since 1945. This is the first time in human history that the end of a war has not brought demobilization. Since the end of the Cold War, which many hoped would bring disarmament, military buildup has accelerated. Dr. Bertell blames the constant state of war preparedness for many of the stresses and problems in our present world. Canada is increasingly dominated by USA corporations in industry, resources and social services and our compliance with USA military objectives of world domination grows as our sovereignty and culture are diminished and impoverished.

 

Dr. Bertell urges people in BC to call for a complete public environmental enquiry into the CFMETR Nanoose Bay facility where we can use this information and our knowledge to raise sufficient public concern to close the base. We also need a full enquiry into the purposes and structures of our military establishment and industry; we Canadians must be sovereign over our own security.

 

.................................................

 

The Barnard-Boecker Centre Foundation organized Dr. Bertell's visit to Victoria. T.W. wrote this article ( in 1999) using material from Dr. Bertell's recorded conversations and public speeches, her books and papers, as well as information from Angels Don't Play This HAARP, Dr. Nick Begich & Jeane Manning, Earthpulse Press, USA; NATO in the Balkans, Ramsey Clark et al., International Action Center, USA; Third World Resurgence #107, Dr. Siegwart-Horst Gunther, and an address to the Senate of Canada by Senator Douglas Roche.

 

 

 

 

 

Secrecy and Lies

The Contamination Continues- No Clean up in Iraq

Levels of Radioactivity in Iraq

Uranium Yellowcake Contamination

Iraqi Scientists Visit Japan

Levels of Radioactivity in Iraq

CADU 15: Summer 2003

 

Scott Peterson, a writer at The Christian Science Monitor, recently went to Iraq with a Geiger counter and a photographer and recorded the levels of radioactivity that he found there at four sites. At one site a 3-foot-long DU dart from a 120 mm tank shell was found producing radiation at more than 1,300 times background levels. Another site, by some burnt out tanks, had piles of pure DU oxide dust, the most easy to inhale and hence the most dangerous. "One pile of jet-black dust yielded a digital readout of 9,839 radioactive emissions in one minute, more than 300 times average background levels registered by the Geiger counter. Another pile of dust reached 11,585 emissions in a minute." The Government always defends its use of DU by claiming it is 40% less radioactive than natural uranium. While this is true, natural uranium is spread out and normally in mineral form. It is the concentration of DU in weapons form that allows it to reach these dangerously high levels of radioactivity.

 

 

MoD Issues DU Warning Card to Troops

Dutch Troops Moved Belatedly from Same Contaminated Area

Iraqis at Risk of DU Contaminated Scrap Metal

Japanese Hostage was Anti-DU Campaigner

Dutch Troops Moved Belatedly from Same Contaminated Area

CADU 17: Spring 2004

 

When Dutch troops arrived in the same army base in Samawah that the DU contaminated US soldiers had been staying in, they measured unacceptably high levels of radioactivity. Sgt. Juan Vega, senior medic with the US 442nd, told the New York-based Daily News “the Dutch swept the area around the train depot with Geiger counters and their medics confided to [me] they had found high radiation levels”. The Dutch were ordered instead to pitch camp in the desert. Yet troop transfer from the area was delayed by three weeks, while the new camp was under construction leading to unnecessary exposure to DU for Dutch troops.

 

British Government Says No Central Register of DU in Iraq Kept

CADU 16: Winter 2003/04

 

In response to written questions in parliament asked by Angus Robertson MP to the Secretary of State for Defence about British DU deployment, location and recovery in Iraq, he replied "I am withholding information about numbers of rounds of DU munitions deployed on operations (in Iraq)... All surplus DU ammunition has now been returned to the UK. Obvious surface-lying DU fragments continue to be removed from the battlefield as they are discovered, however the details of DU findings are not held centrally."

 

 

DU Horrors to be Repeated In Iraq?

Iraq Study Finds Rising Incidence of Babies Borne with Down's Syndrome

DU Horrors to be Repeated In Iraq?

CADU 12: Autumn 2002

 

The British Government makes clear its determination to use DU.

As both the US and British Governments fix their sights on a new war with Iraq there is increasing concern that the unresolved tragedies of the 1991 Gulf War will be repeated on an even larger scale than before. With thousands of Gulf War Veterans still suffering from illnesses that the British and American governments refuse to recognise as being caused by their service in the Gulf and ever rising levels of cancers, leukemias, and birth deformities in Iraq if ever there was a time to learn from past mistakes it is now.

 

Britain to Use DU Weapons

 

CADU has been very alarmed to learn that Whitehall sources have made it clear that British defence plans will be to provide "a large British force supported by heavy armour" including the use of Challenger II battle tanks. The Challenger II is the only current British frontline tank and it uses almost exclusively the L27 depleted uranium kinetic energy round. Although there also exists the L23 tungsten KE round their explosive charges are now passing their use by date and it is considered obsolete. The Challenger II tank has been the subject of much embarrassment to the MOD recently when in an exercise in Oman last year more than half the Challenger tanks broke down, mainly because their engine air-filters proved inadequate in desert conditions

 

The ministry of defence has made no secret of the fact that they are planning to continue using depleted uranium. This month, in response to a letter from CADU addressed to Tony Blair and Geoff Hoon, the Ministry of Defence wrote "DU will remain part of our arsenal for the foreseeable future because we have a duty to provide our troops with the best available equipment with which to protect themselves and succeed in conflict". Deeply ironic we felt to talk of protecting our troops with DU weapons. Campaigners may also be interested to note that this August Alvis acquired the manufacturing of Challenger II tanks after buying Vickers' defence business from Rolls Royce.

 

Denial of DU Effects on Health

 

In the same letter the MOD claimed, "there is no scientific or medical evidence to link DU with ill-health". This is clearly an untruth since the Royal Society report out earlier this year, (see CADU News 10) that the MOD also refers to in its reply, found that DU could cause fatal kidney failure, respiratory damage and damage to DNA and reproductive health. The Royal Society report also recommends that much further research needs to be done.

 

Only this month a report by the Uranium Medical Research Centre in Washington DC found that 11 years on over half the Gulf Veterans in the study tested positive for DU. Another study, also out this month by German biochemist, Professor Albrecht Schott, found that British veterans who fought in the Gulf and Balkan wars (where DU was also used) had up to 14 times the usual level of chromosome abnormalities as would be found in civilian populations.

 

Yet Britain is one of the few countries in NATO that still refuses to recognise Gulf war Syndrome and compensate its soldiers. To expose more soldiers to DU contamination without first establishing the cause of an illness that has affected thousands of British Gulf Veterans nor provide for their subsequent care is a gross dereliction of duty by the MOD.

 

Refusal To Take Responsbility for Past Actions

 

Moreover there has been a serious attempt by the allied forces that attacked Iraq to follow up the consequences of their use of DU weapons in 1991 on the Iraqi population. In winter 2001 lobbying by Washington successfully caused the General Assembly of the United Nations to reject a UN study on the effects of depleted uranium in Iraq. However reports released this year from both UNEP and the Royal Society recommended that areas contaminated by depleted uranium should be cordoned off and local food and water supplies monitored for decades to come.

 

When a site in Cardiff, Wales, was found to be contaminated with depleted uranium this July, soil was classified as low level radioactive waste and transported to a radioactive waste disposal facility near Sellafield. None of these protections have been afforded to Iraqi civilians. The MoD argues in its reply to CADU that it is under "no legal obligation to return to the region post-conflict to clear up any DU that remains." However this was only a precedent that was set by the USA after precarious legal argument, and certainly not a moral one, that can justify exposing a civilian population for possibly generations to come with toxic and radiological pollutants.

 

If Britain is to go down this route then there must be an honest and widespread public debate about this issue. We believe that the British Government is using selective science and the protection of political and military interests to suppress this debate.

 

CADU is profoundly opposed to any US and British attack on Iraq believing that they have shown no factual basis to the assertion that Saddam Hussain is a threat either to the West or to his neighbours at this time and that an invasion of Iraq will add nothing to the proclaimed objectives of "the war on terror". The War will only add to the suffering of the Iraqi people, who have already borne the brunt of the harshest ever UN sanctions for the past 11 years, destabilise the region and will clearly be illegal under international law. We think the British Government's clear determination to use DU weapons again in Iraqi despite the unresolved death and illness of those contaminated first time around is completely immoral and irresponsible.

 

Iraq’s Environment Minister Blames DU for Cancer Epidemic

The Human Cost of Uranium Weapons

CADU NEWS 26, July 2007

 

CADU worker Doug Weir, also co-ordinator of the International Campaign to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW) helped put on a powerful exhibition of photos in the European Parliament in early May. The black and white photos were taken by Japanese photographer Naomi Toyoda. He has been covering the story of Iraq since 1999 as a photojournalist and has become strongly convinced of the link between the use of DU in the first Gulf War and children’s cancers and leukaemia seen today. He says that for the Japanese, the victims of DU are the new Hibakusha, (the name given to the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs).

 

His photos were starkly beautiful but deeply disturbing. They showed children, women and men of Iraq - and one from the US - affected by DU poisoning. Victims of cancer or children with birth malformations, all were portrayed with dignity and with great compassion.

 

Many people came to see the exhibition: MEPs, their research assistants, civil servants or diplomats. No one could remain unmoved and more than one wept openly. They were tears not just of pity, but of rage at those who had strewn this poison, DU, so carelessly, so callously, across the land of Iraq.

 

MEPs Dr Caroline Lucas and Els de Groen who supported the event. (Apolonia Lobo)

 

Dr Ali, the Senior Oncologist at the Basra Teaching Hospital, filled out the story behind the photos as we walked round. “This woman was one of my patients. Her young husband left her as the tumour on her neck grew, saying he hadn’t been told she had cancer.” “This little girl developed a cancer not seen in one so young in your country.” “This little boy loved football. We amputated one leg to try to save him, but he never made it.” “This”, pointing to a photo of an expanse of tiny gravestones, with two despairing figures hunched over one of them, “is the children’s graveyard.”

 

No-one whose memory has been seared by the sight of these photos will ever forget them. No politicians who have sanctioned the use of DU should be allowed to forget the harm they have done.

 

The exhibition will be touring European capitals over the next year, starting with Helsinki, Finland.

 

Iraq’s Environment Minister Blames DU for Cancer Epidemic

 

Iraq: Speaking in Cairo on July 23rd, Iraq's environment minister blamed the use of depleted uranium weapons by U.S. forces during the 2003 Operation Shock and Awe for the current surge in cancer cases across the country.

 

As a result of "at least 350 sites in Iraq being contaminated during bombing" with depleted uranium (DU) weapons, Nermin Othman said, the nation is facing about 140,000 cases of cancer, with 7,000 to 8,000 new ones registered each year.

 

Speaking at a ministerial meeting of the Arab League, she also complained that many chemical plants and oil facilities had been destroyed during the two military campaigns since the 1990s, but the ecological consequences remain unclear.

 

"Our ministry is fledgling, and we need international support; notably, we need laboratories to better monitor air and water contamination," she said.

 

No major clean-up or public awareness campaigns have been reported in Iraq.

 

This is thought to be the first time that a member of the Iraqi Government has spoken out against DU. In our experience, Iraqi diplomats have been unwilling to discuss the issue with ICBUW representatives. CADU had suspected this was due to pressure from the US.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MSPs and CADU Condemn Renewed Solway Firth DU Tests

CADU, Latest News, 11 March 2008:  

 

SNP and Green MSPs today echoed the concerns of the Scottish Environment Minister Mike Russell by condemning the MoD’s decision to renew uranium weapon testing at its firing range near Dundrennan on the Solway Firth.

 

MSPs and CADU Condemn Renewed Solway Firth Depleted Uranium Tests

 

SNP and Green MSPs today echoed the concerns of the Scottish Environment Minister Mike Russell by condemning the MoD’s decision to renew uranium weapon testing at its firing range near Dundrennan on the Solway Firth. The five days of test firing of the controversial weapons comes at a time when the international community is moving towards outlawing their use because of concerns over their impact on human health and the environment.

 

Last December the United Nations General Assembly voted by 136 states to five to request that states submit reports on the health impacts of uranium weapons. The UK was just one of only five states to vote against the resolution, along with the US, Israel, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands.

 

The vote came at the end of an extraordinary 18 month period that saw the world’s first domestic ban on uranium weapons in Belgium, a vote by the European Parliament for a moratorium leading to a ban and the announcement of a huge compensation scheme for Italian Iraq and Balkan war veterans.

 

Green Co-convener Robin Harper MSP said: "Depleted uranium shells leave behind the kind of pollution normally associated with dirty bombs, radioactive material that damages the environment and risks future health problems. There is no safe place to test these shells, and there is no appropriate battlefield to use them on either. The MoD should be ashamed of going back to Dundrennan with this discredited technology, and should instead commit to the ban requested by the European Parliament."

 

An SNP spokesperson said: “When they were serving in areas where uranium weapons had been used, service personnel were issued with warning cards. That would suggest that the UK Government were well aware of the health problems associated with its use. We want to ask the Secretary of State for Defence about the UK’s position with regard to these international developments. Although we don’t have any powers over defence policy we are responsible for the health and well being of the people and service personnel of Scotland.”

 

Whether the MoD’s decision to renew testing is a political response to these events or heralds their use in either Iraq or Afghanistan, both CADU and local residents are deeply concerned about their impact. The MoD has fired more than 6000 rounds of anti-tank ammunition at the Dundrennan site over the last 20 years, equating to more than 20 tonnes of uranium.

 

CADU Development Worker Doug Weir said: "It is ironic that the UK has fired more uranium at home than it has done abroad. The 6000 rounds fired into and around the Solway Firth amounts to more than 20 tonnes of nuclear waste. Worrying stories from ex-workers about contaminated gun barrels wrapped in bin liners being transported by low-loader to the low level waste depository at Drigg in Cumbria abound, raising real concerns about the safety of open air testing at the site.

 

“Coming as they do as the international community is taking its first steps towards banning the use of uranium in weapons, these tests are very unhelpful and highlight the UK’s lack of respect for international law, environmental protection and arms control.”