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HORRORS OF DEPLETED URANIUM
By Guy Dauncey
It's dirty, and it's deadly.
When you coat a shell with it, it slices through armoured plating
as if it
was cheese, turning tanks, buildings and bomb shelters into exploding
incinerators.
It causes cancer among people who breathe its dust, or touch
it.
It causes horrible birth defects among the babies of pregnant
women who
breathe it or touch it.
It causes a host of chronic ailments and sicknesses among returning
troops.
It was used by the US army in Iraq, in Kosovo, and Afghanistan.
The United Nations wants a worldwide ban on it.
The US plans to use it again, in its war on Iraq.
What is it? It's a waste product that arises during the production
of
enriched uranium for nuclear weapons and reactors. It's called
depleted
uranium.
It has a radioactive half-life of 4.5 billion years. The Earth
is 4.5
billion years old.
This means that the cities, battlefields, and locations where
depleted
uranium is used will be radioactive and remain radioactive for
the next 4.5
billion years.
That's as long as the Earth has existed.
That's twice as long as the entire evolution of life on Earth.
Seventy times longer than the time since the dinosaurs became
extinct.
Depleted uranium is extremely dense; that's what makes it
capable of
slicing into heavily armoured vehicles. That's why the American
military
likes it.
In the Gulf War, in 1991, the US army fired off a million
rounds of
depleted uranium, totalling 300 tons. In Baghdad, where they
thought they
were attacking a secret bunker, they sliced into it with depleted
uranium
and incinerated 800 women and children who were hiding in a shelter.
Along
the "highway of death", outside Basra, in southern
Iraq, they incinerated
every tank, every soldier.
Along that road, the shell-holes in the blown-up tanks are
1000 times more
radioactive than the background. The desert near the vehicles
is 100 times
more radioactive.
70% of the uranium burns on impact, turning into as a fine
ceramic dust of
depleted uranium oxide particles which gets blown on the wind,
and washed
into the groundwater. In the Basra region, there has been a 100-fold
increase in uranium in the groundwater.
And then there's the birth defects.
Children born with fingers missing.
Children born with legs missing.
Children born with parts of their face missing.
Children born with their eyes missing.
Children born with grossly deformed skulls.
Children born with enormous distended bellies.
Children born with no hands.
Children born with no genitals.
Children born with no skin over their bellies.
Children born with open holes in their backs.
Children born whose bodies are beyond words, in their pitiful
awfulness.
There has been a 10-fold increase in such birth defects in
the Basra region
since 1988. I have seen the photos of these children. You can
see them for
yourself at
http://www.web-light.nl/VISIE/extremedeformities.html
But be warned -
these photos are not for the squeamish, and may give some people
nightmares. They are also at http://www.ngwrc.org/Dulink/du_link.htm
There has also been a 17-fold increase in cancer in southern
Iraq since
1988, and a sudden increase in childhood leukemia.
That was Iraq. Then there was Afghanistan.
The data is still sketchy, but tests on residents in Jalalabad
have found a
level of uranium in the urine of residents that is 400% to 2000%
higher
than normal. The contamination is also present in Kabul.
A scientific team from the Uranium Medical Research Centre
that went to
Kabul in September 2002 found that people who had been exposed
to debris
from the US/British precision bombing were reporting pains in
their joints,
back and kidney pain, muscle weakness, memory problems, confusion,
and
disorientation. Members of the team began to complain of the
same symptoms.
They found that 25% of new-born infants were suffering from congenital
and
post-natal health problems that appeared to be associated with
uranium
contamination.
So what happened to the US and British troops who were exposed
to the same
dust?
It's hard to sort out, because the troops who served in the
Gulf were
exposed to a cocktail of injections and chemical and biological
hazards, as
well as depleted uranium. But the symptoms are telling.
There were 700,000 US troops who served in the Gulf War in
1991.
50% were black or Latino. Many were women.
260,000 have applied for medical benefits.
159,000 have been awarded disability allowances.
Many are probably on low incomes, who cannot afford expensive
medical
insurance.
They call it Gulf War Syndrome; nobody in the military wants
to talk about
it. The returning troops are suffering from reactive airway disease;
neurological damage; cataracts; kidney problems; lymphoma; skin
and organ
cancer; neuropsychological problems; uranium in their semen;
sexual
dysfunction; and birth defects in their offspring. Birth defects
are
turning up four times more often in the children of those who
served in the
Gulf than normal. (see www.chronicillnet.org/online/lifemag.html)
That was Afghanistan. Now a new war on Iraq looms.
A new round of death
Unless we stand together, work together, pray together, and call
out
together to stop it, and to outlaw depleted uranium forever,
as the United
Nations has recommended.
Four and a half billion years.
Sources:
Afghanistan: The Nuclear Nightmare Starts:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/011103E.dpltd.urnim.htm
Born Soldiers: Birth Defects from Depleted Uranium in the Gulf?
http://www.chronicillnet.org/online/lifemag.html
International Action Center's Depleted Uranium Education Project:
http://www.iacenter.org
Iraqi cancers, birth defects blamed on U.S. depleted uranium.
Seattle Post
Intelligencer: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/iraq2002/95178_du12.shtml
National Gulf War Resource Center: http://www.ngwrc.org/Dulink/du_link.htm
Written and compiled by Guy Dauncey,
Victoria, B.C., Canada
Author of Stormy Weather: 101 Solutions to Global Climate Change.
Editor of
EcoNews. http://www.earthfuture.com
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