Seattle's Post Intelligencer reporter, Larry Johnson, took another trip
to Iraq. He once again has written a good piece on the health
consequences of war in Iraq. This is worth reading................

Beth E. Rivin, M.D., M.P.H.
Research Associate Professor
Health and Human Rights Project
School of Law,
Adjunct Research Associate Professor,
Health Services
School of Public Health and Community Medicine
Office: Condon Hall, Rm 630
University of Washington
Seattle, WA, USA
Phone: 206-616-3674

"Victory depends not on the power of weapons but on awakening the
consciousness of man........."
Anna Louise Strong,
1956, Peking


************************************************************************
*******************

Monday, August 4, 2003

War's unintended effects
Use of depleted uranium weapons lingers as health concern

By LARRY JOHNSON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER FOREIGN DESK EDITOR

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The ideal legacy of the war in Iraq is a free and
democratic society, but a sinister legacy of another kind is possible as
well -- cancers and birth defects.

Depleted uranium weapons used by the U.S.-led forces in the war have
left battle sites throughout Iraq contaminated with abnormally high
levels of radiation.
A war-damaged Iraqi tank near a school in Baghdad
Zoom Dan DeLong / P-I
A war-damaged Iraqi tank rests along the highway next to a school on
the outskirts of Baghdad. Depleted uranium weapons were used in
populated areas in Iraq.

Although there is no firm consensus, nuclear experts and laymen alike
generally agree that depleted uranium, which is toxic as well as
radioactive, is at the very least a potential cause of cancers and birth
defects. Some Iraqi physicians and others blame depleted uranium weapons
used in the 1991 Gulf War for a major increase of cancers and birth
defects that occurred a few years later. It is also a prime suspect for
the Gulf War Syndrome that has sickened and killed thousands of U.S.
veterans.

The Pentagon and United Nations estimate that U.S. and British forces
used 1,100 to 2,200 tons of armor-piercing shells made of depleted
uranium during attacks in Iraq in March and April -- far more than the
estimated 375 tons used in the 1991 Gulf War.

U.S. tanks, Bradley fighting machines, A-10 attack jets and Apache
helicopters routinely used depleted uranium rounds, but in the recent
war, the ammunition was used in and near heavily populated areas, not
just in the desert.

There are some studies under way that could shed more light on the
effects of depleted uranium, a highly complex and poorly understood
subject. Critics say DU shouldn't be used until the studies have been
completed, while supporters, primarily the military, say it is critical
to success on the battlefield.

Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., has introduced legislation requiring the
U.S. government to conduct studies of DU's effects on health and the
environment, and cleanup of DU contamination in the United States. The
bill, co-sponsored by 23 other Democrats, remains in committee.

He said DU may well be associated with increased birth defects.

"We continue to get these sporadic reports of various places where a lot
of people are getting sick, and nobody is willing to connect the dots
yet," he said. "I'm afraid we're going to have a lot of people get sick
before they finally admit that depleted uranium really causes a problem
for us (U.S. veterans and their families) as well as for the Iraqis."

After NATO's use of DU weapons in Kosovo in 1999, the Council of Europe
parliamentarians called for a worldwide ban on the manufacture, testing,
use and sale of weapons using depleted uranium, asserting that NATO's
use of DU weapons would have "long term effects on health and quality of
life in South-East Europe, affecting future generations." The call went
unheeded.

An independent policy analyst on the use and effects of DU, in a June 24
report, was critical of both the British and the Americans for not doing
more to protect their troops and civilians from DU in Iraq. But the
report held criticism for those on all sides of the DU issue.

"What is clear ... is that elements of the U.S. government will
manipulate information and even lie about the health of U.S. combat
veterans to avoid liability for DU's health and environmental effects,"
said Dan Fahey, who has testified on DU at a number of congressional
hearings. "Equally as clear is the willingness of some anti-DU activists
to promote theories as fact, fabricate data and manipulate statistics,
and exploit the suffering of people to further political or financial
interests."

'A well-established risk'

In June, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer conducted tests at six sites
from Basra to Baghdad, and found elevated levels of radiation at all of
them. One destroyed tank near Baghdad was 1,500 times more radioactive
than normal background radiation. Another was 1,400 times more
radioactive than background.

To get additional evidence that DU was used on these tanks, the P-I used
swabs of cloth to gather samples of residue from the blackened bullet
holes on two tanks on the outskirts of Baghdad, and from the black ash
on a tank in Kut.

Bruce Busby, radiation safety officer for Fred Hutchinson Cancer
Research Center in Seattle analyzed the swabs. Although stressing that
far more sophisticated equipment and tests are required to positively
identify DU and precisely measure contamination levels, he was able to
determine that the swabs had elevated levels of radioactive
contamination, consistent with DU. Still, Busby is not convinced it is a
severe problem in Iraq. " ... Considering all the other hazards those
people are exposed to, this is a small risk," he said.
A tank outside Kut in southern Iraq
Zoom Dan DeLong / P-I
Outside Kut in southern Iraq, two young Iraqi men remove parts from
one of the many tanks in the area.

Others were more alarmed by the P-I findings.

"... if you found it (DU), it's possible kids could get it on their
hands by playing on tanks, and adults could inhale re-suspended dust if
salvaging equipment," Fahey said.

Tedd Weyman, deputy director of the Uranium Medical Centre, an
independent research group in Canada and Washington, D.C., was also
concerned about DU in Iraq.

"... Alpha emitters -- DU is one -- are carcinogenic and . . .
inhalation exposure of low quantities of low-level radioactive material
is a well-established risk," Weyman said. "Externally, the radioactivity
travels a very short distance -- centimeters -- before fully releasing
all its energy and disintegrating, (But) if inhaled and lying adjacent
to cells in the body, it is a serious hazard."

Although the Pentagon has said depleted uranium is the material of
choice because its density allows it to slice through heavy tank armor,
the Army is currently looking at an alternative. A Florida company,
Liquidmetal Technologies, says it can get comparable performance from
ammunition using an exotic alloy of tungsten, and if the Army decides to
switch, the new rounds could be in service within two years.

The Pentagon has sent mixed signals about the effects of depleted
uranium, saying there have been no known health problems associated with
the munition. At the same time, the military acknowledges the hazards in
an Army training manual, which requires that anyone who comes within 25
meters of any DU-contaminated equipment or terrain wear respiratory and
skin protection, and says that "contamination will make food and water
unsafe for consumption."

According to the Army Environmental Policy Institute, holding a spent DU
round would expose a person to about 200 mrem per hour. That's a level
of radiation equivalent to receiving eight chest X-rays per hour, said
Tom Carpenter, director of the Government Accountability Project's
Nuclear Oversight Campaign. That's also twice the annual radiation
exposure limit allowed by the Washington state.

The Environmental Protection Agency Web site says, "There is no firm
basis for setting a 'safe' level of exposure (to radiation) above
background. Most regulatory and advisory bodies around the world
(including EPA) assume that any exposure carries some risk and that the
risk increases as the exposure increases."

The April issue of New Scientist magazine reported that Alexandra
Miller, a radiobiologist with the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research
Institute in Bethesda, Md., has discovered the first direct evidence
that radiation from DU can damage chromosomes. "The chromosomes break,
and the fragments reform in a way that results in abnormal joins. Both
the breaks and the joins are commonly found in tumor cells," the article
says. The implication is that it could cause cancer.

Miller's work suggests that the toxic nature of DU, combined with its
radioactivity, could produce effects more dire than either of those
characteristics acting alone.

"I think that we assumed that we knew everything that we needed to know
about uranium. (But) This is something we have to consider now when we
think about risk estimates," the article says.

Cancer on the rise

Researchers aren't the only ones concerned.

The U.S. and British use of DU during the latest conflict, also alarms
doctors in Iraq. Cancer had already 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. The rate of birth defects also had
risen sharply, according to doctors in Iraq.

Now, doctors in Iraq say, the number of cancers and birth defects may be
"devastating."

"This is the right time for active support to help prevent the
catastrophic effects of the bombing," said Dr. Alim Yacoub, on his last
day as dean of the Al Mustansiriya Medical School in Baghdad.

"It is the right time for our U.S. friends to alleviate the consequences
of depleted uranium and dirty weapons," he said.

"If there isn't a centralized health plan soon, the consequences could
be devastating," said Yacoub, the foremost Iraqi authority on the
effects of DU. Yacoub has tracked the rise of cancer in Iraq for years,
and places the blame squarely on DU.

"For the past 12 years, we have only been able to watch what's going on
in this country, now it is time for a comprehensive health plan for
cleaning up DU and for treating cancer," he said. Yacoub has carefully
preserved his studies and is eager to present them to other researchers.

From the cancer ward at the Mother and Child Hospital in Basra, Dr.
Janan Ghalib Hassan has also tracked the rise in cancer in Iraq,
primarily in the south, for years. It is a phenomena that she also says
is most likely caused by the DU used by U.S. forces in the Gulf War in
1991.

"I worked here in this hospital in 1980 and never saw so much cancer,
but after 1991, I started to see many more cancer cases," Hassan said.

She said that because the incubation period for cancer is about five
years, the effects of the latest war should start showing up in 2008. "I
think the number of cancer cases will be as much as 10 times or more
higher," she said. "It is a crime; a crime."

FOR MORE INFORMATION
DEPLETED URANIUM

WHAT IT IS:

Depleted uranium is a highly dense, toxic and radioactive metal that is
the byproduct of the process during which fissionable uranium used to
make nuclear bombs and reactor fuel is separated from natural uranium.
The U.S. uses it for bullets and shells.

WHAT IT DOES:

Depleted uranium contains the highly toxic U-238 isotope, which has a
radioactive half-life of about 4.5 billion years. As U-238 breaks down,
an ongoing process, it creates protactinium-234, which radiates potent
beta particles that may cause cancer as well as mutations in body cells
that could lead to birth defects.

HOW IT SPREADS:

When a depleted uranium round hits a hard target, as much as 70 percent
of the projectile can burn on impact, creating a firestorm of depleted
uranium particles. The toxic residue of this firestorm is an extremely
fine insoluble 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 in the soil, it can pollute the
environment and create up to a hundredfold increase in uranium levels in
ground water, according to the U.N. Environmental Program.
FOR MORE INFORMATION

Dan Fahey report

New Scientist article

Uranium Medical Research Centre

U.S. Department of Defense

National Gulf War Resource Center

A P-I special report on Iraq:

P-I foreign desk editor Larry Johnson can be reached at 206-448-8035 or
larryjohnson@...


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---------------------------------------------------------------
War's unintended effects
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The ideal legacy of the war in Iraq is a free and
democratic society, but a sinister legacy of another kind is possible as
well -- cancers and birth defects.

* Read the full article at:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/133581_du04.html

---------------------------------------------------------------
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world at http://www.seattlepi.com/ -- updated as news breaks.