[CPEO-MEF] Fw: Deception Over Health Risks of Depleted Uranium

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[From: "Nancy Allen" <nallen@acadia.net>
[To: <nallen@acadia.net>]
[Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2001 1:17 PM]
[Subject: Deception Over Health Risks of Depleted Uranium]


http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0201-01.htm
Published on Thursday, February 1, 2001 in the Irish Times
Deception Over Health Risks of Depleted Uranium
by Lara Marlowe

Is depleted uranium, the waste product of the nuclear industry used to
make tank-piercing weapons, responsible for Gulf War syndrome and Balkans
syndrome?
The US Department of Defence and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
both still deny it. But in July 1990 - the month before Saddam Hussein
invaded Kuwait - a report submitted to the US army by Science Applications
International Corporation compared the merits of tungsten and depleted
uranium (or DU) as armour penetrators. DU is a "lowlevel alpha radiation
emitter which is linked to cancer when exposures are internal, and chemical
toxicity causing kidney damage", the report said.

Following combat, it added, "the condition of the battlefield, and the
long-term health risks to natives and combat veterans may become issues in
the acceptability of the continued use of DU kinetic penetrators . . ." The
report warned that "aerosol DU exposures to soldiers on the battlefield
could be significant, with potential radiological and toxicological
effects". A navy memo dated September 1990 alludes to "the hazard created
from residual radiation of a spent round" and notes that "prolonged
exposure could cause illness".

How can one explain that children of Gulf War veterans suffer the same
birth defects as Iraqi children born in zones contaminated by DU? That the
same symptoms - fatigue, depression, respiratory and kidney problems and in
many cases leukaemia - affect civilians and soldiers exposed to DU in both
the Gulf and the Balkans? And if DU is harmless, why is Kuwait paying
private companies millions of dollars to decontaminate its battlefields?
Who will pay to decontaminate Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo?


continued...
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0201-01.htm


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