The Responsibility of the US in Contaminating Iraq with Depleted Uranium
by Prof Souad N. Al-Azzawi
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http://www.apfn.org/apfn/du.htmhttp://www.apfn.org/apfn/du2.htmT
The following text was presented to the Kuala Lumpur International Conference to Criminalise War, Putra World Trade Centre, 28-31 October 2009.
For two decades, the administrations of the United States of America and the United Kingdom have been waging continuous wars on Iraq to occupy this oil rich country.
The armed forces of those two countries attacked civilians with different kinds of conventional, non-conventional, and banned weapons such as cluster bombs ammunitions, napalm bombs, white phosphorous weapons and depleted Uranium weapons.
Depleted Uranium (DU) is a radioactive and chemically toxic heavy metal. If ingested, inhaled, or it enters the human body through wounds or skin, it remains there for decades.
Within the human body the (DU) particles would be a continuous source for emitting alpha particles. With its toxic effects, published research & epidemiological studies have proved that it causes serious health damages to the human body. Some of the damage to the human body is to lymph tissue, kidneys, developing fetuses, neurological system, the bones, lung fibrosis, and an increase in the risk of many types of cancer and malignancies.
Hundreds of tons of (DU) expenditure have been fired & exploded on Iraqi highly populated areas like Basrah, Baghdad, Nasriya, Dewania, Samawa, and other cities.
Exploration programs and site measurements by Iraqi and non-Iraqi researchers all proved the existence of (DU) related contamination over most Iraqi territories.
Iraq's Minister of Environment admitted in July 23, 2007 in Cairo that "at least 350 sites in Iraq are contaminated with (DU)". She added that the nation is facing a tremendous number of cancer cases and called for the international community to help Iraq cope with this problem.
A few years after exposure to (DU) contamination, multifold increase of malignancies, congenital malformations, miscarriages, children leukemia, and sterility cases have been registered in suburb areas of Basrah and other surrounding areas. Similar problems appeared in Falluja, where illegal weapons were also used intensively in the 2004 attack of occupation forces on the city. More than two million of the Iraqi population died since 1991 because of the synergic multiple impact of using (DU) weapons, economical sanctions, and the destruction of the health care systems.
The economical sanction that were also imposed by USA and UK administrations deprived the children and people of Iraq their rights in food, potable water, health care, sanitation and other life supporting necessities.
The USA and UK administrations have subjected the whole nation of Iraq for two decades to torture and slow death through the intentional use of radioactive weapons and the sanctions. The continuous and intentional use of radioactive weapons is a crime against humanity due to its undifferentiating harmful health effects on civilians in contaminated areas tens of years to come after the military engagements. The existence of (DU) radioactive contamination in the surrounding environment is a continuous source of exposure to low level radiation. This exposure can be considered as a systematic attack on Iraqi civilians in an armed conflict, according to Article 4 of the official regulations and Article 7 of the ICC.
This paper is submitted to present the facts and scientific evidences regarding the intentional use of the USA and UK administrations of depleted uranium weapons against the people and environment of Iraq, in addition to the health consequences that have been result from them.
1.0 Introduction:
The administrations of the United States of America and the United Kingdom have been continuously waging wars against Iraq since 1991.
The armed forces of these two administrations have been using different kinds and new generations of conventional, nonconventional, and illegal weapons like Napalm, cluster bombs, white phosphorous, microwave, and Depleted Uranium weapons [1][2][3][4] against the human population and the environment of Iraq. Invasion and occupation of Iraq proved to the world that oil flow is the main reason behind these criminal attacks.
As a result of using these weapons, with the economical sanctions that were also imposed on Iraq by the same administration more than two million Iraqi people died and the count continues.
In this paper, we present the consequences and damage resulting from the use of Depleted Uranium weaponry against Iraq, backed by scientific fact and research.
2.0 What is Depleted Uranium?
Depleted Uranium (DU) is a man-made, radioactive, heavy metal extracted from Uranium ore. Since (DU) is a byproduct of the Uranium enrichment process to produce spent fuel for nuclear reactors. Natural Uranium has an isotopic content of 99.274% of U-238 by weight, 0.072% of U-235, & 0.0057% of U-234 [5].
Due to its highly pyrophoric and spontaneously ignitable properties, the DU penetrator ignites on impact generating extremely high temperatures. As the projectile pierces, it leaves its jacket behind dispersing DU dust into the environment during the impact. The quantity of the aerosol production is proportional to DU mass within the projectile and the hardness of the impact.
It is estimated that up to 70%of DU in the projectiles to be aerosolized when on the impact DU catches fire [6]. The explosion generates high temperatures of (3000-6000) °C. The aerosols particles are smaller than 5µm in size [6]. These nano-particles act more like a gas than a particle. The DU aerosols remain windborne for an extended time and this is the most dangerous pathway on civilian population around the battlefield areas.
3.0 Depleted Uranium within the human body
There is empirical documentation that suggests that DU aerosols can travel up to 26 miles [5], others suggest even further distances. The full radiation effect of DU occurs six months after production [6]. One milligram of U-238 can give of 1, 07, 000 alpha particles in one day. Each alpha particle releases over 4 MeV (million-electron-volts) of energy. If swallowed or inhaled, this much energy will hit up to 6 nearby cells away in the organ [6]. Just 6-10ev (electron volt) is needed to cleave the nuclear DNA strand in the cell.
Dr. Rosalie Bertell, an epidemiologist with 30-years experience in the field of low level radiation explains DU potential harm to the human body [6]:
After inhalation (DU) nano-particle aerosols cross the lung-blood barrier and gain entrance to the cells. They create free radicals. As a heavy metal, DU toxicity attacks the proteins in the cell which normally fight the free radicals, and creates extra free radicals. This amount of free radicals creates total oxidative stress in the human body. This stress causes failure to protective enzymes, leaving cells vulnerable to viruses and mycoplasmas, damage to cellular communication system and the mitochondria.
As a heavy metal, DU replaces the magnesium in the organ’s molecules that normally function as antioxidants, and causes the destruction of the body’s repair mechanisms. Consequences of this destruction are chronic diseases and tumors. Free radicals can also totally disrupt the folding process and manufacturing of the molecule proteins which is sequenced by DNA and manufactured by the RNA. Some of the diseases resulted from misrouted proteins include cystic fibrosis, diabetes insipidus and cancer. [6]
Amassing and accumulation of misfolded proteins leads to neurodegenerative diseases, Parkinson’s Diseases and early onset Alzheimer’s disease. In these diseases, amyloids are formed from protein fragments and dysfunctional proteins and that “Misfolded proteins” are the central pathogenic mechanism.
Gulf War veterans have manifested many of the symptoms of these neurodegenerative diseases.[6]
Other health effects of DU within the human body are:
- Lou Gehrig’s disease is twice as commonly diagnosed in Gulf War veterans as expected.
- Immune and Hormonal system damage
- Disturbance of thyroid function
- Mycoplasmas invasion into human cells.
- Initiation or promotion of cancer
- Tetratogenic toxicity which causes mental retardation, congenital malformations.
- GW veterans were twice-three times as likely to report children with birth defects as their counter partner who did not serve in the first Gulf War.
- Miscarriages
Dr. Hari Sharma, formerly of the University of Waterloo, tested the urine of some US, UK and Canadian veterans as well as Iraqi civilians from Basra and Baghdad.
Using 24hr urine samples, his isotopic analysis revealed a range of DU in the sample of (81-1,340) nanogram. Results showed that two of the three Iraqis from Al Basra had 147 – 426 nanograms respectively in their urine. Also it showed that 2 out of 5 Iraqis from Baghdad have DU in their urine
4.0 Other Important Scientific Evidence:
• Dr Alexandra C. Miller and her team at the Armed Forces Radiological Research Institute, Bethesda, MD and the University of Paris, France used human cell models (the human Osteoblast cell HOS) to evaluate the carcinogenic potential of DU in vitro through assessing morphological transformation, genotoxicity [7] (chromosomal aberration), mutagenic (HRRT Ioci) and genomic instability.
Published data of the results have demonstrated that DU exposure in vitro to immortalized HOS cells is neoplatically transforming, mutagenic, genotoxic, and induces genomic instability. Other results showed:
- Exposure to embedded DU pellets could induce leukemia in mice.
- Internalized DU resulted in significant increases in the mutagenic frequency in the Lac gene in the tests of the exposed mice.
- Internalized DU resulted in the development of bladder carcinoma in 75% of all animal exposed within 90 days of initial DU exposure.
As we can see all these results suggest that long-term exposure to internalized DU could be critical to the development of neoplastic disease in humans.
• Pub. Radiation Protection Dosimetry Schroder, Heike 2003. A molecular biologist conducted research about the chromosomal aberration on white blood cells of 16 British Gulf War veterans of 1991. The veterans have suffered from symptoms ranging from headache, to chronic fatigue, depression, muscle and joint pains, impaired short-term memory and other cognitive defects. [8]
The results showed that the mean frequency of their blood cells chromosomal aberrations is 5-fold elevation higher than the control blood samples. This strongly indicated previous exposure to ionizing radiations.
The intercellular distribution of the Dicentric and Centric ring chromosomes indicates significant over dispersion on the group level for the veterans who served in the Gulf War. Dic and CR are a known consequence of non uniform irradiation on the human body. [8]
• Dr. Huda Ammash, Professor of Molecular Biology in Baghdad University and her team [9] conducted and published the results of genetic hematological analysis for a group of individuals living in DU contaminated areas in southern Iraq. Blood tests for the (47) individuals who lived in Basrah contaminated areas and another 30 as a control group. The control group individuals lived in Baghdad.
- Blood tests showed that 21% of the studied individuals in Basrah group suffered a reduction in hemoglobin concentration of (9-13) g/d.
- The blood packed cell volume (PCV) test results showed that 25.5% of Basrah studied group showed abnormal (PCV) rates of (30-39)% less than the normal rate.
- Total white Blood Cells count (WBC) results showed that 8% of the individuals in the Basrah study group with (WBC) less than normal which is (4000)c/ml or higher than normal rate (1100)c/ml.
- Compound chromosomal changes in the lymphocytes of periphal blood of the individuals of Basrah studied group had been found at a ratio of (0.1118)% which is significantly higher than that of the control group.
- The ratio of dicentric and ring centric chromosomal abnormality fraction was found to be (0.04479) which is higher than ordinary ratio chromosomal damages where mostly in male veteran individuals. One case was for a 13 year old young boy at the time of the exposure in Al-Zubair contaminated area.
• Rita Hindin, et al [5] published a paper “Teratogenicity of Depleted Uranium aerosols: A review from an epidemiological perspective” in which they stated that animal studies firmly support the possibility that DU is a teratogen. They also concluded that the human epidemiological evidence is consistent with the increased risk of birth defects in offspring of persons exposed to DU.
• For further scientific evidences by Iraqi researchers, check: ”Depleted Uranium Contamination: Iraq: An overview”
http:///www.globalresearch.org.
5.0 Contaminating Iraq with Depleted Uranium
The USA and UK armed forces used Depleted Uranium ammunition for the first time in the history of their wars during the Gulf War of 1991. About one million bullets, projectiles, and missiles were fired along the highway from Kuwait to Basrah then up to Nasriya and other Iraqi cities. About 60-65% of this ammunition and expenditure were fired within Iraqi territories, Figure 1 shows areas where DU expenditure have been used in the Gulf War of 1991 [11].
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