Verarmd Uranium 19

Cancer of the conflict zone
R B Stuart (Iraq)
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/displayarticle.asp?xfile=data/opinion/2010/April/opinion_April116.xml&section=opinion&col=
20 April 2010

When my sister, 101st Airborne Army Capt. Chaplain Fran E. Stuart,
returned from Iraq, she was forever changed.

Not only had the desert sand, gun blasts and heat penetrated her psyche
during her one-year deployment, but a carcinogen had made its way into her
body as well. Unbeknown to her, the carcinogen was making a home in my
sister’s body, along with the Anthrax vaccine, depleted uranium, burn pit
smoke and contaminated water dished up at every meal.

In March 2006, when my sister was 41, she was diagnosed with a rare,
aggressive, stage-IV dysgerminoma cancer, also called “germ cell” cancer,
which is usually only seen in pregnant women and teenage girls. The cancer
was advancing quickly, wrapping itself around her internal organs like an
octopus and gathering fuel from her central abdomen. My sister was flown to
Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington for immediate surgery and
further testing, when a volleyball-sized tumor was removed from her
abdomen. Fortunately, doctors were able to corral her cancer, but only
after 10 months and 35 rounds of exhaustive chemotherapy. She wasn’t the
only one undergoing such trauma. While visiting her at Walter Reed, I
witnessed many soldiers returning from Iraq with cancer, unknown to the
public and unacknowledged by the military. Walter Reed had two floors
dedicated solely to the soldiers arriving daily with cancer. Their lives
were spared on the battlefield, but the cancer was ravaging their bodies
from within.

I began to do research, and was alarmed to discover how the military uses
depleted uranium, especially in Iraq. Soldiers I talked to at Walter Reed
began to say the same thing: Cancer is not a “war wound,” so the military
denies responsibility.

Since soldiers are uninformed about depleted uranium, they don’t wear
protective gear and unknowingly inhale the toxic, pollen-like, yellow dust.
The toxins develop into different forms of rare cancers within four to 36
months. In August 2002, before the Iraq war commenced, US Army Col. J.
Edgar Wakayama wrote a report for the military, “Depleted Uranium (DU)
Munitions,” which pointed to the health and environmental risks associated
with depleted uranium. Depleted uranium is produced as a byproduct of the
enrichment process for nuclear reactor-grade or nuclear weapon-grade
uranium. Due to its extreme density, it is used as the armor plating in 16
different size cartridges of US ammunition.

Wakayama outlined three methods of human exposure: shrapnel wounds,
inhalation (lung fibrosis, risk of lung cancer and thoracic lymph nodes)
and ingestion (contaminated soil, contaminated drinking water and food).
Children playing at impact sites can ingest heavily contaminated soil. The
slow leeching of depleted uranium into the local water supply contaminates
plants and food. Even after the internal release of this study, the Defence
Department did not heed warnings. Seven months later, the US military began
the “Shock and Awe Campaign.” They proceeded to drop 320 metric tons of
depleted uranium munitions in Iraq.

In 2003, a Christian Science Monitor journalist Scott Peterson measured
radiation in Baghdad at 1,900 times higher than normal. Peterson noted that
depleted uranium has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, and total
disintegration estimated after 25 billion years. The Seattle
Post-Intelligencer reaffirmed these findings, and followed up with a map of
depleted uranium used worldwide. And just last month, the BBC reported that
doctors in the Iraqi city of Fallujah are seeing a high level of birth
defects — the level of heart defects among newborns is said to be 13 times
higher than in Europe. British-based Iraqi researcher Malik Hamdan told the
BBC’s World Today programme that, based on data from January 2010, the rate
of congenital heart defects was 95 per 1,000 births.

A US military spokesman, Michael Kilpatrick, said they take public health
concerns “very seriously,” but that “[n]o studies to date have indicated
environmental issues resulting in specific health issues.”

The aforementioned sources are a mere fraction of the stories telling of
depleted uranium’s horrific effects. But they don’t garner anywhere near
the media attention in the US as do stories about Tiger Woods and the
earthquake in Haiti. The US military’s unwillingness to publicly admit
there is danger of radiological exposure among deployed troops leaves the
American people uninformed, the soldiers on the battlefield unprotected and
the Iraqi civilians increasingly at risk.

Our soldiers are offered up for radiological contamination, and possibly
death. A byproduct of the greatest weapon of all, an invisible carcinogen,
with the capabilities to annihilate everything that lives — that is our
gift of democracy that keeps on giving.

R B Stuart is a New York author, freelance writer, columnist, photographer
and a contributor for The Huffington Post