INTERNATIONAL PHYSICIANS FOR THE PREVENTION OF NUCLEAR
WAR (IPPNW)
CONFERENCE: DIALOGUES
WITH
DECISION MAKERS
NEW DELHI, INDIA, FEBRUARY 29, MARCH 1-2, 2004
CONFERENCE HOSTED BY THE INDIAN DOCTORS FOR PEACE AND
DEVELOPMENT (IDPD)
CONTACT: DR. ARUN MITRA <idpd2001@hotmail.com>
Texr
version
SILENT
WMDs -- EFFECTS OF DEPLETED URANIUM
By Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat
Former Chief of the Naval Staff, India
FEBRUARY 29, 2004
Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot ..that it do
singe yourself.
-
William Shakespeare
This brief presentation is aimed at
conveying to the primarily Indian participants of the
Conference the fateful and disastrous consequences
of the indiscriminate use of depleted and non DU
munitions on the people of the west, central and south
Asian regions, women, children , men , animals, plant
and animal life now and in the future, in gross
violation of international law, the Hague convention
and domestic US military law.
Official Gamma Ray damage caused studies
have been deficient in a number of respects..internal
contamination, internal dose to individual cells,
omissions of diseases other than cancer, mutagenic,
long term degeneration , oncogenesis, effects of the
killer isotopes in particular. The case studies of the
years 1945-50 were ignored. A recent European
Parliament Report ECRR 2003 (European Committee on
Radiation Risk ) concludes that A Bomb studies
underestimate the radiation risk by more than 1000
times and failed to consider the internal exposure and
diseases caused by Alpha and Beta rays. They
did
not consider the Manhattan Project classified memo
that, in case the Project objective of producing
Plutonium fission and theA Bomb did not succeed ,
Depleted Uranium munitions would be deployed towards
the attainment of the same objective (encl. 1).
DU weapons emit Alpha particle dose to
a single cell from U-238 which is 50 times the annual
dose level. Cancer is initiated with one alpha
particle, its daughter isotopes effect generations as
the isotopes bio-concentrate in plants and animals,
and travel up the food chain. It is a nuclear weapon
because the energy is derived from the nucleus of the
atom. They enter the body through the lungs, the
digestive system or breaks in the skin. One gram of
DU releases more than 12,000 particles per second.
The radiation slowly kills the cells that make life
possible. The Gulf War syndrome of 1991 did just that
( reported by Dr Asaf Durakovic, Prof. of Medicine ,
Georgetown University, and discoverer of the Gulf War
Syndrome.)
We are well aware that the radiation
fall-out map Under the Cloud: Decades of Nuclear
Testing has demonstrated the effects of 1200
nuclear weapon tests conducted at the Nevada Test
Site; and the US Government admitted in Nov. 2002,
that every living person in the US between 1958-63 was
exposed to this fall out resulting in cancer, gene
mutation, heart disease, autism, diabetes, Parkinsons,
ALS, asthma, chronic fatigue syndrome , hypothyroidism
in new-borns, obesity and learning disabilities. One
out of twelve children in the US is disabled. The
fall out did not stop at the US borders. It travelled
around the world, as atmospheric dust and remains even
in the biosphere/ sub-orbital space today. High
breast cancer rates have been co-located in the
proximity of nuclear power plants in the west and more
so in the east coast areas of the US (The Breast
cancer map from The Enemy Within: the high cost of
living near nuclear reactors, quotes US Govt. Disease
Control Centers.
The Radiation & Public health Report
(RPHP), rendered by a group of independent scientists
collected 4000 baby teeth and by measuring Strontium
90 levels in the baby teeth ( a built in dosi-meter )
they have been able to co-relate with radiation
related diseases in children living near the nuclear
power plants; the main path ways being dairy products
and drinking water.
The induction of DU weapons in 1991 in
Iraq, the radio-active trash from nuclear plants broke
a 46 year taboo. This Trojan Horse of nuclear war, an
omnicidal weapon has since then continued to be used
more and more. DU remains radioactive longer than the
age of the earth ( estimated at 4.5 billion years. )
The long-term effects from over a decade
of DU exposures are emerging in Southern Iraq. They
are devastating. The increased quantities of
radio-active material ( including non-depleted
uranium), used in Afghanistan are 3 to 5 times greater
than Iraq 199. In Iraq 2003 they are already
estimated to be 6 to 10 times 1991 and will travel
through a larger area and affect many more people,
babies and unborn. Countries within a 1000 mile
radius of Baghdad and Kabul are being affected by
radiation poisoning , that includes the Capital, New
Delhi, where the ruling elite lives. The reported
coming of an AIDS epidemic last year in India , down
wind, may have a relationship to DU bombing in
Afghanistan. If we think cancer is a problem now wait
until more DU is released in wars against terror and
for regime change, on mistaken Intelligence
reports.
More
than 500 tons of DU munitions have
been dispensed in Afghanistan. Professor Yagasaki
calculated that 800 tons of DU is the atomicity
equivalent to 83,000 Nagasaki bombs in a paper
presented at the "World Uranium Weapons Conference" in
Hamburg in October 2003 ( 5 months ago ). The amount
of DU used in Iraq in 2003 is equivalent to nearly
250,000 Nagasaki bombs ( Busby and Leuren Moret have
calculated that 1900 tons of DU is equivalent to 60
TBq of Alfa and Beta particulate activity).
We
need not ennumerate the DU munition
types used in Iraq 199, Kosovo 1999, Afghanistan
2001-04 and Iraq 2003. They have been dispensed by
all air / ground and sea systems on innocent
civilians. DU burns intensely and is very hard. It
releases Uranium Oxide. The aerosol contains
particles of 0.5-5 microns in size, once they are in
the air or dust they are inhaled or ingested,
including from contaminated soil. Once in the lungs
one such particle is equivalent to having one XRay
per hour, for life. Because it is impossible to
remove, the victim is gradually irradiated. Still
births, birth defects, leukemia, damaged central
nervous systems and other cancers have been common in
children born since 1991. Child leukemia has risen 600
% in areas of Iraq as reported by the Netherland
Visie Foundation. Beyond just the health
consequences, DU munitions are in fact, weapons of
Silent Mass Destruction in so far as the
consequences of their usage are vast, indiscriminate
and violate all Human Rights Conventions . Tora Bora ,
Kabu , Paktia , Karises or underwater supply tunnels
have been contaminated forever. All this has been
documented in a comprehensive paper Uranium wars :
The Pentagon steps up its use of Radio-active
Munitions, by Marc W. Herold to whom this paper owes
sincere acknowledgement.
In another paper Dr Mohammed Daud Miraki,
Director Afghan DU Recovery Fund, quotes George W
Bush , we will smoke them out, condemning the
unborn, the living and the future generations of
Afghans and the neighbouring people to a
pre-determined, death sentence. After the destruction
of our village, I realised that the Americans had
sentenced us all to death. When I saw my deformed
grandson I realised my hopes for the future have
vanished This time we are part of the invisible
genocide brought on by America a silent death from
which we will not escape ( Jooma Khan of Laghman
province..March 2003.) Similar stories are repeated
from Paktita province of Jelly Babies. Pregnant
women are afraid of giving birthThis is the legacy
of US ushered liberation, freedom and democracy. DU
is cheap for the US, utilising nuclear waste, cheaper
than titanium and tungsten, not for the liberated (
non-DU is still cheaper as it is the uranium
feedstock, pre-enrichment).
The Uranium Medical Research Center
(UMRC), Washington DC, and the Bulletin of Atomic
Scientists (1991) - Steve Fetter and Frank Von Hippel
have reported on extensive research by Field teams
of the UMRC in Afghanistan. Testimonies of fathers
and mothers are horrifying What else do the
Americans want ? They killed us , they turned our
new-borns into horrific deformations, and they turned
our farm lands into grave-yards, and destroyed our
homes. On top of all this their planes fly over
and
spray us with bullets.. we have nothing to lose ..we
will fight them the same way we fought the previous
invaders (Sayed Gharib at Tora Bora).
Radiological
dispensing devices or warfare
is the latest of the weapons of the new millenium, but
it singes even those who use it , as shown in the
after effects of the tests at home ground in the US,
where evidence of cognitive damage during early
infancy have been compiled. For us in Eurasia,
Pakistan and India we have a new health epidemic to
drain our scarce resources.
As world citizens we need to focus on a
new scourge, the reality of the PNAC - Rebuilding
Americas Defenses, Strategy, Forces and Resources for
a New Century.
The Report notes that , Much has
been written in recent years about the need to
transform the conventional armed forces of the United
States to take advantage of the Revolution in
Military Affairs. Our military requires a dramatic
transformation , lest we lose our ability to fight the
future unconventional wars .. some may be fought in
cyberspace, others under water or in outer space . And
some even within our bodies.
Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol and others
are some of the men representing contemporary power
centers, who define US policy. History indicates that
the men who define US military policy from the shadows
, are worthy of our attention.
GENETIC BOMBS
When
creating genetic-bombs or weapons to
target specific groups; genetic profiles are subtler
and more accurate than the coarse pseudo category
called race. The group with ADHD ( the Edison Gene)
uniquely share common inherited variations in their
dopamine regulating genes regardless of race,
geography or ethnicity. Thus anybody whos part of a
group with a shared genetic profile may be at risk in
the future.
A virus or bacteria may attack only a
particular type of person, killing, disabling or
sterilising only those of a particular gene profile.
Threatening a particular type would be sufficient
political black-mail.
Wolfowitz,
Kristol and their colleagues
suggested that the Pentagon should be thinking about
not just germ warfare of which they have plenty of
capabilities, but gene warfare.
Genetic terra-forming could replace
diplomacy, or it could change the face of politics if
an organism got loose that killed all the people of a
particular minority community who tend to vote for a
particular political party.
According to the PNAC, Genetically
targeted weapons could change world politics for ever,
and the report notes, advanced forms of biological
warfare that can target specific geno-types may
transform biological warfare from the realm of terror
to a politically useful tool
To conclude 4th generation micro-nukes,
with their war-head composition, were deliberated upon
and decided at the US Airforce Strategic Command
Headquarters at the Offutt Airforce Base, Nebraska,
between the top Corporates /weapon manufacturers and
the US military brass. The former not only have prior
knowledge of numbers and types of all types of nuclear
weapons, but the locations of the planned and approved
targets, globally.
This meeting
took place on Hiroshima Day,
6th August, 2003, and to reiterate, the aim was to
define a new generation of nuclear weapons to be used
on a pre-emptive basis against rogue enemies and
terrorist organisations. (mini-nukes have an
explosive capacity between one-third and six times a
Hiroshima bomb).
In
this Strangelovian
logic, nuclear weapons
are now viewed as a means to ensuring peace and
security against non-existent WMDs.
AT A GLANCE
1. In the 2003 war, the IraqiS were subjected to the
Pentagons radioactive arsenal, mainly in the urban
centers, unlike in the deserts in 1991. The aggregate
effects of illnesses and long term disabilities and
genetic birth defects will be apparent only 2008
onwards.
2. By now, half of all the 697,000 US soldiers
involved in the 1991 war have reported serious
illnesses. According the American Gulf War Veterans
Association, more than 30% of these soldiers are
chronically ill, and receiving disability benefits
from the Veterans Administration.
3. The number of disabled veterans is shockingly high
. They are in their mid-thirties and should have been
in the prime of health.
4. Near the Republican Palace where US troops stood
guard and over 1000 employees walked in and out, the
radiation readings were the hottest in Iraq, at
nearly 1900 times background radiation levels.
5. At a roadside stand, selling fresh bunches of
parsley, mint, and onions, children played on a burnt
out Iraqi tank just outside Baghdad, the Geiger
counter registered 1000 times normal background
radiation.
6. The Pentagon and the United Nations estimate that
the US and Britain used 1,100 to 2,200 tons of armor
piercing shells made of DU during attacks in
March-April 2003, far more than the 1991 Gulf War (
this does not include air dispensed DU munitions and
missiles), wrote the Post Intelligencer.
7. An otherwise useless by-product of the uranium
enrichment process, DU is attractive to military
contractors because it is so cheap and often offered
for free by the Government.
8. The long term effects, as Dr Asaf Durakovic
elaborates, after the early neurological symptoms are
cancer, and related radiation illnesses such as
chronic fatigue syndrome, joint and muscle pain,
neurological and/or nerve damage, mood disturbances,
auto-immuno deficiciencies, lung and kidney damage,
vision problems, skin rupture, increase in
miscarriages, maternal mortality and genetic birth
defects/deformation.
9. For years the US government described the Gulf War
Syndrome as a post traumatic stress disorder. It was
labelled as a psychological problem or simply as
mysterious unrelated ailments much in the same way as
health problems of Vietnam veterans suffering from
Agent Orange poisoning.
(With acknowledgements to Sara Flounders,for 1-9 above,
Coordinator of the DU education program)
I also gratefully acknowledge the facts
learnt from evidence led by scientists/papers
presented and accepted by the International Criminal
Tribunal on Afghanistan, at Tokyo on 13-16 December,
2003 and earlier at the World Depleted Uranium
Weapons Conference, Hamburg 16-19 October, 2003, by
Leuren Moret, whose continuing contribution to this
cause against "Silent Wepons of Mass Destruction" (SWMD),
in defense of humanity, deserves our support.
Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat may be
contacted at
<vbhagwat@bom7.vsnl.net.in>
For Immediate Release
Contact: Bob Nichols
405-749-5888
bobnichols@cox.net
There
are
no words ...
Radiation in Iraq
Equals 250,000
Nagasaki Bombs
by Bob Nichols
(Oklahoma City) - Last summer (2003) one of my neighbors
had just
returned
from Iraq. I wanted to ask him about the summer conditions in
Iraq.
The brutal summer in Iraq is coming up again, the same way it has since
the last
Ice Age.
The neighbor said it routinely got to 142 Degrees F.in
Baghdad and
the rest
of Iraq during the summer months.
As a writer I do not have a set of words to describe what
142 Degrees
in the
shade is like. I've seen 120 D. in Phoenix and 110 D in the
spa's
sauna I use.
One hundred forty-two degrees leaves me speechless. Try to
imagine
142 D
temperature while wearing a helmet, long sleeve shirt, long
pants,
a bullet
proof vest, boots, and carrying a 70 pound pack.
By contrast the Inuit of Alaska and Canada have
thirty-seven words
to
precisely talk about different kinds of snow.
So, since the temperature is heating up in Iraq it seemed
like a
good time to
float this story to different Internet sites and news
publications.
There
was one story in 2003 of one 19 year old British soldier whose
military
job was
to work in a British tank. In Iraq. In the summer. Word is,
from
London,
that he forgot to drink enough water and he literally cooked
in
his tank.
But, this story is not about the temperature in Iraq.
You can bet, though, the weather will be really important for
those
Americans
unfortunate enough to still be in Iraq this summer.
This story is about American weapons built with Uranium
components
for the
business end of things.Just about all American bullets, 120 mm
tank
shells,
missiles, dumb bombs, smart bombs, 500 and 2,000 pound bombs,
cruise
missiles, and anything else engineered to help our side in the
war
of us against
them has Uranium in it. Lots of Uranium.
In the case of a cruise missile, as much as 800 pounds of
the stuff.
This article is about how much radioactive uranium our guys,
representing
us, the citizens of the
United States, let fly in Iraq. Turns out they used about
4,000,000
pounds of the
stuff, give or take. That is a bunch.
Now, most people have no idea how much Four Million Pounds
of anything
is,
much less of Uranium Dust (UD), which this stuff turns into
when
it is shot or
exploded. Suffice it to say it is about equal to 1,333 cars
that
weigh three
thousand pounds per car. That is a lot of cars; but, we can
imagine
what a
parking lot with one thousand three hundred and thirty three
cars
is like. The
point is: this was and is an industrial strength operation. It
is
still going on,
too.
No sir-ee, putting Four Million Pounds of Radioactive
Uranium Dust
(RUD) on
the ground in Iraq was a definitely "on-purpose" kind of
thing.
It was not
"just an accident." We, the citizens of the United States,
through
our kids in
the Army, did this on purpose.
When the uranium bullets, missiles, or bombs hit something
or explode
most of
the radioactive uranium turns instantly to very, very small
dust
particles,
too fine to even see. When US Troopers or Iraqis breathe even
a
tiny amount
into their lungs, as little as One Gram, it is the same as
getting
an X-Ray every
hour for the rest of their shortened life.
The uranium cannot be removed, there is no treatment, there
is no
cure.
The uranium will long outlast the Veterans' and the Iraqis'
bodies
though; for,
you see, it lasts virtually forever.
But, it gets worse. Seems an Admiral who is the former
Chief of the
Naval Staff
of India wanted to know how much radiation this represented.
He
also wanted
to express the amount in a figure that the world, especially
the
non American
world, could easily understand.
The Admiral decided to figure out how many Nagasaki Atom
Bombs it
would take
to deliver the equivalent of the total amount of radiation
deployed
in Iraq in 2003
in Four Million Pounds of uranium.
The Admiral also wanted to figure out how much radiation
the United
States
Military Forces have deployed in the last Five American Wars,
the
so-called
Five Nuclear Wars.
That is a simple enough task for somebody like the Naval
Chief of
Staff for a
country that is a member of the Nuclear Club. Using the
Nagasaki
bomb for the
measuring stick is a particularly gruesome twist,
though. For those of you in the States who do not know it, the
United
States
Military Forces dropped two nuclear Bombs on Japan at the
close
of World
War II. The whole world remembers that.
One Atom Bomb was dropped by Americans on the city of
Hiroshima,
the other
on the city of Nagasaki three days later. About 170,000 people
were
incinerated
immediately. It was a really big deal.
It is a measuring stick that plays very well in the rest of
the world;
but, not very
well on Fox News (Fair & Balanced)(c) or the rest of the
Fox-like
American
media. The Department of Energy still lists the Hiroshima and
Nagasaki
detonations as "tests." The admiral released the data months
ago
at a scientific
conference in India. This article is the first report of the
data
in the United States.
It will first be released on the Internet.
The admiral in India calculated the number of radioactive
atoms in
the Nagasaki
bomb and compared it with the number in the 4,000,000 pounds
of
uranium
left in Iraq from the 2003 war. Now, believe me, it is a lot
more
complex than that;
but, that is essentially what the experts in India did.
How many Nagasaki Nuclear Bombs equal the Radiation loosed
in the
2003 Iraq war? Answer: About 250,000 Nuclear Bombs.
How many Nagasaki Nuclear Bombs equal the Radiation loosed
in the
last Five
American Nuclear Wars? Answer: About 400,000 Nuclear Bombs.
Who would do something like this?
We would. The only people in the history of the world to
engage
in Nuclear Wars
are Americans, citizens of the United States. Allegedly, the
Germans
and
Japanese of WWII also wanted to engage in nuclear wars, except
the
American
Military beat them to the draw, so to speak.
Respected academic scholars could debate forever whether or
not Herr
Hitler,
Fuhrer of Germany, would have deployed uranium munitions in
the
Sudetenland
if the weapons had been available. Certainly the Germans knew
just
as much
about uranium wars as we did at the time. It seems doubtful
that
Adolph Hitler
would have ordered the use of uranium munitions there because
the
Sudetenland was so close to the Fatherland, Nazi Germany.
An American General named Leslie Groves was in charge of
the bomb
making
operation called The Manhattan Project. In 1943 The War
Department
knew
exactly what uranium bullets and bombs were good for.
If the nuclear weapons did not detonate in Japan, the use
of uranium
bullets and
bombs were the fall back position. It was not till Ronald
Reagan
was President
in 1980 did the re-named Defense Department resurrect the
deadly
radioactive
uranium bullets, bombs, and missiles. No wonder his popular
nick-name
was
Ronnie Ray-Guns.
The American Military knew the symptoms of radiation
poisoning in
1943 too;
starting with the irritated sore throat through to an
agonizing
death from being
cooked from the inside out.
President Bush promised to invade twelve countries in the
2003 State
of the Union
speech. I believe the man. For some reason, some misguided
Americans
do not
believe him, or think he was "exaggerating." The rest of the
world
has every reason
to believe him, though.
Not to worry, the President has plenty of raw material for
radioactive
uranium
munitions left. There are more than 77,000 Tons stored at the
103
nuclear
waste plants and the several Nuclear Weapons Labs in the US.
Each one makes another 250 pounds of radioactive material a
day
for radioactive
bullets, bombs, and missiles. Not to put too fine a point on
it;
but, that
is enough for 40.5 more gloriously successful campaigns like
the
2003 Nuclear War in Iraq.
Every year about this time the Southern winds leave a fine
desert
sand on the
windshields of cars parked outside in Continental Europe and
Britain.
Soon this
sand dust will carry a surprise. Thanks to the Americans.
Thanks
to us. We did this
to the world. And, we wonder why they hate and despise us so.
These uranium weapons' indiscriminate killing effect gives
a whole
new meaning to
the age old term: cannon fodder. In Iraq, what goes around,
comes
around. If
not the uranium munitions themselves, the uranium dust will be
in
the bodies of our
returning armed forces, time bombs slowly ticking away the
lives
of the
gullible and the ignorant with their very own internal
radiation
source, the cannon
fodder of the 21st Century American Nuclear Wars.
Put your ending to this article next.
A lot of people have done everything we can think of to
stop
these nuclear wars. Even more specifically to stop the use of uranium
as
a munition and shut down
the nuclear power plants. We have tried and failed for years.
Why
don't you give it
a try? Can't hurt anything! Write what steps you would take to
turn
this situation
around.
Copyright 2004, Bob Nichols. All rights
reserved.
Permission for reposting is allowed provided the
complete text and attribution are kept intact. Bob
Nichols writes in Oklahoma City and is the Editorial
writer for DemoOkie.com. Bob Nichols is a contributing
writer for LiberalSlant, Democratic Underground,
OnlineJournal, AmericaHeldHostage, and other online
dot com publications. Mr. Nichols is a frequent
contributor The Oklahoma Observer and other print
publications, and an editorial writer for
DemoOkie.com. He lives and works in Oklahoma. He is a
member of CASE - Citizens' Action for Safe Energy, and
President of the Carrie Dickerson Foundation. CASE has
successfully killed two serious, well funded attempts
to build Nuclear Power Plants in Oklahoma and several
attempts to site what is now known as the "Yucca
Mountain Reactor Dump" in Oklahoma. All these efforts
to build nuclear facilities have failed.
US troops test
positive for
DU contamination
Subject: - Army to test N.Y. Guard unit
Date: Mon, 05 Apr 2004 15:11:13 -0500
From: Dave Kraft <neis@neis.org>
Organization: NEIS
To: neis@neis.org
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/v-pfriendly/story/180644p-156921c.html
New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
Army to test N.Y. Guard
unit
Monday, April 5th, 2004
Army officials at Fort Dix and Walter Reed Army Medical
Center
are rushing to
test all returning members of the 442nd Military Police Company of
the New York
Army National Guard for depleted uranium contamination.
Army brass acted after learning that four of nine
soldiers from
the
company tested by the Daily News showed signs of radiation exposure.
The soldiers, who returned from Iraq late last year, say
they
and other members of
their company have been suffering from unexplained illnesses since
last summer,
when they were stationed in the Iraqi town of Samawah.
Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a former Army doctor and nuclear
medicine
expert
who examined and tested the nine men at The News' request, concluded
four of them
"almost certainly" inhaled radioactive dust from exploded depleted
uranium shells fired
by U.S. troops.
Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), after learning of The News'
investigation,
blasted
Pentagon officials yesterday for not properly screening soldiers
returning
from Iraq.
"We can't have people coming back with undiagnosed illnesses,"
Clinton
said. "We
have to have a before-and-after testing program for our soldiers."
Clinton, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said
she will
write to
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld demanding answers and soon will
introduce
legislation to require health screenings for all returning troops.
During meetings with Pentagon officials last year,
Clinton said
"one of the issues
we raised was exposure to the depleted uranium that was in the weapons,
and how
they were going to handle it."
She was assured then that troops would be properly screened.
But the soldiers from the 442nd contacted The News after
becoming frustrated
with
how the Army was handling their illnesses.
Six of them say they repeatedly sought testing for depleted
uranium
from Army doctors
but were denied.
Three who were tested in early November for DU said they had
been waiting
months
for the results. Two of those finally got their results last week -
both negative.
Testing for uranium isotopes in 24 hours' worth of urine
samples can
cost as much
as $1,000 each.
But late last week, after learning of The News' results, the
Army reversed
course
and ordered immediate testing for more than a dozen members of the
442nd who are
back in the U.S.
The rest of the company, comprising mostly New York City
cops,
firefighters
and correction officers, is not due to return from Iraq until later
this month.
"They ordered all of us who are here at Fort Dix to provide
24-hour
urine samples
by 1 p.m. today," one soldier from the company said Friday.
Late Friday, Pentagon spokesman Austin Camacho said he could
not confirm
or deny
that new tests had been ordered for the soldiers of the 442nd.
"It's hard to imagine, theoretically, that these men could
have harmful
exposures,"
Camacho said, because none of them had been inside tanks during direct
combat.
Army studies of depleted uranium have concluded that only
soldiers who
suffer
shrapnel wounds from DU shells or who were inside tanks hit by DU
shells
and
immediately breathe radioactive dust are at risk.
Even then, Camacho said, studies of about 70 such cases from
the first
Gulf War
have shown no long-term health problems.
But medical experts critical of the use of DU weapons, as well
as some
of the Army's
own early studies of depleted uranium, say exposure to it can cause
kidney damage.
Some studies have shown that it causes cancer and chromosome damage
in mice,
according to the experts.
Depleted uranium, a waste product of the uranium enrichment
process,
has been used
by the U.S. and British militaries for more than 15 years in some
artillery
shells and
as armor-plating for tanks. It is valued for its extreme density -
it is twice as heavy as lead.
Amid growing controversy in Europe and Japan, the European
Parliament
called last
year for a moratorium on its use.
'Every time I ran I felt my throat burning and my chest
tightening.'
Sgt. Agustin Matos, a member of the 442nd Military Police of
the New
York
National Guard and a city correction officer in civilian life, has
all-too-vivid memories
of his stay in Samawah, Iraq.
"The place was filthy; most of the windows were broken; dirt,
grease
and bird
droppings were everywhere," he said. "I wouldn't house a city prisoner
in that place."
He recalled a mandated morning run of about 3 miles on a sandy
track
near a train depot.
"Every time I ran I felt my throat burning and my chest
tightening,"
he said.
Now, Matos, 37, believes his symptoms may be the result of
radioactive
dust he
inhaled from spent American shells made from depleted uranium.
The Long Island man is one of four Iraq war veterans who
tested positive
for DU
contamination, according to a Daily News investigation.
The soldiers and other members of the 442nd say they are
suffering
from physical
ailments that began last summer while they were stationed in Samawah.
Matos, who was assigned to the 4th platoon's 2nd squad,
arrived in Samawah
last June,
two weeks ahead of the rest of the company.
His advance team had orders from Capt. Sean O'Donnell, their
commander,
to ready a
huge depot in a train repair yard on the outskirts of downtown Samawah
as a barracks
for the unit.
Once the entire company arrived, each platoon was assigned its
own space
inside the
depot, which was bigger than a football field.
A locomotive that straddled a repair pit and an empty train
car sat
in the middle of the
sleeping area, with two platoons assigned to bed down along one side
of the train and
two others along the other side.
Just outside the depot, two Iraqi tanks, one of them shot up,
had been
hauled onto
flatbed railroad cars.
The company was so short-handed, according to the soldiers,
that the
commander would
evacuate a G.I. only if he could no longer physically function.
Matos was sent home last year for surgery for a shoulder
injury suffered
in a jeep
accident.
Since his return, he has had constant headaches, fatigue,
shortness
of breath, nausea,
dizziness, joint pain and excessive urination.
After he recently discovered blood in his urine, doctors at Walter
Reed Army
Medical Center gave him a CAT scan and discovered a small lesion on
his liver.
A 1990 Army study linked DU to "chemical toxicity causing
kidney damage."
"Before I left for Iraq, they tested my eyes and I was fine,"
Matos
said. "Now my
eyesight's gotten bad, on top of everything else."
Another member of the company who tested positive for DU is
2nd platoon
Sgt.
Hector Vega, 48, a retired postal worker from the Bronx who has been
in the National
Guard for 27 years.
Since being evacuated to Fort Dix for treatment for foot
surgery, Vega
said he has
endured insomnia and constant headaches. And like many of the sick
soldiers,
Vega said, "I have uncontrollable urine, every half hour."
One day, during a trip a few hours south of Samawah, he and
another
soldier stopped
on the side of the road to photograph and check out two shot-up Iraqi
tanks.
"We didn't think anything of walking right up to those tanks
and touching
them," he said.
"I didn't know anything about depleted uranium."
As for the railroad depot where they slept, Vega recalls
it as
"disgusting. Oil, dirt and
bird droppings everywhere, insects crawling all around us."
And then there were the frequent dust storms.
"They would blow all that dust inside the depot all over us
when we
were sleeping or
eating. It was so thick, you could see it."
Kraft, David A.
Director NEIS
<neis@neis.org
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Inside
camp of troubles
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/story/180342p-156689c.html
The soldiers of the 442nd Military Police
never heard of depleted uranium before
they went to Iraq.
They know only that inexplicable
ailments have befallen them.
Last year, more than a dozen of the
company's soldiers were transferred back
to Fort Dix for treatment of a variety of
maladies. Frustrated with how the
military was handling their concerns,
they gave extensive interviews to the
Daily News about their experiences, and
nine of them eventually volunteered to be tested by a team of experts
headed by Dr. Asaf Duracovic.
According to the soldiers, most of them became sick last summer while
stationed in Samawah, a town 150 miles south of Baghdad that was
the
scene of heavy combat in the first weeks of the war.
Their unit entered the town in June, following short stays in
Diwaniyah,
Karbala and Najaf. They pitched camp at a huge, dusty,
vermin-infested train depot on the outskirts of town.
That's where, they claim, their problems began.
"One night, I had 10 or 15 people with temperatures over 103,
unexplained night chills, all kinds of things," said Sgt. Juan Vega,
the
company's principal medic. About a dozen of the 160 soldiers in the
company suddenly developed kidney stones, he said.
A 1990 Army study linked DU, to "chemical toxicity causing kidney
damage."
"I told our commander, 'We need to get the hell out of this place,
there's
something wrong with it,'" said Vega, 34, an FDNY paramedic.
The soldiers recall that two Iraqi tanks, one all shot up, had been
hauled onto flatbed railroad cars less than 100 yards from where the
company slept.
Pentagon officials have confirmed that tanks hit by DU shells are the
biggest potential sources of battlefield radioactivity because when DU
penetrators hit a target and explode, a fine aerosol of uranium oxide,
or radioactive dust, is formed. The closer the tanks are to people, the
greater the danger of inhaling the dust.
In addition, a UN environmental report on Iraq warned last year of a
"high risk of inhaling DU dust" within 150 meters of any target hit by
DU
shells "unless high-quality dust masks are worn." The soldiers never
received dust masks.
Originally published on April 3, 2004
|
New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
Poisoned?
By JUAN GONZALEZ
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Saturday, April 3rd, 2004
Four soldiers from a New York Army National Guard
company serving
in Iraq are contaminated with radiation likely caused by dust from
depleted
uranium shells fired by
U.S. troops, a Daily News investigation has found.
They are among several members of the same company, the
442nd
Military Police, who say they have been battling persistent physical
ailments
that began last summer
in the Iraqi town of Samawah.
"I got sick instantly in June," said Staff Sgt. Ray
Ramos, a Brooklyn
housing cop. "My health kept going downhill with daily headaches,
constant
numbness in my hands
and rashes on my stomach."
A nuclear medicine expert who examined and tested nine
soldiers
from the company says that four "almost certainly" inhaled radioactive
dust from exploded American
shells manufactured with depleted uranium.
Laboratory tests conducted at the request of The News
revealed
traces of two manmade forms of uranium in urine samples from four of
the
soldiers.
If so, the men - Sgt. Hector Vega, Sgt. Ray Ramos, Sgt.
Agustin
Matos and Cpl. Anthony Yonnone - are the first confirmed cases of
inhaled
depleted uranium exposure
from the current Iraq conflict.
The 442nd, made up for the most part of New York cops,
firefighters
and correction officers, is based in Orangeburg, Rockland County.
Dispatched
to Iraq last Easter, the
unit's members have been providing guard duty for convoys,
running
jails and training Iraqi police. The entire company is due to return
home
later this month.
"These are amazing results, especially since these
soldiers were
military police not exposed to the heat of battle," said Dr. Asaf
Duracovic,
who examined the G.I.s and
performed the testing that was funded by The News.
"Other American soldiers who were in combat must have
more depleted
uranium exposure," said Duracovic, a colonel in the Army Reserves who
served
in the 1991
Persian Gulf War.
While working at a military hospital in Delaware, he was
one of
the first doctors to discover unusual radiation levels in Gulf War
veterans.
He has since become a leading
critic of the use of depleted uranium in warfare.
Depleted uranium, a waste product of the uranium
enrichment process,
has been used by the U.S. and British military for more than 15 years
in
some artillery shells and
as armor plating for tanks. It is twice as heavy as lead.
Because of its density, "It is the superior heavy metal
for armor
to protect tanks and to penetrate armor," Pentagon spokesman Michael
Kilpatrick
said.
The Army and Air Force fired at least 127 tons of
depleted uranium
shells in Iraq last year, Kilpatrick said. No figures have yet been
released
for how much the Marines
fired.
Kilpatrick said about 1,000 G.I.s back from the war have
been
tested by the Pentagon for depleted uranium and only three have come up
positive - all as a result of
shrapnel from DU shells.
But the test results for the New York guardsmen - four
of nine
positives for DU - suggest the potential for more extensive radiation
exposure
among coalition troops and
Iraqi civilians.
Several Army studies in recent years have concluded that
the low-level
radiation emitted when shells containing DU explode poses no
significant
dangers. But some
independent scientists and a few of the Army's own reports
indicate otherwise.
As a result, depleted uranium weapons have sparked
increasing
controversy around the world. In January 2003, the European
Parliament
called for a moratorium on their
use after reports of an unusual number of leukemia deaths among
Italian soldiers who served in Kosovo, where DU weapons were used.
I keep getting weaker. What is happening to me?
The Army says that only soldiers wounded by depleted
uranium shrapnel
or who are inside tanks during an explosion face measurable radiation
exposure.
But as far back as 1979, Leonard Dietz, a physicist at
the Knolls
Atomic Power Laboratory upstate, discovered that DU-contaminated dust
could
travel for long distances.
Dietz, who pioneered the technology to isolate uranium
isotopes,
accidentally discovered that air filters with which he was
experimenting
had collected radioactive dust
from a National Lead Industries Plant that was producing DU 26
miles away. His discovery led to a shutdown of the plant.
"The contamination was so heavy that they had to remove
the topsoil
from 52 properties around the plant," Dietz said.
All humans have at least tiny amounts of natural uranium
in their
bodies because it is found in water and in the food supply, Dietz said.
But natural uranium is quickly and
harmlessly excreted by the body.
Uranium oxide dust, which lodges in the lungs once
inhaled and
is not very soluble, can emit radiation to the body for years.
"Anybody, civilian or soldier, who breathes these
particles has
a permanent dose, and it's not going to decrease very much over time,"
said Dietz, who retired in 1983
after 33 years as nuclear physicist. "In the long run ...
veterans
exposed to ceramic uranium oxide have a major problem."
Critics of DU have noted that the Army's view of its
dangers has
changed over time.
Before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, a 1990 Army report
noted that
depleted uranium is "linked to cancer when exposures are internal,
[and]
chemical toxicity causing
kidney damage."
It was during the Gulf War that U.S. A-10 Warthog "tank
buster"
planes and Abrams tanks first used DU artillery on a mass scale. The
Pentagon
says it fired about 320
tons of DU in that war and that smaller amounts were also used
in the Serbian province of Kosovo.
In the Gulf War, Army brass did not warn soldiers about
any risks
from exploding DU shells. An unknown number of G.I.s were exposed by
shrapnel,
inhalation or
handling battlefield debris.
Some veterans groups blame DU contamination as a factor
in Gulf
War syndrome, the term for a host of ailments that afflicted thousands
of vets from that war.
Under pressure from veterans groups, the Pentagon
commissioned
several new studies. One of those, published in 2000, concluded that
DU,
as a heavy metal, "could
pose a chemical hazard" but that Gulf War veterans "did not
experience
intakes high enough to affect their health."
Pentagon spokesman Michael Kilpatrick said Army followup
studies
of 70 DU-contaminated Gulf War veterans have not shown serious health
effects.
"For any heavy metal, there is no such thing as safe,"
Kilpatrick
said. "There is an issue of chemical toxicity, and for DU it is raised
as radiological toxicity as well."
But he said "the overwhelming conclusion" from studies
of those
who work with uranium "show it has not produced any increase in
cancers."
Several European studies, however, have linked DU to
chromosome
damage and birth defects in mice. Many scientists say we still don't
know
enough about the
long-range effects of low-level radiation on the body to say
any amount is safe.
Britain's national science academy, the Royal Society,
has called
for identifying where DU was used and is urging a cleanup of all
contaminated
areas.
"A large number of American soldiers [in Iraq] may have
had significant
exposure to uranium oxide dust," said Dr. Thomas Fasey, a pathologist
at
Mount Sinai Medical
Center and an expert on depleted uranium. "And the health impact
is worrisome for the future."
As for the soldiers of the 442nd, they're sick,
frustrated and
confused. They say when they arrived in Iraq no one warned them about
depleted
uranium and no one gave
them dust masks.
Experts behind News probe
As part of the investigation by the Daily News, Dr. Asaf
Duracovic,
a nuclear medicine expert who has conducted extensive research on
depleted
uranium, examined the
nine soldiers from the 442nd Military Police in late December
and collected urine specimens from each.
Another member of his team, Prof. Axel Gerdes, a
geologist at
Goethe University in Frankfurt who specializes in analyzing uranium
isotopes,
performed repeated tests on
the samples over a week-long period. He used a state-of-the
art procedure called multiple collector inductively coupled plasma-mass
spectrometry.
Only about 100 laboratories worldwide have the same
capability
to identify and measure various uranium isotopes in minute quantities,
Gerdes said.
Gerdes concluded that four of the men had depleted
uranium in
their bodies. Depleted uranium, which does not occur in nature, is
created
as a waste product of uranium
enrichment when some of the highly radioactive isotopes in
natural
uranium, U-235 and U-234, are extracted.
Several of the men, according to Duracovic, also had
minute traces
of another uranium isotope, U-236, that is produced only in a nuclear
reaction
process.
"These men were almost certainly exposed to radioactive
weapons
on the battlefield," Duracovic said.
He and Gerdes plan to issue a scientific paper on their
study
of the soldiers at the annual meeting of the European Association of
Nuclear
Medicine in Finland this year.
When DU shells explode, they permanently contaminate
their target
and the area immediately around it with low-level radioactivity.
New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
Army
to test
N.Y. Guard unit
Monday, April 5th, 2004
Army officials at Fort Dix and Walter Reed Army
Medical Center
are rushing to test all returning members of the 442nd Military Police
Company of the New York Army
National Guard for depleted uranium contamination.
Army brass acted after learning that four of nine
soldiers from
the company tested by the Daily News showed signs of radiation
exposure.
The soldiers, who returned from Iraq late last
year, say they
and other members of their company have been suffering from unexplained
illnesses since last summer,
when they were stationed in the Iraqi town of Samawah.
Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a former Army doctor and
nuclear medicine
expert who examined and tested the nine men at The News' request,
concluded
four of them "almost
certainly" inhaled radioactive dust from exploded depleted
uranium
shells fired by U.S. troops.
Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), after learning of
The News' investigation,
blasted Pentagon officials yesterday for not properly screening
soldiers
returning from Iraq.
"We can't have people coming back with undiagnosed
illnesses,"
Clinton said. "We have to have a before-and-after testing program for
our
soldiers."
Clinton, a member of the Senate Armed Services
Committee, said
she will write to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld demanding answers
and
soon will introduce
legislation to require health screenings for all returning
troops.
During meetings with Pentagon officials last year,
Clinton said
"one of the issues we raised was exposure to the depleted uranium that
was in the weapons, and how they
were going to handle it."
She was assured then that troops would be properly
screened.
But the soldiers from the 442nd contacted The News
after becoming
frustrated with how the Army was handling their illnesses.
Six of them say they repeatedly sought testing for
depleted uranium
from Army doctors but were denied.
Three who were tested in early November for DU
said they had been
waiting months for the results. Two of those finally got their results
last week - both negative.
Testing for uranium isotopes in 24 hours' worth of
urine samples
can cost as much as $1,000 each.
But late last week, after learning of The News'
results, the Army
reversed course and ordered immediate testing for more than a dozen
members
of the 442nd who are
back in the U.S.
The rest of the company, comprising mostly New
York City cops,
firefighters and correction officers, is not due to return from Iraq
until
later this month.
"They ordered all of us who are here at Fort Dix
to provide 24-hour
urine samples by 1 p.m. today," one soldier from the company said
Friday.
Late Friday, Pentagon spokesman Austin Camacho
said he could not
confirm or deny that new tests had been ordered for the soldiers of the
442nd.
"It's hard to imagine, theoretically, that these
men could have
harmful exposures," Camacho said, because none of them had been inside
tanks during direct combat.
Army studies of depleted uranium have concluded
that only soldiers
who suffer shrapnel wounds from DU shells or who were inside tanks hit
by DU shells and
immediately breathe radioactive dust are at risk.
Even then, Camacho said, studies of about 70 such
cases from the
first Gulf War have shown no long-term health problems.
But medical experts critical of the use of DU
weapons, as well
as some of the Army's own early studies of depleted uranium, say
exposure
to it can cause kidney
damage. Some studies have shown that it causes cancer and
chromosome
damage in mice, according to the experts.
Depleted uranium, a waste product of the uranium
enrichment process,
has been used by the U.S. and British militaries for more than 15 years
in some artillery shells
and as armor-plating for tanks. It is valued for its extreme
density - it is twice as heavy as lead.
Amid growing controversy in Europe and Japan, the
European Parliament
called last year for a moratorium on its use.
'Every time I ran I felt my throat
burning and my chest tightening.'
Sgt. Agustin Matos, a member of the 442nd Military
Police of the
New York National Guard and a city correction officer in civilian life,
has all-too-vivid memories of his
stay in Samawah, Iraq.
"The place was filthy; most of the windows were
broken; dirt,
grease and bird droppings were everywhere," he said. "I wouldn't house
a city prisoner in that place."
He recalled a mandated morning run of about 3
miles on a sandy
track near a train depot.
"Every time I ran I felt my throat burning and my
chest tightening,"
he said.
Now, Matos, 37, believes his symptoms may be the
result of radioactive
dust he inhaled from spent American shells made from depleted uranium.
The Long Island man is one of four Iraq war
veterans who tested
positive for DU contamination, according to a Daily News investigation.
The soldiers and other members of the 442nd say
they are suffering
from physical ailments that began last summer while they were stationed
in Samawah.
Matos, who was assigned to the 4th platoon's 2nd
squad, arrived
in Samawah last June, two weeks ahead of the rest of the company.
His advance team had orders from Capt. Sean
O'Donnell, their commander,
to ready a huge depot in a train repair yard on the outskirts of
downtown
Samawah as a
barracks for the unit.
Once the entire company arrived, each platoon was
assigned its
own space inside the depot, which was bigger than a football field.
A locomotive that straddled a repair pit and an
empty train car
sat in the middle of the sleeping area, with two platoons assigned to
bed
down along one side of the train
and two others along the other side.
Just outside the depot, two Iraqi tanks, one of
them shot up,
had been hauled onto flatbed railroad cars.
The company was so short-handed, according to the
soldiers, that
the commander would evacuate a G.I. only if he could no longer
physically
function.
Matos was sent home last year for surgery for a
shoulder injury
suffered in a jeep accident.
Since his return, he has had constant headaches,
fatigue, shortness
of breath, nausea, dizziness, joint pain and excessive urination. After
he recently discovered blood in
his urine, doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center gave him
a CAT scan and discovered a small lesion on his liver.
A 1990 Army study linked DU to "chemical toxicity
causing kidney
damage."
"Before I left for Iraq, they tested my eyes and I
was fine,"
Matos said. "Now my eyesight's gotten bad, on top of everything else."
Another member of the company who tested positive
for DU is 2nd
platoon Sgt. Hector Vega, 48, a retired postal worker from the Bronx
who
has been in the National
Guard for 27 years.
Since being evacuated to Fort Dix for treatment
for foot surgery,
Vega said he has endured insomnia and constant headaches. And like many
of the sick soldiers, Vega
said, "I have uncontrollable urine, every half hour."
One day, during a trip a few hours south of
Samawah, he and another
soldier stopped on the side of the road to photograph and check out two
shot-up Iraqi tanks.
"We didn't think anything of walking right up to
those tanks and
touching them," he said. "I didn't know anything about depleted
uranium."
As for the railroad depot where they slept, Vega
recalls it as
"disgusting. Oil, dirt and bird droppings everywhere, insects crawling
all around us."
And then there were the frequent dust storms.
"They would blow all that dust inside the depot
all over us when
we were sleeping or eating. It was so thick, you could see it."
|
VISIE Foundation
New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
Soldiers
demand to know health risks
By JUAN GONZALEZ
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Saturday, April 3rd, 2004
Doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center recently told
Staff
Sgt. Ray Ramos that a biopsy revealed his rash comes from
leishmaniasis,
a disease spread by
sandflies and contracted by hundreds of G.I.s in Iraq.
Until last week, however, Army doctors refused requests
by Ramos
and a few others in the 442nd Military Police to have their urine
analyzed
for depleted uranium, a
procedure that can cost up to $1,000.
Three of the nine tested in the Daily News investigation
— Sgt.
Herbert Reed, Spec. William Ruiz, and Spec. Anthony Phillip - also were
tested by the Army in
November. But the results were withheld for months despite
repeated
inquiries.
Last week, after Army officials received press inquiries
about
the 442nd and discovered that a group from the company had sought
independent
testing, an administrator
at Walter Reed told Reed and Phillip that their tests from
November
had come back negative for depleted uranium.
The News' tests also showed negative results for Reed
and Phillip,
but Ramos tested positive. The soldiers of the 442nd are not the only
ones
to raise questions about
depleted uranium in Samawah.
In August, a contingent of Dutch
soldiers
arrived in the town to replace the Americans. Press reports in the
Netherlands
revealed that Dutch authorities questioned the
U.S. beforehand about the possible use of DU ammunition in
Samawah.
According to Sgt. Juan Vega, senior medic for the 442nd, the Dutch
swept
the area around the
train depot with Geiger counters and their medics confided to
him they had found high radiation levels. The Dutch unit refused to
stay
in the depot, Vega said, and pitched
camp in the desert instead.
And in February, after Japanese troops moved into the
same town,
a Japanese journalist equipped with a Geiger counter reported finding
radiation
readings 300 times
higher than background levels.
"There'd been a lot of fighting in Samawah before we got
there,"
said Staff Sgt. Ray Ramos, 41. "The place was dusty as hell, and the
sandstorms
were hitting us pretty
good."
Felled at first by what he thought was the sweltering
Iraqi heat,
Ramos expected to recover quickly.
"My health just kept getting worse," he said. "I tried
to work
out each day to get through it but I kept getting weaker. A numbing
sensation
hit my hands and my face, and
the migraine headaches became constant. I was afraid I was having
a stroke."
He was sent first to a Baghdad hospital for treatment,
but with
no neurologist available, he was shipped out to Germany and eventually
to the U.S.
"I had rashes on my stomach for four months," Ramos
said. "And
now, whenever I [lie] down, my hands fall asleep."
Doctors at Walter Reed have been stumped. They've given
Ramos
braces to wear on his arms at night to try to prevent his hands from
falling
asleep, and they've
prescribed a host of muscle relaxants and painkillers, but
nothing
seems to work.
"I have four kids. What happens to them now if I can't
work?"
said Ramos, who was looking forward to a transfer from the NYPD Housing
Bureau to the robbery unit in
Brooklyn's 75th Precinct once he returns from active duty. "I
need them to investigate what's going on with my body."
Cpl. Anthony Yonnone, 35, a cop with the Veterans
Administration
in Fishkill, N.Y., has the highest DU levels of the four soldiers who
tested
positive, said Dr. Asaf
Duracovic, who performed the testing funded by The News.
Yonnone said his nausea, skin rashes and migraines began
in Samawah.
"The headaches are constant and they don't want to stop," he said. "The
rashes seem to come
and go.
"We were always passing blownout tanks when we were out
doing
patrols."
He recalled that American units in the town burned trash
and waste
each night in big drums near the train depot. "The combination of smoke
and sand when we lit those
fires covered everybody," he said.
Evacuated from Iraq in August for minor surgery, Yonnone
was sent
first to Germany.
"They gave us a questionnaire. I marked that I wasn't
exposed
to depleted uranium because nobody had even told us what it was back in
Iraq," he said.
Some discussion
about this issue
Detection
of Depleted Uranium in Urine of Veterans from the 1991 Gulf War
— R. H. Gwiazda, K. Squibb, M. McDiarmid,
and
D. Smith; Heatlh
Physics Society Journal, January 2004.
Earlier
done by Len
Dietz, Asaf Durakovic and Pat Horan
The DoD/DVA are panicked. They publish
in their
mouthpiece Journals
(RH is a member of this "society" of nuke
industry
polyannas), out of
date propaganda, attempting to stem the
tide
of European, Dutch,
Bulgarian, German and Japanese troops
awakening
to the risk of 2000
metric tonnes of freshly aerosolized
uranium
dispersed into the Iraqi
environment. They want badly to redirect
the
matter away from
inhalation of ceramic U. Let's see them
take
a peep into the the
lungs of their exposed veterans. They are
terrified
to do this
because they know that ceramic U is
retained
for life.
Can anyone image the DVA's physicians
are not
suffering deep ethical
pain. They haven't got the integrity to
pursue
the most basic
clinical logic: ceramic U, inhalation, life
long
incorporation, alpha
emitters, radiation effects, systemic,
mutagenic
and congenital
outcomes.
M. McDiarmid continues to be a
disgusting example
of a human being
posing as a doctor. She has one and only
one
assignment: blitz the
literature with anything that will direct
attention
from U
inhalation. Hope she sleeps well at
night.
Subject: [DU-WATCH] Diehl/Fahey
are traitors
to veteans --- work for nuke sector
Date: Thu, 08 Apr 2004 02:48:38
-0000
From: "Amarie"
<amarierosa@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: du-watch@yahoogroups.com
To:
du-watch@yahoogroups.com
Fahey is running behind the scenes
defamation
of character and
scientific credibility challenge to the New
York
Daily News reporter
(Gonzales), the As Samawah vets and the
results
of the
UMRC/Frankfurt University findings of DU.
He
is working with Peter
Diehl of WISE to discredit the the lab and
help
US Defense
Department and Coaliton partners to
misrepresent
the medical
consequencs of inhaled battlefield uranium.
See
the report vrom WISE
below. "Miniscule" is the term selected to
spin
a no-consequences to
exposure postion. Fact is, all uranium in
body
is a miniscule amount.
If any ceramic uranium reaches the urine,
its
a miracle and
indicates 1000's of times more has been
incorporated
into organs,
bones and lungs. Would they like to see
hugh
quantities of uranium
in the vets urine ... apparently so.
Fahey and Diehl are traitors to veterans
and liars
who have
successfully boondoggled many anti-DU and
anti-nuke
activists. NPRI,
NGWRC, MTP and a host of veterans
organizations,
reporters and
activists are suckers for Fahey in the US
and
the same goes for the
suckers for WISE in Germany.
See WISE Uranium Project - DU
section
Minuscule amounts of DU found in
urine of civilians
and US soldiers in Iraq
Urine samples of Iraqi civilians and
US military
personnel in Iraq
were found to contain total uranium in a
range
of 1.1 to 65.3
nanograms per litre, of which 0.2 to
approx.
10 percent was depleted
uranium.
The samples were analyzed by Dr Axel
Gerdes
at the Institute of
Mineralogy of the University of
Frankfurt
am Main (Germany) using
extremely sensitive multi-collector mass
spectrometry.
Detailed
results have not been published yet.
> Download University of Frankfurt am
Main
release, April 2, 2004
(PDF, in German)
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