[Health&Healing] Dangerously High Levels of Radiation Around Baghdad

[Guest guest]

Talk about weapons of mass destruction... This is beyond criminal.

This means horrible sickness, future birth deformities and potential

genocide for the civilians of Iraq, but also devestating disease for

our soliders... Perhaps this explains the 100+ cases of pneumonia??

Misty L. Trepke

http://www..com

 

DANGEROUSLY HIGH LEVELS OF RADIATION MEASURED AROUND BAGHDA

 

 

Sep 01 2003 15:05:42 ET

EXPRESS [LONDON]

 

SOLDIERS and civilians in Iraq face a health timebomb after

dangerously high levels of radiation were measured around Baghdad.

 

Levels between 1,000 and 1,900 times higher than normal were

recorded at four sites around the Iraqi capital where depleted

uranium (DU) munitions have been used across wide areas.

 

Experts estimate that Britain and the US used 1,100 to 2,200 tons of

armour-piercing shells made of DU during attacks on Iraqi forces.

 

That figure eclipses the 375tons used in the 1991 Gulf War. Unlike

that largely desert-based conflict, most of the rounds fired in

March and April were in heavily residential areas.

 

DU rounds are highly combustible and tiny particles of the

radioactive material are left on the battleground.

 

If inhaled the material can attack the body causing cancers, chronic

illness, long-term disabilities and genetic birth defects - none of

which will be apparent for at least five years.

 

Veterans of the first Gulf War believe that DU exposure has played a

role in leaving more than 5,000 of them chronically ill and almost

600 dead.

 

The Royal Society, Britain's leading scientific body, described

America's failure to confirm how much or where they used DU rounds

as an " appalling situation " .

 

Professor Brian Spratt, chairman of the society's working group on

DU, said: " The Americans are really giving us no information at all

and think it is a pretty appalling situation that they are not

taking this seriously at all.

 

" We really need someone like the UN Environment Programme or the

World Health Organisation to get into Iraq and start testing

civilians and soldiers for uranium exposure. "

 

Evidence of massive uranium radiation has emerged in recent weeks.

The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle analysed swabs

from bullet holes in Iraqi tanks and confirmed elevated radiation

levels.

 

Last month Scott Peterson, of the respected Christian Science

Monitor, took Geiger counter readings at several sites in Baghdad.

Near the Republican Palace, his radiation readings were

the " hottest " in Iraq at nearly 1,900 times background radiation

levels.

 

Even the Ministry of Defence, which has consistently refused to

accept there are dangers involved in DU exposure or that it has

played role in Gulf War illnesses is addressing the problem.

Soldiers returning from this year's conflict will be routinely

tested for uranium poisoning. Professor Malcolm Hooper, who sits on

two committees advising the Government on Gulf health issues, said

he is not surprised by the radiation levels.

 

He said: " Really these things are dirty bombs. Exactly the sort of

device that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair keep talking

about being in the hands of terrorists. "

 

Dozens of US soldiers, backed by armoured vehicles and helicopter

gunships, searched farms on the outskirts of the northern Iraqi city

of Mosul yesterday in their hunt for followers of Saddam Hussein.

 

THOUSANDS of Iraqis packed into northern Baghdad yesterday for the

funeral of Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, a Shi'ite Muslim

cleric slain by a car bomb which also killed scores of his followers.

 

A senior official in Hakim's Supreme Council for the Islamic

Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) said the Americans bore some blame for

Friday's attack as they had failed to ensure adequate security

measures.

 

Up to five suspects, all of them Iraqi, have been detained over the

car bomb attack, the local governor said yesterday.

 

END

 

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