High Uranium Levels Found in Troops and Civilians

[Guest guest]

t

Fri, 22 Jul 2005 11:57:33 -0000

(#4) High Uranium Levels Found in Troops and Civilians

(

 

 

#4) High Uranium Levels Found in Troops and Civilians

 

 

 

URANIUM MEDICAL RESEARCH CENTER, January 2003

Title: " UMRC's Preliminary Findings from Afghanistan & Operation

Enduring Freedom "

and

" Afghan Field Trip #2 Report: Precision Destruction- Indiscriminate

Effects "

Author: Tedd Weyman, UMRC Research Team

 

AWAKENED WOMAN, January 2004

Title: " Scientists Uncover Radioactive Trail in Afghanistan "

Author: Stephanie Hiller

 

DISSIDENT VOICE, March 2004

Title: " There Are No Words…Radiation in Iraq Equals 250,000 Nagasaki

Bombs "

Author: Bob Nichols

 

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, April 5,2004

Title: " Poisoned? "

Author: Juan Gonzalez

 

INFORMATION CLEARING HOUSE, March 2004

Title: " International Criminal Tribune For Afghanistan At Tokyo, The

People vs. George Bush "

Author: Professor Ms Niloufer Bhagwat J.

 

Evaluator: Jennifer Lillig, Ph.D.

Student Researcher: Kenny Crosbie

 

 

---

-----------

 

Civilian populations in Afghanistan and Iraq and occupying troops

have been contaminated with astounding levels of radioactive

depleted and non-depleted uranium as a result of post-9/11 United

States' use of tons of uranium munitions. Researchers say

surrounding countries are bound to feel the effects as well.

 

In 2003 scientists from the Uranium Medical Research Center (UMRC)

studied urine samples of Afghan civilians and found that 100% of the

samples taken had levels of non-depleted uranium (NDU) 400% to 2000%

higher than normal levels. The UMRC research team studied six sites,

two in Kabul and others in the Jalalabad area. The civilians were

tested four months after the attacks in Afghanistan by the United

States and its allies.

 

NDU is more radioactive than depleted uranium (DU), which itself is

charged with causing many cancers and severe birth defects in the

Iraqi population–especially children–over the past ten years. Four

million pounds of radioactive uranium was dropped on Iraq in 2003

alone. Uranium dust will be in the bodies of our returning armed

forces. Nine soldiers from the 442nd Military Police serving in Iraq

were tested for DU contamination in December 2003. Conducted at the

request of The News, as the U.S. government considers the cost of

$1,000 per affected soldier prohibitive, the test found that four of

the nine men were contaminated with high levels of DU, likely caused

by inhaling dust from depleted uranium shells fired by U.S. troops.

Several of the men had traces of another uranium isotope, U-236,

that are produced only in a nuclear reaction process.

 

Most American weapons (missiles, smart bombs, dumb bombs, bullets,

tank shells, cruise missiles, etc.) contain high amounts of

radioactive uranium. Depleted or non-depleted, these types of

weapons, on detonation, release a radioactive dust which, when

inhaled, goes into the body and stays there. It has a half-life of

4.5 billion years. Basically, it's a permanently available

contaminant, distributed in the environment, where dust storms or

any water nearby can disperse it. Once ingested, it releases

subatomic particles that slice through DNA.

 

UMRC's Field Team found several hundred Afghan civilians with acute

symptoms of radiation poisoning along with chronic symptoms of

internal uranium contamination, including congenital problems in

newborns. Local civilians reported large, dense dust clouds and

smoke plumes rising from the point of impact, an acrid smell,

followed by burning of the nasal passages, throat and upper

respiratory tract. Subjects in all locations presented identical

symptom profiles and chronologies. The victims reported symptoms

including pain in the cervical column, upper shoulders and basal

area of the skull, lower back/kidney pain, joint and muscle

weakness, sleeping difficulties, headaches, memory problems and

disorientation.

 

At the Uranium Weapons Conference held October 2003 in Hamburg,

Germany, independent scientists from around the world testified to a

huge increase in birth deformities and cancers wherever NDU and DU

had been used. Professor Katsuma Yagasaki, a scientist at the

Ryukyus University, Okinawa calculated that the 800 tons of DU used

in Afghanistan is the radioactive equivalent of 83,000 Nagasaki

bombs. The amount of DU used in Iraq is equivalent to 250,000

Nagasaki bombs.

 

At the Uranium Weapons Conference, a demonstration by British-

trained oncologist Dr. Jawad Al-Ali showed photographs of the kinds

of birth deformities and tumors he had observed at the Saddam

Teaching Hospital in Basra just before the 2003 war. Cancer rates

had increased dramatically over the previous fifteen years. In 1989

there were 11 abnormalities per 100,000 births; in 2001 there were

116 per 100,000—an increase of over a thousand percent. In 1989 34

people died of cancer; in 2001 there were 603 cancer deaths. The

2003 war has increased these figures exponentially.

 

At a meeting of the International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan

held December 2003 in Tokyo, the U.S. was indicted for multiple war

crimes in Afghanistan, among them the use of DU. Leuren Moret,

President of Scientists for Indigenous People and Environmental

Commissioner for the City of Berkeley, testified that because

radioactive contaminants from uranium weapons travel through air,

water, and food sources, the effects of U.S. deployment in

Afghanistan will be felt in Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan,

Uzbekistan, Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China and

India. Countries affected by the use of uranium weapons in Iraq

include Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Turkey, and

Iran.

 

UPDATE BY BOB NICHOLS: (Oklahoma City) Throughout the world people

are familiar with the " smoking gun " solution so prized by murder

mystery writers. Many think that once the smoking gun in any mystery

is discovered, it is time for the " bad guys " to give up. Wish it

were only so.

 

The smoking guns are Sgt. Hector Vega, Sgt. Ray Ramos, Sgt. Agustin

Matos and Cpl. Anthony Yonnone from New York's 442nd Guard Unit—they

are the first confirmed cases of inhaled uranium oxide exposure from

the current Iraq conflict. Dr. Asaf Durokovic, professor of Nuclear

Medicine at the Uranium Medical Research Centre http://www.umrc.net/

conducted the diagnostic tests. The story was released April 3, 2004

in the New York Daily News. There is no treatment and there is no

cure. http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/180333p-156685c.html

 

Leuren Moret reports, " In my research on depleted uranium during the

past 5 years, the most disturbing information concerns the impact on

the unborn children and future generations for both soldiers serving

in the depleted uranium wars, and for the civilians who must live in

the permanently radioactive contaminated regions. Today, more than

240,000 Gulf War veterans are on permanent medical disability and

more than 11,000 are dead. They have been denied testing, medical

care, and compensation for depleted uranium exposure and related

illnesses since 1991. "

 

Moret continues " Even worse, they brought it home in their bodies.

In some families, the children born before the Gulf War are the only

healthy members. Wives and female partners of Gulf War veterans have

reported a condition known as burning semen syndrome, and are now

internally contaminated from depleted uranium carried in the semen

of exposed veterans. Many are reporting reproductive illnesses such

as endometriosis. In a U.S. government study, conducted by the

Department of Veterans Affairs on post-Gulf War babies, 67% were

found to have serious birth defects or serious illnesses. They were

born without eyes (anophthalmos), ears, had missing organs, missing

legs and arms, fused fingers, thyroid or other organ malformations. "

 

" LIFE Photoessay: "

http://www.life.com/Life/essay/gulfwar/gulf01.html

 

Moret concludes, " In Iraq it is even worse where babies are born

without brains, organs are outside the body, or women give birth to

pieces of flesh. In babies born in Iraq in 2002, the incidence of

anophthalmos was 250,000 times greater (20 cases in 4,000 births)

than the natural occurrence, one in 50 million births. Takashi

MORIZUMI's photos: in http://www.savewarchildren.org/ record the

tragedy in Iraq. "

 

For more information on the American President's continuing campaign

of contaminating the land, check the World Uranium Weapons

Conference, http://www.uraniumweaponsconference.de/ ,

Check the Uranium Medical Research Center and Dr. Asaf Durakovic at

http://www.umrc.net/ ,

and for updates on the related Nuclear Power Plants see Russell

Hoffman's website at:

http://www.animatedsoftware.com/hotwords/index.htm .

 

Write Leuren Moret, Independent Scientist and radiation specialist,

City of Berkeley Environmental Commissioner, Past President,

Association for Women Geoscientists: leurenmoret

 

" Depleted Uranium: The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War " by Leuren Moret,

World Affairs Journal, July, 2004.

http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/DU-Trojan-Horse1jul04.htm

 

These Groups host discussions about uranium munitions:

<du-list >du-list

<du-watch >du-watch

<pandora-project >pandora-

project

<nucnews >nucnews

<abolition-caucus >abolition-

caucus

<earthfirstalert >earthfirstalert

om

Read Bob Nichols at: www.dissidentvoice.org .

 

UPDATE BY TEDD WEYMAN: UMRC found artificial uranium in bomb

craters, surrounding watercourses and the bodies of civilians

exposed to US Coalition bombing in Afghanistan. Civilians surveyed

presented with the classical symptoms of internal contamination by

uranium, which began after exposure to the bombing. The presence of

artificial uranium in environmental and biological samples indicates

that the bunker buster warheads used in Afghanistan are made of

uranium.

 

Uranium is a chemically and radiologically toxic element, clinically

proven to be a cause of various types of cancer and congenital

malformations (birth defects). Internal contamination of uranium is

responsible for variety of systemic and organ system problems, which

has never been considered or studied by the Defense Department or

Veterans health programs as possible cause of Gulf War Illness. The

symptoms of internal contamination by uranium in Iraq and

Afghanistan civilians are identical to the symptoms of US and

Coalition veterans complaining of Gulf War Illness.

 

The Pentagon/DoD have interfered with UMRC's ability to have its

studies published by managing, a progressive and persistent

misinformation program in the press against UMRC, and through the

use of its control of science research grants to refute UMRC's

scientific findings and destroy the reputation of UMRC's scientific

staff, physicians and laboratories. UMRC is the first independent

research organization to find Depleted Uranium in the bodies of US,

UK and Canadian Gulf War I veterans and has subsequently, following

Operation Iraqi Freedom, found Depleted Uranium in the water, soils

and atmosphere of Iraq as well as biological samples donated by

Iraqi civilians.

 

The United States and several of its Coalition partners and NATO

allies have been deploying in battlefield and experimenting with

chemically toxic and radioactive heavy metals in various types of

bullets, bombs and warheads since the early 1970s. Uranium powder is

taken from the nuclear fuel reprocessing cycle, after it has been

mixed with nuclear reactor waste products and spent fuel, to supply

the non-fissile weapons' manufacturing industry.

 

Uranium is preferred over all other " ballistic " metals (e.g. lead,

iron, tungsten) because it offers a set of unique metallurgical

properties: it is extremely dense yet ductile metal (not brittle);

it is pyrophoric (uranium dust burns spontaneously at room

temperature); and, solid metal uranium is autoigniting at 170° F.

Uranium metal has a very unusual property not available in any other

metal; it is " self-sharpening " , meaning that when it hits a target

at high velocities (1 km/sec) it erodes and breaks in such a way as

to continuously re-sharpen its point — the leading points of all

other warhead metals flatten or mushroom under these conditions.

These properties give uranium a superior performance as a

penetrating warhead alloy capable of breaching the hardest and

thickest armor plating, retaining penetration capabilities at 15 %

greater distances and lower speeds than the most common alternative

metal, tungsten. Burning uranium is hard to extinguish, and if

doused with water, it will explode. Uranium used in specially

designed high velocity liquid metal penetrators can bore through 20

feet of super-reinforced concrete bunkers in classified weapons

called " shaped charges " and " explosively formed penetrators " . The

hard (dense), resilient (ductile) and heavy (sustaining momentum)

characteristics of uranium also make its optimal in the warhead of

robust earth-penetrating bombs to carry them into buried targets and

caves.

 

The mainstream press in the US and Canada does not show any general

interest in the story, let alone an investigative interest. European

mainstream press is more interested and follows key developments.

The NY Daily News April 5, 2004 has covered Gulf War II results by

UMRC's studies of US veterans. DoD has lied and misled the public

and the veterans in an attempt to undermine the significance of the

story. There is significant alternative press and internet press

coverage. The technique for coverage is to approach the story as a

debate between government and independent experts in which public

interest is stimulated by polarizing the issues rather than telling

the scientific and medical truth. The issues are systematically

confused and misinformed by government, UN regulatory agencies (WHO,

UNEP, IAEA, CDC, DOE, etc) and defense sector (military and the

weapons developers and manufacturers).

 

UPDATE BY STEPHANIE HILLER: This is a shocking story since it

suggests that experimental nuclear bombs were dropped around Kabul

at the end of the war Operation Enduring Freedom. (Did they mean

enduring radiation?) And what have they dropped on Iraq?

 

Continued research shows that we have all been irradiated here in

the United States, at an enormous cost to the public health. Cancer

rates alone show that genetic mutation has been rapidly increasing

since the first bomb was tested in Almorgordo, NM in 1945. But the

effects of low-level radiation have been systematically hidden from

public view!

 

In April after sick vets from the current war got no help from the

Pentagon, the mother of one of the soldiers went to the papers. Juan

Gonzalez of the New York Daily News launched an investigation. The

News paid for nine men to be tested by Asaf Durakovic. He found that

four of them were contaminated with uranium. The News got the

attention of New York Senator Hilary Clinton. She held a

teleconference— but Durakovic was not allowed to participate!

 

Amy Goodman interviewed Durakovic later the same month on Democracy

Now!— don't know if it was thanks to my story. AlterNet rejected the

story because their source on depleted uranium, John Fahey, did not

agree with it.

I don't know of any mainstream media that has picked up the story,

and I don't find any references to the Gonzalez piece either. The

BBC and the Seattle Post Intelligencer covered it before me.

 

To learn more about uranium weapons search the web! It's a huge

topic. Start with the world Uranium Weapons Conference held last

October in Hamburg: <http://www.uraniumweaponsconference.de> The

Power Point by Dr. Ali shows the most excruciating consequences of

Persian Gulf One -- deformed babies. Also, Join WBW! Women for a

Better World has begun an information campaign to educate the public

about depleted uranium, especially young people who might be called

to join the military and their families, regarding the contamination

of Central Eurasia. Come to our web site for more information,

flyers, and to sign a petition opposing the draft for the same

reason. <http://www.awakenedwoman.com/wbw.htm>