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Toxic munitions cause of baby deaths and deformities in Fallujah

By David Randall

In September this year, say campaigners, 170 children were born at Fallujah General Hospital, 24 per cent of whom died within seven days. Three-quarters of these exhibited deformities, including "children born with two heads, no heads, a single eye in their foreheads, or missing limbs". The comparable data for August 2002 -- before the invasion -- records 530 births, of whom six died and only one of whom was deformed.

The data -- contained in a letter sent by a group of British and Iraqi doctors and campaigners to the United Nations last month -- presaged claims made in a report in The Guardian yesterday that there has been a sharp rise in birth defects in the city. The paper quoted Fallujah General's director and senior specialist, Dr Ayman Qais, as saying: "We are seeing a very significant increase in central nervous system anomalies... There is also a very marked increase in the number of cases of brain tumours." Earlier this year Sky News reported a Fallujah grave-digger saying that, of the four or five new-born babies he buries every day, most have deformities. [right: Iraqi boys play with remains of US rocket.]

The campaigners' letter to the UN calls for an independent investigation to be set up, "the cleaning up of toxic materials used by the occupying forces, including depleted uranium and white phosphorus", and an inquiry launched to discover if any war crimes have been committed.

The campaigners believe that either white phosphorus or depleted uranium is a major, if not only, cause of the birth defects. White phosphorus, which US military has admitted firing on insurgents in heavily populated Fallujah, has a long history of military use, dating back to the First World War.

And although no scientific study has ever proved a causal link between depleted uranium and serious medical problems Ð and several studies seem to have proved the opposite -- it is by no means in the clear. Ever since the first Gulf War, its use has been linked to cancers among returning troops.

WHAT IS DEPLETED URANIUM?

Depleted Uranium, or DU, is a waste material left over from the nuclear industry. A vast amount of this waste DU is produced when natural uranium is enriched for use in nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. Only the uranium isotope U-235 can be used in nuclear processes, such as reactors and weapons. As most of this isotope is removed from naturally occurring uranium, the remaining uranium product comprises U-238 and smaller amounts of the more highly radioactive U-235 and U-234. DU is both chemically toxic and radioactive. It is this latter product, the left over uranium, comprising mainly U-238, which has been used to make 'depleted' uranium weapons. It is used for weapons because this heavy, dense metal is judged by the army to be an excellent penetrator of enemy armour, tanks, and even buildings.

A large amount of DU in the stockpiles held in the United States has been contaminated with recycled spent nuclear fuel from nuclear reactors. For example trace amounts of U-236 and highly radioactive substances such as plutonium, neptunium and technetium were found in a DU anti-tank shell used in Kosovo. Hundreds of thousands of tons of this contaminated stock was exported to the UK, France and other countries in the 1990s. The extent to which this DU has been contaminated with recycled spent fuel is still unknown and undisclosed.

Governments have largely ignored the serious dangers this recycled fuel represents. A common defence used by the British and US governments and their militaries is to claim that depleted uranium is less radioactive than natural uranium and therefore does not constitute a risk to human health. This statement is, however, misleading. In its natural form uranium is present in our environment in very small quantities as an ore, for example in rocks and soil. Conversely, the DU used by the military has been concentrated relative to background amounts, and is therefore many times more radioactive than uranium ore.

In May 2003 Scott Peterson, a writer with the US newspaper CSM, examined radioactivity levels next to DU bullets in Baghdad and found Geiger-counter readings were 1900 times greater than background radiation levels next to DU bullets. When natural uranium is concentrated in a similar form to 'depleted' uranium it emits about 40% more alpha radiation, 15% more gamma radiation and around the same level of beta radiation. The chemical toxicity of uranium does not depend on the isotope, therefore enriched, 'normal', and depleted uranium are equally toxic chemically.

It is extremely difficult and expensive for the nuclear industry to store DU. It is thought that the US currently has 1 billion tonnes of depleted uranium radioactive waste, while the UK has at least 50,000 tonnes. This waste is stored in cylinders at many sites across the US and UK and is vulnerable to corrosion and leaks owing to ageing cylinders and outside storage. It is stored mainly in the form of depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) which can leak if the corroding cylinders are breached. At least 10 cylinders are known to have breached during the past 10 years.

Turning this DU waste into weapons solves some of the problem faced by the Government and nuclear industry, concerning what to do with these large stockpiles. Not only is DU practically free of charge for the arms manufacturers, but it no longer has to be stored and monitored indefinitely.

Depleted uranium is a risk to health both as a toxic heavy metal and as a radioactive substance. The UK and US Governments have long sought to play down these risks. While, as late as 2003, the UK Government was claiming that DU presented no harm to soldiers or civilians, yet accumulating and alarming evidence from scientists, soldiers and activists has forced them to back down and recognise the risks posed.(1) However what is clear from reading all major studies is that more research urgently needs to be done. There exists very little research on the effects of uranium contamination in humans and accurate tests to understand exposure doses from military uses of DU have never been done.

There are three main routes through which DU exposure on the battlefield takes place: inhalation, ingestion and wounding.(2) As a DU penetrator hits its target some of the DU from the weapon reacts with the air in the ensuing fire and becomes a fine dust (often called an 'aerosol') that makes inhalation and ingestion a possibility for those in the area. Even after the dust has settled, the danger remains that it may be resuspended in the future by further activity or the wind, and again pose a threat to civilians and others for many years into the future. DU particles have been reported as travelling twenty-five miles on air currents.(3) Open wounds also allow a gateway for DU into the body and some veterans have also been left with DU fragments in their bodies, remaining after combat.

Inhaled DU dust will settle in the nose, mouth, lung, airways and guts. As a DU penetrator hits its target, the high temperatures caused by the impact ensure the DU dust particles become ceramic and therefore water insoluble. This means that, unlike other more soluble forms of uranium, DU will stay in the body for much longer periods of time. This aspect of uranium toxicology has often been ignored in studies of the health effects of DU, which base their excretion rates on soluble uranium. DU dust can remain in the sticky tissues of the lung and other organs such as the kidneys for many years. It is also deposited in the bones where it can remain for up to 25 years.(4) This helps explain why studies of Gulf War veterans have found that soldiers are still excreting DU in their urine over 12 years after the 1991 conflict (5) . Ingested DU can be incorporated into bone and from there will irradiate the bone marrow, increasing the risk of leukaemia and an impaired immune system. (6)

[Right: Dr. Khajak Vartaanian, a radiation expert, holds a Geiger counter next to a hole in an Iraqi tank destroyed by depleted uranium weapons in the Persian Gulf War in 1991. The shell holes show 1,000 times the normal background radiation level.]

External exposure to DU entails exposure to alpha, beta and gamma radiation. Although the skin will block alpha particles, beta and gamma radiation can penetrate beyond the dead outer skin layers and damage living tissue. Beta particles can penetrate to a depth of 2 cm, while gamma radiation (through a process called 'the Compton effect') generates beta particle radiation along its trajectory through the body. Neither is all external exposure to alpha radiation harmless. Cataracts, for example, can be caused by exposure to alpha radiation.(7)

Inside the body, DU poses a health risk in a variety of ways to different organs. The kidneys are the first organ to be dfamaged by DU. At a high dose kidney uranium levels can lead to kidney failure within a few days of exposure.8 Lower doses lead to kidney dysfunction, and can lead to an increased risk of kidney disease later in life.

For more updated stories, see Article in Truthout