February 6, 2004
Warning of uranium contamination risks to
NGO
staff, Coalition forces, foreign contract
personnel
and civilians in Iraq
February 6, 2004 – Recently completed laboratory analyses show two
members of Uranium Medical Research Centre’s (UMRC) field investigation
team are contaminated with Depleted Uranium (DU). The two field staff,
one from Canada and the other, from Beirut, toured Iraq for thirteen
days in October 2003; five months after the cessation of Operation Iraqi
Freedom’s aerial bombing and ground force campaign. Using mass
spectrometry, UMRC’s partner laboratory in Germany measured DU in both
team members’ urine samples.
The UMRC team surveyed US and British controlled combat areas and
bomb-sites in southern Iraq, including Baghdad, An Nasiriyah, As
Suweiriah and Al Basra (details can be found at UMRC.net, Abu Khasib
to Al Ah’qaf: Field Investigation Report). The conditions
responsible for the team’s DU contamination are considered to be
inhalation of resuspended ultra-fine soil and dust particles saturated
with uranium and airborne uranium oxides and metallic particulate.
Uranium was used in anti-tank penetrators, suppression ordnance and
bunker-defeat warheads deployed during the 26 days of Operation Iraqi
Freedom by both US and UK forces. The contamination of UMRC’s team
members occurring over a two-week period, many months after the main
conflict, represents a risk to civilians, non-governmental
organisations’ staff, Coalition armed forces and foreign contractors and
diplomatic staff.
In 1997, UMRC was the first study group to detect DU in the urine
of Canadian, British and US troops who served in Gulf War I. The urinary
excretion of battlefield uranium was identified six years following
exposure. In January 2004, the US Department of Veterans Affairs
admitted it had detected DU in the urine of US forces who are not
retaining DU shrapnel, in 2000, eight years after Desert Storm. In 2001
and again in 2002, UMRC measured high concentrations of artificial
uranium containing the synthetic isotope, 236U, in Afghan civilians
exposed to the detonation plumes of bombs deployed during Operation
Enduring Freedom.
In November 2003, the British Ministry of Defence (MOD) released a
formal statement to the Guardian disclaiming UMRC’s Operation Telic
findings of high levels of radioactivity in British-led battlefields.
The MOD stated unequivocally that battlefield uranium residues remain
stable inside defeated Iraqi tanks and cannot be made biologically
available to humans. Since then, the MOD has found unusually high
concentrations of uranium excreted in the urine of its 1st
Armoured Division troops who served in Basra (September 2003, UK DU
Oversight Board Meeting minutes, Gulf Veterans Illnesses Unit, UK
Ministry of Defence). The MOD’s recent findings in its troops now
deployed back to Germany, coupled with the contamination of UMRC’s staff
demonstrate the need to initiate immediate solutions to protect exposed
civilians and foreign personnel in Iraq.
Preliminary results of UMRC’s laboratory analysis of field samples
of civilian urine, soils and water samples indicate uranium
contamination in several Iraqi cities and battlefields. Details of
UMRC’s findings from US and British controlled battlefields and
bombsites will be released later this month (February 2004). UMRC has
offered its assistance to the United Nation’s Environment Program (UNEP)
to guide UNEP’s post-conflict study team to radiologically contaminated
bombsites and battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan. UMRC urges UNEP to
undertake immediate studies and lead the implementation of a radiation
protection program for Iraqi and Afghan civilians as well as a
supervised environmental clean-up program, as early as possible.
For information:
T Weyman
Iraq
Field Team Lead
Info@UMRC.net
|