Urgent Reading: The Medical Consequences of War in Iraq

NEW YORK - As the Bush administration prepares to make war on the Iraqi
people - for it is the civilian population of that country and not Saddam
Hussein who will bear the brunt of the hostilities - it is important that
we recall the medical consequences of the last Persian Gulf war. It was,
in effect, a nuclear war.

By the end of that 1991 conflict, the United States left between 300 and
800 tons of depleted uranium-238 in anti-tank shells and other munitions
on the battlefields of Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

The term "depleted" refers to the removal of the fissionable element
uranium-235 through a process that ironically is called "enrichment." What
remains, uranium-238, is 1.7 times more dense than lead. When incorporated
into an anti-tank shell and fired, it achieves enormous momentum, cutting
through tank armour like a hot knife through butter.

What other properties does uranium-238 possess? First, it is pyrophoric.
When it hits a tank, it bursts into flames, producing aerosolised
particles less than 5 microns in diameter, making them easy to inhale into
the terminal air passages of the lung.

Second, it is a potent radioactive carcinogen, emitting a relatively heavy
alpha particle composed of two protons and two neutrons. Once inside the
body - either in the lung if it has been inhaled, in a wound if it
penetrates flesh, or ingested since it concentrates in the food chain and
contaminates water - it can produce cancer in the lungs, bones, blood or
kidneys.

Third, it has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, meaning the areas in which
this ammunition impacted in Iraq and Kuwait will remain effectively
radioactive for the rest of time. Children are 10 to 20 times more
sensitive  to the effects of radiation than adults. My fellow
paediatricians in the Iraqi city of Basra, for example, report an increase
of six to 12 times in the incidence of childhood leukaemia and cancer. Yet
because of the sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United States and the
United Nations, they have little access to antibiotics, chemotherapeutic
drugs or effective radiation machines to treat their patients.

The incidence of congenital malformations has doubled in the exposed
populations in Iraq where these weapons were used. Among them are babies
being born with only one eye and with an encephaly - the absence of a
brain.

However, the medical consequences of the use of uranium-238 almost
certainly did not affect only Iraqis. Some American veterans exposed to it
are reported, by at least one medical researcher, to be excreting uranium
in their urine a decade later. Other reports indicate it is being excreted
in their semen.

That nearly one-third of the American tanks used in Desert Storm were
armed with munitions made with uranium-238 is another story, for their
crews were exposed to whole body gamma radiation. What might be the
long-term consequences of such exposure has not, apparently, been studied.

Would these effects have surprised U.S. authorities? No, for incredible as
it may seem, the American military's own studies prior to Desert Storm
warned that aerosol uranium exposure under battlefield conditions could
lead to cancers of the lung and bone, kidney damage, non-malignant lung
disease, neurocognitive disorders, chromosomal damage and birth defects.

Do President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Deputy Defense Secretary
Paul Wolfowitz, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld understand the medical consequences of the 1991
war and  the likely health effects of the next one they are planning? If
they don't, their ignorance is breathtaking. Even more incredible, though,
and possibly more likely, is that they do understand but don't care.
Helen Caldicott, October 6, 2002  (Editorial published in the Baltimore
Sun)

Helen Caldicott, MD, founder and president of the Nuclear Policy Research
Institute, has devoted 25 years to an international campaign to educate
the public about the medical hazards of the nuclear age. Her most recent
book is The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush's Military-Industrial
Complex, (The New Press, 2002).