Hey wrath, you were tryin to tell me how it isn't as bad as they made it sound and tried to convince us that DU is harmless. Tell you what, I hear they have work over there, why don't you volunteer to go over and help.
Here is a copy of an e-mail that is circulating.
Friends in Peace and Justice, Veterans for Peace, Environmental Health, Military Families :
The exciting groundbreaking DU news articles below will be a good resource to help educate the public. It is up to us to mobilize to Ban US Radioactive Weapons, illegal under International Law. (see below and attachments, share freely)
More of our troops and innocent civilians are being poisoned each day by radioactive weapons, also called "DU". The statistics of Gulf War 1 Vet's children born with birth defects is staggering. Shocking, also, are the astronomical statistics of dying Iraq innocent civilians and Iraq children born with birth defects from the effects of DU.
The use of DU weapons is in violation under International Laws. The United Nations with brilliant global scientists, doctors and legal experts, have decried the damaging effects of DU Weapons. The Pentagon's own Material Safety Data Sheets states DU is hazardous. (Ground Zero Documents)
We hope the US Government will stop denying their soldier's DU damage and burying their medical files and that they will clean up their radioactive waste up before anymore innocents are permanently damaged. We also hope that they will halt all uranium weapon production.
For relevant educational resources:
http://
www.traprockpeace.org Traprock Peace Center
http://www.llrc.org The Low Level Radiation Campaign
http://www.umrc.net. Uranium Medical Research Center
Karen Parker JD non-governmental delegate to UN Commission on Human Rights and its Sub-Commission since 1982
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World Depleted Uranium Centre, WODUC
Prof. Dr. A. Schott, Berlin
British Veteran Kenny Duncan First To Win War Pension Tribunal
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The Chromosome test, originated and paid by Prof. A. Schott, Head of WODUC, "helped to sway "(Kenny Duncan's wife) the War Pensions Appeal Tribunal heard in Edinburgh, 2.2.04, that K. Duncan from Scotland has been poisoned by Depleted Uranium (DU) during the 1991 Gulf War. This Decision is a landmark in the struggle of the worldwide 66,000 DU contaminated veterans of the 1991 Gulf War (and the uncounted number of the 2003 Gulf War). K. Duncan served as tank transporter: Iraqi tanks, destroyed by DU Weapons, fired by British and US forces. So he inhaled the radiological and chemical poisonous DU dust. Uranium is an alpha-emitter. Alpha-radiation is known to make chromosome breaks. The tribunal realized that K. Duncan had been exposed to DU dust during his service in the 1991 Gulf War.
Mandy and Kenny Duncan have three children born after the 1991 war. All three are heavily congenital damaged. The severe health problems require weekly treatment and special school training. Their illnesses are attributable to genetic damage caused by DU.
The statement of NGVF-Association "... it must be noted that these tests had been paid for by the Charity." (Press Release, 3rdFebruary 2004) is not correct. Details about DU you find in the WODUC-brochure "Fluch und Tragödie des Uran-Missbrauchs", Berlin 2004.
Prof. Dr. A. Schott Head of WODUC
E-Mail:
[email protected]
http://www.woduc.de/ (in German)
http://www.woduc.de/ESPR-2003-200.pdf (English)
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http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/9272.html
First award for depleted uranium poisoning claim
MARTIN WILLIAMS
A SCOTS ex-soldier has become the first veteran to win a pension appeal after being diagnosed with depleted uranium (DU) poisoning during the 1991 Gulf war.
A Pension Appeal Tribunal Service hearing in Edinburgh accepted medical evidence provided by Kenny Duncan, of Clackmannan, previously dismissed by the MoD, which revealed he had become ill after service in the Middle East.
Mr Duncan, 35, a driver with 7 Tank Transporter Regiment, helped move tanks destroyed by shells containing the poisonous dust.
He says he has evidence that his children's health problems are linked to his service. Kenneth, 10, Andrew, eight, and six-year-old Heather, have symptoms similar to those suffered by some Iraqi children, including deformed toes, and low immune systems making them susceptible to asthma, hay fever and eczema.
Mr Duncan has suffered increasing breathlessness and aching joints which he has linked to DU.
During the conflict, US and British troops fired an estimated 350 tonnes of DU weapons at Iraqi tanks.
Doctors in southern Iraq have reported a marked increase in cancers and birth defects, and suspicion has grown that they were caused by DU contamination from tank battles.
DU has been linked to a leukemia cluster around the MoD range at Dundrennan, near the Solway Firth. Communities close to the range show the highest rate of childhood leukaemia in the UK.
Mr Duncan's appeal was launched after he was awarded only about £40 a week, half the full pension, when he retired from the Army through ill health in 1993 after nine years' service. His pension will now be reassessed.
The National Gulf Veterans and Families Association (NGVFA) said the tribunal decision added weight to its call for a full independent inquiry into Gulf war illnesses and supported its view that the government should do more financially to help the victims.
Mr Duncan's case relied on blood tests carried out by Dr Albrecht Schott, a German biochemist, which revealed chromosome aberrations caused by ionising radiation.
Dr Schott's research formed part of a study of 16 British veterans of conflicts in the Gulf, Bosnia, and Kosovo, which found that they had 14 times the usual level of chromosome abnormalities in their genes, raising fears that they will pass cancers and genetic illnesses to their offspring.
The test results were dismissed by the MoD as "neither well thought out nor scientifically sound."
Mr. Duncan said yesterday" "It is just a huge relief to have someone in authority say that you have been poisoned by this stuff and that you are not telling lies. It is now time for the MoD to tell us what went wrong.
"For all those veterans who have been going to the doctor with these ailments and are being told there is nothing wrong with them, this is for them, and I hope it will help them.
"I doubt that I will benefit much financially from this, but it wasn't about the money, it was about the principle of the thing."
The ministry said yesterday: "Once we have seen the decision, we will consider the implications it might have on the MoD."
Page created February 12, 2004 by Charlie Jenks
Traprock Peace Center
103A Keets Road, Woolman Hill
Deerfield, MA 01342
Phone: (413) 773-7427; Fax
413)773-7507; contact by email
UMRC Information Bulletin
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, 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 organizations' staff, Coalition armed force! s 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 Defense (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
[email protected]
But it isn't as bad as they make it sound, is it?!
