The Department of Defense website, in touting the Army's humanitarian efforts, cites the high cancer rates in the region without making reference to any potential causes. 12)
Fallujah - another area where US forces used considerable DU munitions during the battles in 2004 - now is also reporting an observable rise in birth defects and other radiation-related conditions. A report sent to the UN General Assembly on October 12, 2009, by Dr Nawal Majeed Al-Sammarai, Iraq's Minister of Women's Affairs, stated that 24% of the babies born in Fallujah General Hospital in September 2009 died within their first week of life. Of the remainder of the babies who survived beyond the first week of life, a full 75% were reported born with deformaties.
Statistics from the same hospital in 2002 - six months prior to start of the 'shock and awe' attacks of 2003 (which included DU weapons) - recorded 530 live births with only six dying in the first week and only one deformity. 13)
An important detail of DU risk to humans is that the most dangerous form of exposure is inhalation (rather than contact). This happens when DU weapons 'aerosolize' upon impact. A single particle of inhaled DU can expose the surrounding tissue to radiation 800 times the annual dosage considered safe by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for the entire body. (Authors Note: The US Army has no established protocols for diagnosing, nor treating soldiers with suspected inhaled DU). 14)
Several sources place the amount of DU used in US weapons since 2003 at over 1,600 tonnes: this amount would create a staggering, uncountable amount of particles to be dispersed in the soil, water and air. 15) This corresponds to studies now showing local soil, water and air which now show radiation levels 'hundreds to thousands of times' above what occurs naturally. An American reporter from the Christian Science Moniter described that radiation meters which his crew brought to the region went "off the scale" in some areas. 16)
The emerging reports out of Iraq have been virtually absent in the United States media, with scant attention in European media - two recent reports in the Guardian (UK) being notable exceptions. 17)
Largely out of the US press, however, some governments and humanitarian organizations are reacting.
The government of Belgium in 2007 became the first nation to ban "all weapons" which contain Depleted Uranium. In 2008 the European Parliament adapted a resolution for both a moratorium and an international treaty to ban them . The International Coalition to Ban UraniumWeapons, based in Manchester, is seeking an international ban modeled after the Ottawa Landmine-Ban Treaty and has called upon the United Nations to do so.
And at least one U.S. University has voted to cease doing business with producers of a weapon which one former nuclear expert from the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory described as a "a dirty bomb...in every way". 18)
So what led the students in Vermont to ask the University to divest - on an issue relatively unknown in the United States - at a time when any number of pressing issues could well have merited more publicized attention?
"At UVM social and political activism are both things that are taken very seriously" said Hillary Walton, the student journalist who first wrote about the divestment vote in the campus newspaper The Vermont Cynic. The University's culture indeed appears to welcome student social activism, perhaps more than most US universities: It previously created a Socially Responsible Investing Work Group which is composed of students, faculty, administration, and staff: all have equal vote in deciding which issues to bring before the Trustees. Previous divestment resolutions have passed regarding tobbaco and the human rights in Sudan. 19)
Whether other US Universities follow Vermont's lead on DU weapons and the emerging radiation crisis in Iraq remains to be seen.
In their October 22 divestment resolution, the University Trustees said "... The University's policy of fiscal prudence shall not preclude the consideration of moral, ethical and social criteria in determining which companies to invest." 20)
It appears that the CEOs and Board of Directors at General Dynamics, ATK Alliance Sytems, and Aerojet Ordnance Tennessee - along with their their US Banking partners and Army contractors - have it the other way around.
Don Lieber is an independent journalist whose previous works have been published with the Associated Press, the United Nations, The Willamette Week (Portland Ore.), The International Campaign to Ban Landmines, and others.
FOOTNOTES
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