Sick veterans blame new weapon
From the Boston Globe
Excerpt: ... Since he left a bombed-out train depot in Iraq, the Army National Guard veteran has had trouble with bleeding gums. There also is blood in his urine and his stool. Bright light hurts his eyes. A tumor has been removed from his thyroid. Rashes erupt everywhere. Migraines cleave his skull. His joints ache.

There is something massively wrong with Reed, though no one is sure what it is. The Department of Veterans Affairs medical center in the Bronx has supplied him with an internist, a neurologist, a pain-management specialist, a psychologist, an orthopedic surgeon, and a dermatologist.

Reed believes that the military's new favorite weapon -- depleted uranium coating artillery shells and tanks -- has made him terrifyingly sick. ...

...Reed says he unknowingly breathed depleted uranium dust while living with his unit in Samawah, Iraq. He was removed in 2003 because of herniated spinal discs. Then began a series of symptoms he had never experienced in his previously healthy life.

At Walter Reed, he ran into some buddies from his unit. ``We all had migraines. We all felt sick," Reed says. ``The doctors said, `It's all in your head.' "

Then the medic from their unit showed up. He too, was suffering. That made eight sick soldiers from the 442d Military Police, an Army National Guard unit of mostly police and correctional officers from the New York area. ...

...Depleted uranium can contaminate soil and water, and coat buildings with radioactive dust. In 2005, the UN Environmental Program identified 311 polluted sites in Iraq. Cleaning them will take at least $40 million and several years, the agency said.

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Also see: Campaign Against Depleted Uranium

Labels: depleted uranium, health, iraq, veterans

Use of depleted uranium weapons lingers as health concern
From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Excerpt: The ideal legacy of the war in Iraq is a free and democratic society, but a sinister legacy of another kind is possible as well -- cancers and birth defects.
Depleted uranium weapons used by the U.S.-led forces in the war have left battle sites throughout Iraq contaminated with abnormally high levels of radiation...

The Pentagon and United Nations estimate that U.S. and British forces used 1,100 to 2,200 tons of armor-piercing shells made of depleted uranium during attacks in Iraq in March and April -- far more than the estimated 375 tons used in the 1991 Gulf War.

U.S. tanks, Bradley fighting machines, A-10 attack jets and Apache helicopters routinely used depleted uranium rounds, but in the recent war, the ammunition was used in and near heavily populated areas, not just in the desert...

Labels: depleted uranium, health, iraq, UK