US blamed for Basra birth defects

A mother and baby living in a refugee camp near Fallujah London - Caroline Kent In Basra and Fallujah the number of birth defects and cancer cases has seen a huge rise. Doctors and locals are blaming American uranium-tipped munitions. A study published in the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology has confirmed that the fears of residents and medical staff might be right. The study reported a sevenfold increase in birth defects in Basra between 1994 and 2003. There were similar reports from Fallujah, a city that saw heavy combat in the last decade. Besides uranium, other substances such as lead and mercury, which are used in the production of ammunition and bombs, are also implicated. "The bombardment of Basra and Fallujah may have increased the population's exposure to metals, possibly resulting in the current increase in birth defects," explained the study. According to the study, the concentration of lead in the milk teeth of children in Basra was almost three times as high as areas where there was no fighting. Furthermore it said that that of 1000 live births in Basra, 23 had birth defects. The study pointed out that such a high (and rising) rate of neural tube defects has never been recorded in babies. The number of cases of hydrocephalus (water on the brain) among newborns is six times as high in Basra as the United States. Accounts of children being born with cancer and birth defects were highlighted in German newspaper Der Spiegel today. Iraqis who were interviewed revealed a number of babies born with only one eye in the forehead, two heads, tails, and swollen “monkey” faces. According to a Global Research report formed in light of the study the blame lays with “War pollution - due to everything from heavy metals from exploded ordnance to radiation left behind by depleted uranium used on U.S ammunition and tanks - inhaled by Fallujah’s residents, seeped into the ground water, flowing in the nearby Tigris River, choking the air they breathe.” Cancer specialist at the Sadr Teaching Hospital Jawad Ali told Der Spiegel: "It isn't just that the number of cancer cases suddenly increased. We also had double and triple cancers, that is, patients with tumors on both kidneys and in the stomach. And there were also familial clusters, entire families that were affected. There is a connection between cancer and radiation. Sometimes it takes ten or twenty years before the consequences manifest themselves." Uranium ammunition is the term for projectiles with cores containing weak but radioactive uranium, the substance gives them a high density which provides the projectile with very high momentum and enables it to pierce the armor of combat tanks. When the munitions explode they deposit a fine dust which is absorbed through the skin, mouths and airways of those nearby. London's Royal Society released a study in 2002 addressing the potential risk to soldiers (concluding that the threat of long-term health damage was “very low”) however it did not address the concerns of residents in areas where streets were littered with uranium-filled ammunition. The Guardian newspaper in Britain criticised the silence and “moral failure” of the West, citing chemist Chris Busby, who said that the Fallujah health crisis showed "the highest rate of genetic damage in any population ever studied." The World Health Organization is assembling a report on uranium-fused ammunition but it has been criticised for providing input that will come too late for many.