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Radioactive wreckage, landmines blight Iraq

Radioactive wreckage, landmines blight Iraq
Herald Sun By Aubrey Belford in BaghdadAugust 24, 2009 
RADIOACTIVE wreckage and tens of millions of landmines still blight Iraq after decades of war and the deadly violence that engulfed the nation after the 2003 invasion, the environment minister says.Narmin Othman Hasan said a lack of funding and Iraq’s fragile security situation was hampering efforts to clean up contaminated sites across the country.She said that only a fraction of tanks and other wartime vehicles contaminated with depleted uranium have been successfully treated and disposed of by the Iraqi authorities.”We have only found 80 per cent (of the contaminated sites)… because of the (lack of) security there are still some areas we can’t reach,” she estimated.The twin menaces are the legacy of decades of conflict: the 1980-1988 war with neighbouring Iran, the 1991 Gulf war that followed Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and its bloody aftermath.
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Depleted uranium, a radioactive metal present in armour piercing bullets used by US-led forces during the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 invasion, and which is twice as dense as lead, has been blamed for health problems from cancer to birth defects, but much research remains inconclusive.

“All radiation is dangerous – but how much depleted uranium radiation is affecting health, that is still under study,” Ms Hasan said, a

Radioactive wreckage, landmines blight Iraq | Herald Sun

August 24, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 1, environment, Iraq | antinuclear, nuclear, radiation, radioactive, uranium | Leave a comment