Polluted Air Another Danger to U.S. Troops in Iraq

[unhappycamper]

Polluted Air Another Danger to U.S. Troops in Iraq
By Serena Gordon
HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, March 31 (HealthDay News) -- While the risks of gunfire and explosive devices to U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq are obvious, new research suggests that high levels of air pollution in that country might pose a threat to their respiratory health.

Scientists have been collecting air samples in Baghdad since 2008, and they found that the Iraqi air often contains fine particulate matter made up of many elements, including silica, sulfates and heavy metals, such as lead, arsenic, cadmium and mercury. Fine particulate matter is of greater concern than large particulate matter because these tiny particles can travel deep into the lungs, where they can cause more damage.

Some air quality readings in Iraq found that the fine particulate matter was nearly 10 times higher than the levels generally considered acceptable in the United States.

"There is concern with the amount of the fine particles in the atmosphere that the soldiers, and the Iraqi citizens, are living in," said study co-author Jennifer Bell, a doctoral student in the department of chemistry and biochemistry at the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks.

"Fine particulate matter is very, very small. If you think about the size of a hair follicle, these particles are smaller than a hair follicle," said Bell. "The natural defenses, like the hairs in the nose, normally trap coarse particles, but these particles are so small they bypass the body's natural defenses."

[Aryo]

1. Why is Depleted Uranium never mentioned in articles like this?

[unhappycamper]

2. Depleted Uranium is Agent Orange on steroids.

We had to drag the Veterans Administration into admitting that AO was bad for you for decades. I suspect it will be more decades before they admit DU is harmful to humans.

[Aryo]

3. Great point.

Have you seen any of the deformed babies born in the countries where we use DU? Really tragic and sickening that no one knows this stuff is going on.

[unhappycamper]

5. Not personally, but I helped put a presentation together a few years ago

***CAUTION - contains graphic pictures - CAUTION ***

http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&source=hp&biw=1280&bih=557&q=%22birth+defects%22%2Bbasra&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=

***CAUTION - contains graphic pictures - CAUTION ***

[Gravel Democrat]

4. ^^^

The US and NATO militaries used DU penetrator rounds in the 1991 Gulf War, the Bosnia war,<15> bombing of Serbia, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.<16>




Annex II to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material 1980 (which became operative on 8 February 1997) classifies DU as a category II nuclear material. Storage and transport rules are set down for that category which indicates that DU is considered sufficiently "hot" and dangerous to warrant these protections. But since weapons containing DU are relatively new weapons no treaty exists yet to regulate, limit or prohibit its use. The legality or illegality of DU weapons must therefore be tested by recourse to the general rules governing the use of weapons under humanitarian and human rights law which have already been analysed in Part I of this paper, and more particularly at paragraph 35 which states that parties to Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 have an obligation to ascertain that new weapons do not violate the laws and customs of war or any other international law. As mentioned, the International Court of Justice considers this rule binding customary humanitarian law.

In 2001, Carla Del Ponte, then the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, said that NATO's use of depleted uranium in former Yugoslavia could be investigated as a possible war crime.<43>


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium