According to ATK's website, it also has an ammunitions facility in Plymouth and a 3,000-acre ammunitions testing grounds facility in Elk River.
https://ordspub.epa.gov/ords/cimc/f?p=CIMC:RCRA:::::P14_RCRA_HANDLER_ID:MND081138604
Feurat Alani is a French Iraqi writer and documentarian who was based in Baghdad from 2003 to 2008. His recent piece for The Washington Post is headlined “The Iraq War helped destroy what it meant to be an Iraqi.” Sinan Antoon was born and raised in Baghdad. He is also a writer, as well as a poet, translator and associate professor at New York University. His latest piece appears in The Guardian, headlined “A million lives later, I cannot forgive what American terrorism did to my country, Iraq.”
Fallujah, about fifty miles West of Bagdad, in Iraq, is a contaminated city. One in five children are born with an important physical deformity. The potential causes: the use of white phosphorus bombs by the American army, terrible weapons which contained depleted uranium and more bombs that are still unknown. The Pentagon denies it, but people from Iraq, NGOs, previous GIs and, above all, many scientists, denounce it. In the meantime, mass contamination goes on and its consequences seem never-ending.
Depleted Uranium weapons documentary
I got arrested at Alliant Techsystems - the judge dropped our charges. People kept getting arrested to Alliant Techsystems moved their headquarters out of Minnesota. I think production still goes on there in DU ammunitions.
"We could smell and taste the uranium."
A fourth radiation weapons military doc
The term Persian Gulf War Syndrome is now known worldwide -- but -- after the 1991 Iraq war, as formerly A1 fit soldiers fell ill with debilitating symptoms in their thousands, the cause was, for two years, a “mystery”.
It was in 1993, when a group of twenty-four affected soldiers approached Professor Asaf Durakovic, one of the world’s leading experts on the effects of radiation, that a cause came to light.
They had many times the “safe” level of chemically toxic and radioactive depleted uranium (DU) in their bodies. Durakovic, although a senior officer in the U.S. Army during the first Persian Gulf War, had been unaware that the weapons used had contained depleted uranium.
“I was horrified,” he said. “I was a soldier, but above all I am a doctor.” By 1997, it was estimated that ninety thousand U.S. veterans were suffering from Persian Gulf War Syndrome.
Durakovic, who is also medical consultant for the Children of Chernobyl project at Hadassah University, Jerusalem, lost his job as Chief of Nuclear Medicine at the Veteran’s Administration Medical Facility at Wilmington, Delaware as a direct result of his work with Persian Gulf War veterans contaminated with radiation, he states.
Two other physicians, Dr. Burroughs and Dr. Slingerland of the Boston VA, also lost their jobs when they asked for more sensitive equipment to better diagnose the soldiers referred to them by Professor Durakovic.
Oddly, all the records pertaining to the sick soldiers at the Delaware VA went missing, a syndrome of another kind which has become familiar on both sides of the Atlantic.
Two years before Durakovic’s discovery, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) “self initiated” a report warning the government that if fifty tons of the residual dust from the explosions of the weapons on impact was left “in the region”, they estimated it would generate “half a million” extra cancer deaths by the end of the century (2000.)
Iraq’s cancers and birth deformities have become an anomaly, compared to those in the Pacific Islands and amongst British troops after the nuclear testing in the 1950s.
Further, “depleted” is a misnomer. These weapons are made from waste from the nuclear fuel cycle and thus contain the whole lethal nuclear cocktail. DU weapons (sold to seventeen countries that are known and possibly others -- why let poisoning the planet and its population get in the way of numerous millions of quick bucks) are equivalent to spreading the contents of a nuclear reactor around the globe.
And far from fifty tons and that chilling warning, in Iraq several thousand tons now cover this ancient Biblical land, and with the bombs raining daily, the audit rises nearly hour by hour. The U.S. is currently by far the largest user of DU weapons. Over the past decade, they have bought more than sixteen million DU shells and bullets from Alliant Tech Systems alone. (Source: Janes.)
Strangely, this time, there have been few reports of soldiers with the terrible effects of 1991, where they were only in the region for a few weeks. Although troops now remain for months or a year, Persian Gulf War Syndrome mark 2 seems not an issue. Perhaps it is because, reportedly, doctors treating returning troops have been threatened with jail and or hefty fines if they say anything regarding DU-related symptoms.
The implication regarding compensation to countries affected by this poisoned legacy (DU’s lethality lasts for four and a half billion years) and troops is financially stratospheric. Since the 2003 invasion, U.S. troops have denied entry to International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors and all other radiation experts seeking to test ground and air levels.
In Bosnia and the other parts of the former Yugoslavia where DU weapons were used (with missiles also dropped accidentally in neighboring countries, by the U.S., to whom all the world’s lives are seemingly cheap) the “Iraq Syndrome” quickly became apparent.
Even European peacekeepers on relatively short tours of duty became ill and developed leukemia and other cancers, and a number died. A five man film crew from BBC Scotland all tested DU positive after filming for less than a week there.
Afghanistan too was “liberated” in 2001, by uranium weapons, which continue to be routinely used, condemning generations yet to be born to deformities and the living -- the newborn and under fives the most susceptible -- to cancers and other horrific DU-related conditions.
Durakovic also found high levels of uranium in hospital patients there, as there will undoubtedly be in the occupying forces. He also found identical conditions to Iraq amongst the young: “Children born with no limbs, no eyes, or with tumors protruding from their mouths and eyes.”
The latest country to fall victim to uranium weapons is Lebanon -- but with a difference; it transpires. Dr. Chris Busby*, founder of the Low Level Radiation Campaign and Green Audit, is Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk and also sits on the (UK) Ministry of Defence Uranium Oversight Board.
Israel is one of the countries that possess uranium weapons. “The first evidence that the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) were using them (in the July-August 2006 Israeli bombardment) was a Getty Picture Library image of an Israeli soldier carrying a DU anti-tank shell,” says Busby.
He then noted a report in Lebanon’s Daily Star saying that Dr. Khobeisi, a scientist, had measured gamma radiation in a bomb crater at Khiam in the south of the country, at ten to twenty times higher (samples taken from different locations in the crater) than naturally occurring background radiation.
The following month, independent researcher Dai Williams** went to Lebanon on behalf of Green Audit to investigate and bring back samples to the UK for testing. He also brought back an air filter from an ambulance. Tested at the Harwell UKAEA laboratory: “The results were astonishing.”
Both soil and filter contained enriched uranium with the soil sample containing uranium about nine times higher than the natural background. (Remember how threatening the West has become towards Iran’s efforts to enrich uranium?)
The soil sample was also sent to the School of Ocean Sciences in North Wales for a second test by a different method for certainty. The results were the same.
Busby asks, “Why use enriched uranium? It is a bit like shooting your enemy with diamonds.” He contends it is possible that it is a smoke screen for the wider use of depleted uranium, as the final contamination “when all gets mixed up after the war has a natural isotopic signature” (i.e.: can be read as uranium which occurs naturally in nature).
There are two other chilling possibilities says Busby: a fusion bomb or a thermobaric bomb, both of which would need enriched uranium. Certainly, doctors were reporting bodies in conditions they could find in no medical manuals, as in the attack on Falluja, Iraq.
Lebanese authorities denied the presence of enriched uranium; Israel denied using it. The bombardment had ended on the agreement that UN peacekeepers went in. Given their debilitation and mortality rate in the Balkans, this lethal presence might well have deterred them. To be certain, the incident was not isolated. Williams returned to Lebanon and brought back soil and water samples from Khiam and other sites. Enriched uranium was found in water samples from two separate craters in Khiam and in one of the soil samples. Then the money ran out.
The samples tested had already cost £2,000. Donations from an Arab friend and Swiss supporters totaled £850 -- and Dai Williams had paid the rest out of his own money. More work is needed, but it is now known that the IDF used enriched uranium in Lebanon.
“Since it is in the ambulance air filter, it is also in the lungs of the inhabitants… the Lebanese people have been sacrificed to cancers, leukemia, birth defects, like the people of the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq,” says Busby, adding, “and it may be worse: since we still do not know what the weapon was.”
And have these weapons been used on the people of Gaza and the West Bank? Furthermore, Israel is not only decimating those she perceives as her enemies, but her own people, neighboring countries, and even those further afield.
In context, Green Audit studied airborne uranium at sites in the UK between 1998 and 2004. There was only one period in which uranium in the air “significantly” exceeded the naturally occurring background presence: during the bombing of Iraq, in March and April 2003.
As with the radionuclides from Chernobyl, which affected Europe and the globe and still contaminate agricultural land, the potentially deadly wave of invisible particles traveled on the wind from Iraq. “We are all (Persian) Gulf War victims now,” commented Busby’s colleague Richard Bramhill.
Can anything be done to halt the use of these genocidal weapons? Francis Boyle, Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois and author of The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, thinks so. He has launched a campaign for a global pact against uranium weapons.
Boyle points out that the 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibits “the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases and of all analogous liquids, materials or devices.” Clearly, he says, DU is “analogous” to poison gas.
The government of France is the official depository for the 1925 Geneva Protocol. Boyle contends that rather than aiming for an international treaty prohibiting the use of DU, which would probably take years, pressure should be put on every state to submit a letter to the French government to enforce a ban.
“All that needs to be done is for anti-DU citizens, activists and NGOs in every country to pressure their foreign minister to write to their French counterpart, drawing attention to the Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare of 17th June 1925, prohibiting uses as above.”
The letter should add that this Protocol is believed to “already prohibit the use in war of depleted uranium ammunition, uranium armor plate and all other uranium weapons.” A request should be made that the letter be circulated to all other High Contracting Parties to the 1925 Protocol and addressed to:
His Excellency, The Foreign Minister, Republic of France, 37, Quai d’Orsay, 75351 Paris, France.
Or Fax: 33-1-43-17-4275.
Professor Boyle points out, “As the Land Mines Treaty demonstrates, it is possible for a coalition of determined activists and NGOs, acting in concert with at least one sympathetic state, to bring into being an international treaty to address humanitarian concerns.”
Such a sympathetic state exists. Belgium outlawed uranium weapons earlier this year. If the rest of the world does not follow, what will happen is what Richard Bramhill calls “a DU-locaust” -- of the children of the countries where these weapons have been used, of soldiers, of the uranium miners, and of the munitions workers, as the living, dead, and deformed prove.
* Author of Wings of Death and of Wolves of Water (2007) essential reading on radiation’s horrors, published by Green Audit (admin@greenaudit.org). Busby is also involved in Radioactive Times, the journal of the Low Level Radiation Campaign, a detailed quarterly update on nuclear industry shenanigans (http://www.llrc.org)
** See http://www.eoslifework.co.uk for a wealth of DU related material
https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/157412/Depleted-uranium-a-way-out
https://uraniumfilmfestival.org/en/director/feurat-alani
https://uraniumfilmfestival.org/
https://feuratalani.blogspot.com/
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/3/20/us_invasion_of_iraq_20th_anniversary
And we discovered later on that uranium was used. When I came back to do an investigation about some terrific and terrible news about babies born with deformities, the pictures were so terrible that I could not really look at them. So I spent two weeks there talking to the inhabitants in Fallujah, to the hospital doctors, going into datas and talking to the families that were trying to hide those kids. We talked to a lot of scientists. We had studies. We had a lot of data linking the U.S. bombing of Fallujah and all the diseases and all the babies born with deformities. And you mentioned a figure that is still the case today: One in five babies are born with deformities in Fallujah. This is one of the most terrible consequences of the U.S. invasion, and still today the city is struggling with the sanitary, if we can call this this way, situation in Fallujah. And this is a catastrophe to me.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/05/15/uranium-weapons-still-making-money-wreaking-havoc/
https://www.banktrack.org/news/belgium_bans_investments_in_depleted_uranium_weapons
A special investigation by Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzalez of the New York Daily News has found four of nine soldiers of the 442nd Military Police Company of the New York Army National Guard returning from Iraq tested positive for depleted uranium contamination. They are the first confirmed cases of inhaled depleted uranium exposure from the current Iraq conflict. After repeatedly being denied testing for depleted uranium from Army doctors, the soldiers contacted The News who paid to have them tested as part of their investigation.[12]
An April 14, 2007 study by researchers at the University of Southern Maine concluded that "exposure to particulate DU may pose a significant genotoxic risk (risk of genetic mutation) and could possibly result in lung cancer."[13]
In a paper to be published in the 2007 issue of the scientific journal Science of the Total Environment, a team led by Professor Randall Parrish of Leicester University found high concentrations of DU particles in soil, stream sediments and household dust in the vicinity of the site of a DU weapons factory in Colonie New York, 23 years after the plant closed, despite massive clean up efforts by the US Army corps of engineers. The team also found that traces of DU contamination still remain in the urine of former workers and neighbors of the plant.[14]
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Depleted_Uranium#Health_Studies
https://tcbmag.com/major-mn-employer-atk-splits-into-2-companies/
This study revealed heavy metal contamination in Fallujah soil, likely arising from military activity and industrial sources. The presence of toxic metals like uranium and lead raises concerns about potential health risks for residents.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12403-024-00645-5
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00204-022-03223-3
the kidneys are known as main toxicity target for systemically available uranium compounds, as well as the lungs after inhalation of poorly soluble uranium compounds (DFG 2015). Thus, during the last 15 years, publications in Archives of Toxicology dealt with mechanistic aspects of both nephrotoxicity (Goldman et al 2006; Zhu et al 2009) and lung toxicity (Periyakaruppan et al 2007, 2009) of uranium. But also other aspects were highlighted, namely effects of depleted uranium on CYP enzymes, with consequences on xenobiotic and vitamin D metabolism (Guéguen et al 2006, 2014; Tissandie et al 2006), and effects on the bone matrix (Tasat et al 2007; Pierrefit-Carle et al. 2017; Gritsaenko et al 2021).
There is an environmental impact of uranium toxicity, due to exposure via drinking water and food (Shaki et al 2019). In a recent review, Bjørklund et al (2020) pointed out that phosphate fertilization is an important source of contamination with uranium in agriculture, mainly due to contamination in the phosphate rock used for fertilizer manufacture. Therefore, long-term use of uranium-bearing fertilizers might substantially increase the concentration of uranium in fertilized soils. Hydro-geochemical aspects related to uranium-containing water sources are a new field related to public health (Bjørklund et al 2020).
Thus, uranium toxicity, as a matter of environmental concern, will continue as a subject of toxicological investigative efforts.
Spirulina, a blue-green algae, demonstrates the ability to bind and remove heavy metals from the body, acting as a chelating agent. Studies show its high adsorption capacity for heavy metals like lead, mercury, and cadmium. This process involves spirulina's unique chemical composition, including phycocyanin, amino acids, and polysaccharides, which help extract these metals. While not a replacement for medical treatment, spirulina's detoxifying properties may complement detoxification efforts.
Protect the land. Poison the sea. An environmental history of the Kirkcudbright Training Area and the firing of depleted uranium by the British Army (1982–2013)
Abstract
Located in the South West of Scotland, the Kirkcudbright Training Area, alongside the extensive Dundrennan weapons ranges, have been used since the Second World War for the training of the British Army. From the Cold War to today, Dundrennan has been the testing ground for the majority of British armoured vehicles, and the controversial firing of depleted uranium shells which took place from 1982 to 2013. This paper examines the response to the firings from protestors, campaigners and environmental campaign groups, and outlines why Scottish nationalists found common ground with them in opposing the actions of the Ministry of Defence (MOD). The response by the MOD, and in particular the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO), to accusations of environmental mismanagement of the site are also discussed here. This counter narrative, which stresses the role of military conservation practices (known as ‘khaki conservation’) disseminated through the DIO publication Sanctuary is also scrutinised, noting the tensions between the requirements of the military and its environmental impact.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10402659.2023.2296085#d1e95
In 1999, Depleted Uranium was the main story for 60 min, one of the top ten most watched shows in the USA at the time (Klein Citation1999, “D. U.”). In 2001, it would reach its zenith in reporting, with over 5000 stories about it (global.factiva.com). However, reporting on the issue largely disparaged the idea that it caused real harm, with Wall Street Journal editorials calling it “hypochondria” (Stephens Citation2001, 1) and “Kremlin propaganda,” (Socor Citation2001, 1). Even the 60 min episode from 1999 warned that the issue might be seen as siding with the Milosevic and Hussein regimes if groups opposing Depleted Uranium’s usage were not careful. This ties in with Elvira Rosert’s argument that salience is a key factor in whether a taboo is formed around a weapon. Rosert defines “salience” as “the amount of attention granted to an issue,” (Rosert Citation2019, 78) and it is clear that, while attention may have been granted to Depleted Uranium weapons at the time, the kind of attention it was getting meant that simply being covered was not enough. For taboo creation, not all publicity is good publicity.
This has similar modern day echoes, as the Putin regime is arguing that Depleted Uranium is dangerous and should not be used, and Ukraine’s allies are arguing it is safe, with the UK saying that independent scientists have “assessed that any impact to personal health and the environment from the use of depleted uranium munitions is likely to be low,” (Gozzi Citation2023, 1). Again, it should be noted that Russia uses Depleted Uranium too.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10402659.2023.2296085#d1e95
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1402-4896/ad00ec/meta
The second was a report done by the United
Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) claiming that
“there were no clinically significant pathologies resulting from exposure to depleted uranium in
munitions.”630 It should be noted that, upon closer inspection, the UNSCEAR report did not use
independent research, but instead used previously published reports, and did not cite which
reports it used.631
VICE News published an episode called “Toxic Iraq” on HBO and YouTube in 2014 that
chronicled the use and possible ill health effects of Depleted Uranium in Fallujah. They
interviewed doctors, parents, veterans, and a US Congressman. They pointed out that Depleted
Uranium was no longer just used in tank rounds but is now used by infantry soldiers, and they
also confirmed Morizumi’s findings that it was people collecting scrap metal from old
battlefields that resulted in continual exposure for local populations. This episode received a lot
of attention when it first came out, and currently has over a million views just on YouTube.6
https://merip.org/2020/09/birth-defects-and-the-toxic-legacy-of-war-in-iraq/
Studies of American veterans hit by friendly fire with depleted uranium shrapnel have also demonstrated links between uranium and perturbations in reproductive hormones, including infertility.[1
A team of scientists based in Iraq took 60 people who had leukemia and 60 people who were healthy and used a CR-39 track detector to discover the amount of Depleted Uranium in their blood. They found that, “The independent sample t Test confirmed statistically significant difference in the uranium concentration between the leukemia patients and healthy group (p < 0.001),” (Al-Hamzawi, Jaafar, and Tawfiq Citation2014, 1270). In 2020, Mozhgan Savabieasfahani et al. released a study showing that the proximity to a US military base had a significant correspondence with higher levels of Depleted Uranium and Thorium (a direct product of Depleted Uranium decay) in the teeth and hair of children. Using Tallil Air Base in Nasiriyah as their case study, they found that living closer to the base created both a statistically significant increase in having a child with a congenital birth defect and a statistically significant increase in the amount of thorium and uranium found in the hair samples of the children. They also noticed a statistically significant correlation between levels of thorium and uranium in the hair samples and the risk of congenital anomalies. Savabieasfahani et al. believed that this exposure was likely caused by Depleted Uranium products being ignited in on-base burn pits, (Savabieasfahani, Basher Ahamadani, and Mahdavi Damghani Citation2020).
Savabieasfahani, Mozhgan, F. Basher Ahamadani, and A. Mahdavi Damghani. 2020. “Living Near an Active U.S. Military Base in Iraq is Associated with Significantly Higher Hair Thorium and Increased Likelihood of Congenital Anomalies in Infants and Children.” Environmental Pollution (Barking, Essex: 1987) 256:113070. doi:10.1016/j.envpol.2019.113070.
Al-Hamzawi, A., M. Jaafar, and N. Tawfiq. 2014. “Uranium Concentration in Blood Samples of Southern Iraqi Leukaemia Patients Using CR-39 Track Detector.” Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry 299 (3): 1267–1272. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-013-2808-0.
Fathi, R., L. Matti, H. Al-Salih, and D. Godbold. 2013. “Environmental Pollution by Depleted Uranium in Iraq with Special Reference to Mosul and Possible Effects on Cancer and Birth Defect Rates.” Medicine, Conflict, and Survival 29 (1): 7–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/13623699.2013.765173.
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