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[ This message has been sent to you via the CASI-analysis mailing list ] This article struck my attention (which I dont think as been posted on CASI??? a google search didnt find it anyway) I am never sure what to make of these stories as I often feel there is a lot of alarmist misinformation or deliberate muddying of the waters in these areas. But it does fit a pattern that has been seen before. I should apologise in that I have not been following the DU items posted here with some frequency. But things that spring to mind of similar type unexplained pathologies include... The very high levels of uranium found in the urine of Afghani males in the aftermath of the coalition attacks. The high level of autoimmune illness found in rescue workers at the crash site of the Israeli Airline crash into an apartment building in Amsterdam in the 90's Similiar accounts are sometimes heard regarding rescue workers and inhabitants near Ground Zero in Manhattan. Gulf War sickness amongst veterans and of course use of DU in the Balkans. I am not sure if all these cases can or should be related back to one factor. Or to what extent they are just conspiracy rumour mongering. I have seen convincing evidence that at least some of Gulf War syndrome can be related back to deliberate infection of servicemen with genetically engineered mycoplasm (the work of Garth Nicolson, who was, previously, a well respected biologist with a very large list of publications to his name.). Alarmingly his work suggests that some servicemen were infected with a strain of mycoplasm containing an HIV gene sequence and others were infected with a strain without this sequence - a perfect classical controlled experiment. The other fact I would mention regarding the use of DU, is that Uranium metal ignites at a very low temperature - around 500 degrees - and combusts into gaseous uranium oxides. Its use in munitions leaves open the possibility that what could be occuring is the production of a heavy toxic gas that could be poisoning nearby residents and rescue workers. In effect a chemical weapon. However, the science of this is far from my area of expertise (such as it is). But again, for me in this area the line between information and deceit always seems very blurred. I welcome any comments. Tom Young Living by the fence in Abu Ghraib E-mail this Print this Jo Wilding, Electronic Iraq, 25 December 2003 Dr Jinan at the clinic in Abu Ghraib says there are patients coming in with illnesses that she and her colleagues can't diagnose. Patients are referred to the main hospital complex at Baghdad Medical City but they return with still no diagnosis and having had no treatment. In particular, there have been patients presenting with bubbles on the skin. They "become hot, like burning coals, get hard and spread." She said they don't understand it. There's been an enormous increase in allergenic respiratory and skin problems with no apparent trigger. In particular there has been a rise in three conditions -- alopeicia (hair loss), psoriasis and viteligo (skin problems). These are not infections spreading through the community but auto-immune, caused by the body attacking itself, to put it simply. They are related to nerves, so fear and stress could be a factor in the increase, but environmental factors are also believed to be important. In the row of houses closest to the airport fence every single household reported some kind of skin or breathing problem. Probably the most common was white patches on the skin, which started, for most people, between April and July. Or spots on the skin, which turn black and then the skin peels off. Or the blisters or bubbles on the skin that Dr Jinan mentioned, with or without fluid. Women brought us inside, away from the men, took off their hijabs and showed us bald patches on their heads. The water is contaminated and, to combat that, it's filled with chemicals. It means you can drink it without spending the rest of the week in the toilet but it wrecks your skin. One of the women brought us to her small son whose scalp was like a toadstool of red skin and white pustules under the hair, insanely itchy but too painful to touch. Immediately after the bombing of the airport, people said, thousands of trucks started removing the soil from the complex. No one can tell us where it was dumped. Other trucks brought fresh soil from elsewhere to replace it and tarmac trucks came in to cover it over. About a month after the bombing, the trucks started leaving their loads closer to the fence, tipping rubble, metal, broken crockery and general debris in the 1st June sector. Kids play and men forage in the heaps between the houses. One said "There are no jobs. Sometimes useful things are dumped and we come and find them and sell them." Some of the kids told us about sweets, food and mineral water being thrown out. They go and eat the sweets and bring home the water and military ration MREs (Meals Ready to Eat). "No you don't," scolded one of the mothers. "I do," the child said with a gleeful grin. She went red and said "Well, sometimes." The November 2003 study by the Uranium Medical Research Committee (UMRC) said: "Witnesses living next to the airport report 3,000 civilians were incinerated by one morning's attack from aerial bursts of thermobaric and fuel air bombs. Since the cessation of the main phase of battle, several of the Baghdad area battlefields [were] landscaped by the US forces and Iraqi contractors, thus preventing a thorough examination." One family living near the fence told us that all their chickens died on the day of the bombing. "There was no harm to their bodies, they were still complete, but they were dead." The grandmother's eye ruptured during the bombing. A thermobaric weapon -- stop eating before you read this -- is essentially a fireball which sucks out all the oxygen in the area. Among other things it sucks out eyeballs and suffocates victims. "On the day of the bombing the smoke went in his eye and it ran for a week and then stopped and the doctor said he can't operate because the nerves are already destroyed." The five-year-old boy watched us with his other eye and his 22-year-old sister stood in silence as their mother told us she was already deaf and mute from birth. She had her first fit during the bombing at the airport and has had them regularly, every week or ten days, since then. The mother is one of the women who have had several miscarriages in recent years. The Dairy buildings on the other side of the airport are a little further from the fence, the Dairy provided a buffer. Less illness was reported there: the same conditions but less concentrated. In the 1st June sector as well, the frequency of problems seemed to decrease in the second and third rows of houses as you move back from the fence. Health statistics are few and basic. We could get the rate per year of cancers, all types and all ages, for in patients at the hospital (one or none each year from 1991 to 1996, 7 in 1997, 3 in 1998 and then 11, 16, 15, 19 and 20 respectively for each of the last five years). We could get the monthly incidence of skin and breathing problems for in patients at the hospital. We could get nothing about outpatients treated in the clinic, nothing to compare the monthly data for this year with previous years, nothing about the geographical distribution of sufferers, let alone any details of the majority who never go for diagnosis or treatment because they can't afford it, which is why we were chatting about health with the women of the community in the first place. Because of the threats made, we weren't able to test water, soil and air to map the environmental contaminants which might be responsible and to work out a clean up scheme, but I didn't come here to whine about the nigh-impossibility of doing any research so I'll give it a rest there. What we did achieve was a general picture of health conditions and some of the environmental clean up work that might be needed. Truncated - rest of the article here http://electroniciraq.net/news/1290.shtml ____________________________________________________________ Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10 _______________________________________ Sent via the CASI-analysis mailing list To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-analysis All postings are archived on CASI's website at http://www.casi.org.uk