World Health Organization 'Suppressed' Study on Depleted Uranium

[G_j]

World Health Organization 'Suppressed' Study on Depleted Uranium

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/022604F.shtml

WHO 'Suppressed' Scientific Study into Depleted
    Uranium Cancer Fears in Iraq?
    By Rob Edwards
    Sunday Herald UK

    Sunday 22 February 2004

Radiation experts warn in unpublished report that DU weapons used by Allies in Gulf war pose long-term health risk

     An expert report warning that the long-term health of Iraq's civilian population would be endangered by British and US depleted uranium (DU) weapons has been kept secret. The study by three leading radiation scientists cautioned that children and adults could contract cancer after breathing in dust containing DU, which is radioactive and chemically toxic. But it was blocked from publication by the World Health Organisation (WHO), which employed the main author, Dr Keith Baverstock, as a senior radiation advisor. He alleges that it was deliberately suppressed, though this is denied by WHO.

     Baverstock also believes that if the study had been published when it was completed in 2001, there would have been more pressure on the US and UK to limit their use of DU weapons in last year's war, and to clean up afterwards.

     Hundreds of thousands of DU shells were fired by coalition tanks and planes during the conflict, and there has been no comprehensive decontamination. Experts from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) have so far not been allowed into Iraq to assess the pollution.

     "Our study suggests that the widespread use of depleted uranium weapons in Iraq could pose a unique health hazard to the civilian population," Baverstock told the Sunday Herald.
...more..

[mmm]

1. DU dust is is radioactive and chemically toxic

We all knew this all along.
Why, Why, Why is the US still using DU?!

[G_j]

2. unfortunately

even here there are people who insist depleted uranium is safe. :shrug:

I expect they'll chime in at some point.