Iraq Report
War remnants, pollution
behind rise in cancer deaths?
In the late 1990s 22-year-old
Manal Sabir Abdullah from
Basra was diagnosed with lung
cancer, from which she eventually
died in 2004.
“Her cancer was bizarre as
none of our relatives had
cancer before and she had
never had bad health or
harmful habits,” said her
husband, Hassan Najim
Ghanim. “None of the doctors
could determine how she
developed the disease but most
believed it was probably caused
by contaminated air, soil and
water,” he said.
Remnants from Iraq’s three
recent wars – the Iran-Iraq war
in the 1980s, the Gulf War in
1991 and the US-led invasion
in 2003 – coupled with the
absence of adequate government
controls on emissions
and industrial effluent, have
turned Iraq into one of the
world’s most contaminated
countries, say officials.
“There are a number of environmental
challenges in Iraq,”
Environment Minister Narmin
Othman told IRIN. “One of
them is water, air and soil
contamination caused mainly
by emissions from cars and
generators in crowded areas,
unplanned use of chemical
fertilizers, war remnants and
bombing with depleted
uranium.”
She said her ministry had
identified military vehicles and
tanks contaminated with
radioactive materials dating
back to the wars of 1991 and
2003, but no action had been
taken to get rid of them.
There was a lack of government
supervision of the waste
being discharged into the
country’s two main rivers – the
Tigris and Euphrates. This
included waste from heavy
industry, tanning and paint
factories, as well as raw sewage
and hospital waste, she said.
“The contamination levels
are rising significantly in Iraq,”
she concluded.
Depleted uranium
The US-led coalition forces
used depleted uranium (DU) as
a “penetrator” at the core of
armour piercing tank rounds in
the 1991 and 2003 wars. Amid
growing reports of ill-health
among veterans, an international
campaign has sought a
global ban on DU weapons
[http://www.cadu.org.uk/] on
public health grounds.
The US Department of
Defense has denied that
depleted uranium is an exposure
threat, but does monitor
soldiers with embedded DU
armour fragments as a result of
combat operations. So far, the
amounts of DU detected after
tests “pose no known” health
risk, William Winkenwerder,
assistant secretary of defense for
health affairs, said in a statement.
[http://www.ha.osd.mil/asd/message2.cfm].
But in a landmark ruling in
September 2009,
[http://www.bandepleteduranium
.org/en/a/287.html] a British
jury concluded that exposure
to depleted uranium in the
1991 Gulf War was the likely
cause of the colon cancer that
killed British veteran Stuart
Dyson in June 2008.
DU is a heavy metal and a
by-product of the uranium
enrichment process. It can
enter the human body by
inhalation, eating contaminated
food, eating with
contaminated hands or by
exposing an open wound to
contaminated dust or debris,
according to Rahim Hani
Nasih, a doctor in Mosul.
It can also contaminate soil
and water, and coat buildings
with radioactive dust. Wind and
sandstorms spread the contamination,
leading to diseases,
including cancer, Nasih said.
In a 2005 publication, the
UN Environment Programme
identified 311 sites in Iraq
contaminated with DU and
said cleaning them up would
require several years. No
figures were available from the
Ministry of Health on how
many cancer cases might have
been related to or caused by
contaminated war remnants.
Basra study
Qusai Abdul-Latif Aboud,
head of the Enhancing Health
Directorate (EHD - affiliated
to the Health Ministry) in the
southern governorate of Basra,
said war remnants in Iraq had
become one of the main causes
of cancer - along with smoking,
emissions of harmful gases, and
other kinds of pollution.
An EHD study earlier this
year had noted that 340 cases
of leukaemia had been registered
between 2001 and 2008
in Basra. This compares with
17 cases in 1988 and 93 cases
in 1997, Aboud said.
The study focused only on leukaemia, as cases of the disease
had risen sharply in Basra.
It also found that the amount
of uranium in Basra’s soil had
jumped from 60-70 becquerels
per kilogramme of soil prior to
1991 to 10,000 becquerels per
kg in 2009. As much as 36,205
becquerels per kg have been
recorded in areas with abandoned
remnants of war.
He said EHD relied on the
media and community leaders
to spread awareness about selfprotection and how to avoid contaminated areas. 
Date
of upload: 26th Jan 2010
