Siria: USA ammettono utilizzo uranio impoverito

Siria: USA ammettono utilizzo uranio impoverito. Come in Iraq contro soft targets?

Anche se la notizia è stata completamente ignorata, gli Stati Uniti hanno ammesso di aver utilizzato armi all'uranio impoverito in Siria, almeno in due occasioni. Gli USA però non specificano né dove né contro quale obiettivo, che potrebbe non essere solo "blindato". E' stato rivelato infatti che in Iraq nel 2003 solo 33,2% degli obiettivi USA erano carri armati.  

25/10/2016

http://www.mainfatti.it/uranio-impoverito/Siria-USA-ammettono-utilizzo-uranio-impoverito-Come-in-Iraq-contro-soft-targets_0167670033.htm

Anche se la notizia è passata completamente sotto silenzio, il 20 ottobre scorso il Comando Centrale degli Stati Uniti (CENTCOM) ha confermato che gli americani hanno sparato in Siria munizioni all'uranio impoverito in almeno due occasioni. Nello specifico il CENTCOM conferma all'IRIN, media che copre in particolare notizie umanitarie, che gli USA hanno utilizzato in Siria armi all'uranio impoverito (DU, depleted uranium) il 18 e il 23 novembre 2015.

D'altronde all'IRIN, che ha riportato tale notizia in esclusiva, un portavoce del Pentagono sottolinea che non esiste una "restrizione politica sull'uso dell'uranio impoverito nelle operazioni contro lo Stato Islamico", sia in Siria che in Iraq. A differenza delle mine antiuomo, delle munizioni a grappolo o delle armi batteriologiche e chimiche, non vi è infatti alcun trattato dedicato a regolamentare la produzione o l'uso di armi all'uranio impoverito. Il diritto internazionale vieta genericamente che nei conflitti armati vengano utilizzate armi che possano causare danni a lungo termine o sofferenze inutili. Incredibilmente e ipocritamente però ancora oggi, a livello ufficiale, sono assenti dati sugli effetti immediati ed a lungo termine dell'uranio impoverito sulla salute umana e sull'ambiente.

Tanto che persino Umberto Veronesi, direttore scientifico dell'Istituto europeo di oncologia ed ex presidente dell'Agenzia per la sicurezza nucleare, ha avuto il coraggio di affermare che "l'uranio impoverito non fa niente" perché "sono radiazioni alfa, con un range di un decimo di millimetro: uno se lo può anche mettere in tasca. Non è pericoloso". Il problema è che la polvere di uranio impoverito non finisce in tasca ma viene inalata dalle persone che si trovano nelle zone di conflitto, sia militari che civili.

Inoltre, Veronesi dimentica che "la perturbazione (del programma genetico di duplicazione cellulare, ndr) con dei raggi ionizzanti Alfa, Beta, Gamma porta a mezzo e lungo termine a terribili conseguenze tumorali per gli individui, per le popolazioni" come denunciarono nel 2008 l'allora presidente dell'AIPRI Maurice Eugène André e l'attuale presidente, professor Paolo Scampa.

André e Scampa spiegavano: "Prodotte dalla combustione ad altissima temperatura di migliaia di tonnellate di proiettili a l'uranio impoverito, miliardi di miliardi di miliardi d'infinitesimali polveri radioattive si sono oramai equamente ridistribuite in ogni metro cubo d'aria che noi tutti respiriamo. - chiarendo - E un fatto scientificamente certificato che si tace a voi, a noi, a tutti. Sono così piccole che possono entrare senza difficoltà nel sangue tramite la respirazione o l'alimentazione per poi insediarsi nel cuore delle nostre cellule colpendone mortalmente il DNA. E un altro fatto scientificamente stabilito."

Nonostante questo, solamente da relativamente poco tempo qualche tribunale ha il coraggio di sentenziare che esiste con "inequivoca certezza" il nesso di causalità tra esposizione all'uranio impoverito e tumori, come ha affermato per esempio nel maggio 2015 la Corte d'Appello di Roma che ha condannato il Ministero della Difesa a risarcire con 1 milione 300mila euro i familiari di un militare italiano ammalatosi e deceduto dopo aver partecipato ad una missione in Kosovo tra il 2002 e il 2003.

Ad aggravare la situazione il fatto che spesso (quasi sempre) chi spara armi all'uranio impoverito non rivela, neanche a distanza di anni, in quali zone del conflitto sono state utilizzate. Dati necessari per compiere studi epidemiologici, che il governo iracheno vorrebbe condurre visto che in un rapporto del 2014 della Nazioni Unite aveva espresso "la sua profonda preoccupazione per gli effetti nocivi" dell'uranio impoverito impiegato nei conflitti ed esortato i Paesi che avevano utilizzato tali armi a fornire tutte le informazioni necessarie alle autorità locali.

L'appello però è rimasto inascoltato anche se solo pochi giorni fa è stato dimostrato che durante la guerra in Iraq del 2003 gli Stati Uniti hanno utilizzato munizioni all'uranio impoverito non solo contro "carri armati, blindati o altri obiettivi corazzati". Come riporta sempre l'IRIN, in base al Freedom of Information Act il National Security Archive della George Washington University ha ottenuto nel 2013 i documenti contenenti particolari sulle almeno 181.000 cartuccere per munizioni all'uranio impoverito utilizzate nel 2003 dalle dalle forze americane in Iraq (durante la prima guerra del Golfo invece gli USA utilizzarono ben 700.000 cartuccere).

Tali documenti non sono mai stati resi pubblici ma all'inizio del 2016 tali report furono rigirati dalla George Washington University ai ricercatori della l'Ong olandese PAX e a quelli della coalizione internazionale per bandire le armi all'uranio (ICBUW). Le analisi effettuate dal PAX e ICBUW dimostrano quindi che appena il 33,2 per cento dei 1.116 obiettivi USA in Iraq erano carri armati o veicoli blindati. La maggior parte delle munizioni all'uranio impoverito infatti sono state utilizzate dagli americani contro i cosiddetti "soft targets" come automobili e camion ma anche edifici e insediamenti di truppe, e in zone popolate.

Nonostante i danni da munizioni all'uranio impoverito siano ben visibili in Iraq, compresa Baghdad, finora le forze americane non si sono sentiti obbligati a bonificare le aree e neppure a riferire agli iracheni le zone colpite. E questo anche se in diverse città irachene, tra cui Falluja, molti bambini nascono con diversi difetti congeniti (le polveri di uranio impoverito sono così piccole che colpiscono mortalmente il DNA, avvertivano André e Scampa).

Da sottolineare infine che a sparare tali armi DU sono gli stessi jet A-10 che sorvolano ancora oggi l'Iraq e la Siria (e nel 2011 la Libia).

Così, quando il CENTCOM assicura che le circa 5.100 cartuccere con munizioni all'uranio impoverito sono state sparate in Siria il 18 e il 23 novembre 2015 "a causa della natura di obiettivi" riesce difficile credere che siano stati colpiti solo blindati, soprattutto perché proprio in quelle date gli Stati Uniti hanno portato avanti una serie di attacchi contro le infrastrutture petrolifere siriane, distruggendo inoltre centinaia di camion di petrolio tra cui ben 283 solo il 22 novembre. Tale Operazione fu ribattezzata Tidal Wave II, poiché la prima fu una missione di bombardamento aereo da parte dell'Air Force dell'USAAF eseguita durante la Seconda Guerra Mondiale per distruggere le raffinerie di petrolio di Ploiesti in Romania, fondamentali per il rifornimento di carburante alle forze armate tedesche.

Senza contare che in Siria anche Israele avrebbe utilizzato "un nuovo tipo di arma, con uranio impoverito".

Monia Manna

Recommendations of the European Committee on Radiation Risk 2010

Recommendations of the European Committee on Radiation Risk 2010

US Denies Pay to Nuclear Weapons Workers With Cancer

01:03 20.04.2016 (updated 01:06 20.04.2016) 

http://sputniknews.com/us/20160420/1038290681/america-doe-nasa-victims-nuclear.html

The discarded victims were once viewed as the heroes of America’s space race.

"We need the money and we’ll have a good retirement, but when I die, turn the lights off and watch me glow," said the late Dan Kurowski to his wife, Lorraine. "Big Dan," as his co-workers called him, worked from 1964 to 1997 as a radioactive-waste packer at Santa Susana Field Laboratory, a nuclear and aeronautical facility used by NASA and the Atomic Energy Commission during the Cold War, McClatchy DC reported.

© REUTERS/ Khalil Ashawi

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Years later, Kurowski died a painful death, from pancreatic cancer attributed to his exposure to radioactive substances. Yet, when he sought compensation from a government program to help workers exposed to radiation and toxic substances at US nuclear sites, he was denied.

Kurowski’s story is not an isolated incident, as hundreds of Santa Susana workers fell ill and died of similar illnesses attributable to their exposure to radioactive substances. All of these individuals were denied compensation by the federal government.

The Department of Energy stated that these workers were unable to prove that they were ever commanded to work in a section of Santa Susana known as Area IV. The Department of Labor, tasked with distributing compensation, claimed that they were only authorized to use funds for Area IV workers.

© AP Photo/ Mary Altaffer

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The claimants, composed of a few surviving workers and family members of the deceased, argue that the Department of Labor failed to recognize how "fluid" the jobs, contracts and work locations at the site were, with staff regularly dispatched to work in the radioactive Area IV.
One of those survivors, Bill Shepler, suffers illness today from his time working on a joint NASA-Department of Energy project. From 1981 to 2005, Shepler worked on projects including experimental reactor steam generation and electrical systems for the space station. Shepler often worked in Area IV, but has been denied compensation because his official clock-in location was in another region of the facility, called Area II.
Shepler says, "I spent a good year or two in Area IV if you add it all up, but there are no records."

© AP Photo/ Marty Lederhandler

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Boeing, a major US defense company and the lead civilian contractor on the joint project, claimed in a statement that it provided records to workers, establishing their locations, including not only their clock-in locations, but also radiation exposure and industrial hygiene records throughout the day.
The workers remember things differently, arguing that Boeing and the US government have rewritten history because they failed to keep records accounting for worker movements.

Santa Susana workers argue that employees should not be forced to prove their presence in Area IV 'after the fact' because Department of Energy contractors used the entire site. They claim the federal government is at fault for failing to maintain appropriate records of exposure.

© YouTube/The Late Show

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Kurowski died of pancreatic cancer in 2003, while his claim was pending. When his widow, Lorraine, attempted to file a survivor claim Boeing emailed her stating that her husband’s personnel record had been destroyed, eliminating any hope for her to prove a claim.
Kurowski’s wife Lorraine, like many Santa Susana victims and family members, is not giving up. "I’ll let my kids fight this and my grandkids and my great grandkids," said Lorraine. "They asked me to sign off, but when my husband used to tell me 'shut off the lights and watch me glow,' I can’t do that."

Radiation, Genomic Instability and Heritable Genetic Damage

March 18, 2016

It’s Not Just Cancer! Radiation, Genomic Instability and Heritable Genetic Damage

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/18/ts-not-just-cancer-radiation-genomic-instability-and-heritable-genetic-damage/

by Chris Busby

Those who fear the effects of radiation always focus on cancer. But the most frightening and serious consequences of radiation are genetic.
Cancer is just one small bleak reflection, a flash of cold light from a facet of the iceberg of genetic damage to life on Earth constructed from human folly, power-lust and stupidity.
Cancer is a genetic disease expressed at the cellular level. But genetic effects are transmitted across the generations.
It was Herman Joseph Muller, an American scientist, who discovered the most serious effects of ionizing radiation – hereditary defects in the descendants of exposed parents – in the 1920s. He exposed fruit flies – drosophila – to X-rays and found malformations and other disorders in the following generations.
He concluded from his investigations that low dose exposure, and therefore even natural background radiation, is mutagenic and there is no harmless dose range for heritable effects or for cancer induction. His work was honoured by the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1946.
In the 1950s Muller warned about the effects on the human genetic pool caused by the production low level radioactive contamination from atmospheric tests. I have his original 1950 report, which is a rare item now.
Muller, as a famous expert in radiation, was designated as a speaker at the Conference, ‘Atoms for Peace’ in Geneva in 1955 where the large scale use of nuclear energy (too cheap to meter) was announced by President Eisenhower. But when the organisers became aware that Muller had warned about the deterioration of the human gene pool by the contamination of the planet from the weapon test fallout, his invitation was cancelled.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
The protective legislation of western governments does, of course, concede that radiation has such genetic effects. The laws regulating exposure are based on the risk model of the International Commission on Radiological Protection, the ICRP.
The rules say that no one is allowed to receive more than 1mSv of dose in a year from man-made activities. The ICRP’s scientific model for heritable effects is based on mice; this is because ICRP states that there is no evidence that radiation causes any heritable effects in humans.
The dose required to double the risk of heritable damage according to the ICRP is more than 1000mSv. This reliance on mice has followed from the studies of the offspring of those who were present in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the Japanese/ US Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC).
These studies were begun in 1952 and assembled groups of people in the bombed cities to compare cancer rates and also birth outcomes in those exposed at different levels according to their distance from the position of the bomb detonation, the hypocentre. The entire citadel of radiation risk is built upon this ABCC rock.
But the rock was constructed with smoke and mirrors and everything about the epidemiology is false. There have been a number of criticisms of the A-Bomb Lifespan Studies of cancer: it was a survivor population, doses were external, residual contamination was ignored, it began seven years after the event, the original zero dose control group was abandoned as being “too healthy”, and many others.
But we are concerned here with the heritable effects, the birth defects, the congenital malformations, the miscarriages and stillbirths. The problem here is that for heritable damage effects to show up, there have to be births. As you increase the exposures to radiation, you quickly obtain sterility and there are no pregnancies. We found this in the nuclear test veterans.
Then at lower doses, damaged sperm results in damaged foetuses and miscarriages. When both mother and father are exposed, there are miscarriages and stillbirths before you see any birth defects. So the dose response relation is not linear. At the higher doses there are no effects. The effects all appear at the lowest doses.
Bad epidemiology is easily manipulated
As far as the ABCC studies are concerned, there is another serious (and I would say dishonest) error in the epidemiology. Those people discarded their control population in favour of using the low dose group as a control.
This is such bad epidemiology that it should leave any honest reviewer breathless. But there were no reviewers. Or at least no-one seemed to care. Perhaps they didn’t dig deeply enough. In passing, the same method is now being used to assess risk in the huge INWORKS nuclear worker studies and no-one has raised this point there either.
Anyway, the ABCC scientists in charge of the genetic studies found the same levels of adverse birth outcomes in their exposed and their control groups, and concluded that there was no effect from the radiation.
Based on this nonsense, ICRP writes in their latest 2007 risk model, ICRP103, Appendix B.2.01, that “Radiation induced heritable disease has not been demonstrated in human populations.”
But it has. If we move away from this USA controlled, nuclear military complex controlled A-Bomb study and look in the real world we find that Muller was right to be worried. The radioactive contamination of the planet has killed tens of millions of babies, caused a huge increase in infertility, and increased the genetic burden of the human race and life on earth.
And now the truth is out!
In January of this year Prof. Inge Schmitz-Feuerhake, of the University of Bremen, Dr Sebastian Pflugbeil of the German Society for Radioprotection and I published a Special Topic paper in the prestigious peer-review journal Environmental Health and Toxicology. The title is: ‘Genetic Radiation Risks – a neglected topic in the Low Dose debate‘.
In this paper we collected together all the evidence which has been published outside the single Japanese ABCC study in order to calculate the true genetic effects of radiation exposure. The outcome was sobering, but not unexpected.
Using evidence ranging from Chernobyl to the nuclear Test Veterans to the offspring of radiographers we showed clearly that a dose of 1mSv from internal contamination was able to cause a 50% increase in congenital malformations. This identifies an error in the ICRP model and in the current legislation of a factor of 1,000. And we write this down. The conclusion of the paper states:
“Genetically induced malformations, cancers, and numerous other health effects in the children of populations who were exposed to low doses of ionizing radiation have been unequivocally demonstrated in scientific investigations.
“Using data from Chernobyl effects we find a new Excess Relative Risk (ERR) for Congenital malformations of 0.5 per mSv at 1mSv falling to 0.1 per mSv at 10mSv exposure and thereafter remaining roughly constant. This is for mixed fission products as defined though external exposure to Cs-137.
“Results show that current radiation risk models fail to predict or explain the many observations and should be abandoned. Further research and analysis of previous data is suggested, but prior assumptions of linear dose response, assumptions that internal exposures can be modelled using external risk factors, that chronic and acute exposures give comparable risks and finally dependence on interpretations of the high dose ABCC studies are all seen to be unsafe procedures.”
Radiation causes genomic instability
Our paper is available on the web as a free download, so you can see what we wrote and follow up the 80 or so references we used to construct the case.
Most of the evidence is from effects reported in countries contaminated by the Chernobyl accident, not only in Belarus and Ukraine but in wider Europe where doses were less than 1mSv. Other evidence we referred to was from the offspring of the nuclear test veterans.
In a study I published in 2014 of the offspring of members of the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association (BNTVA) we saw a 9-fold excess of congenital disease in the children but also, and unexpectedly, an eight-fold excess in the grandchildren. This raises a new and frightening spectre not anticipated by Herman Muller.
In the last 15 years it has become clear that radiation causes genomic instability: experiments in the laboratory and animal studies show that radiation exposure throws some kind of genetic switch which causes a non-specific increase in general mutation rates.
Up until these genomic instability discoveries it was thought that genetic processes followed the laws of Gregor Mendel: there were specific dominant and recessive gene mutations that were passed down the generation and became diluted through a binomial process as offspring married away.
But radiation scientists and cancer researchers could not square the background mutation rate with the increased risks of cancer with age: the numbers didn’t fit. The discovery of the genomic instability process was the answer to the puzzle: it introduces enough random mutations to explain the observations.
It is this that supplies the horrifying explanation for the continuing high risk of birth defects in Fallujah and other areas where the exposures occurred ten to twenty years ago. Similar several generation effects have been seen in animals from Chernobyl.
Neonatal mortality in the nuclear bomb era
So where does that leave us? What can we do with this? What can we conclude? How can this change anything? Let’s start by looking at the effects of the biggest single injection of these radioactive contaminants, the atmospheric weapons tests of the period 1952 to 1963.
If these caused increases in birth defects and genetic damage we should see something in the data. We do. The results are chilling. If babies are damaged they die at or shortly before birth. This will show up in the vital statistics data of any country which collects and publishes it.

In Fig 1 (above right) I show a graph of the first day (neonatal) mortality rates in the USA from 1936 to 1985. You can see that as social conditions improved there was a fall in the rates between the beginning and end of the period, and we can obtain this by calculating what the background should have been using a statistical process called regression.
The expected backgound is shown as a thin blue line. Also superimposed is the concentration of Strontium-90 in milk (in red) and its concentration in the bones of dead infants (in blue). The graph shows first day neonatal mortality in the USA; it is taken from a paper by Canadian paediatrician Robin Whyte (woman) in the British Medical Journal in 1992. This paper shows the same effect in neonatal (1 month) mortality and stillbirths in the USA and also the United Kingdom. The doses from the Strontium-90 were less than 0.5mSv.
This is in line with what we found in our paper from Chernobyl and the other examples of human exposures. The issue was first raised by the late Prof Ernest Sternglass, one of the first of the radiation warrior-scientists and a friend of mine. The cover-ups and denials of these effects are part of the biggest public health scandal in human history.
It continues and has come to a venue near you: our study of Hinkley Point showed significant increased infant mortality downwind of the plant at Burnham on Sea as I wrote in The Ecologist.
It’s official – genetic damage in children is an indicator of harmful exposures to the father
As to what we can do with this new peer-reviewed evidence we can (and we shall) put it before the Nuclear Test Veterans case in the Pensions Appeals hearings in the Royal Courts of Justice which is tabled for three weeks from June 14th 2016 before a tribunal headed by high court judge Sir Nicholas Blake.
I represent two of the appellants in this hearing and will bring in the genetic damage in the children and grandchildren as evidence of genetic damage in the father.
We are calling Inge Schmitz-Feuerhake, the author of the genetic paper, as one expert witness; the judge has conceded that genetic damage in the children is an indicator of harmful exposures to the father. He has made a disclosure order to the University of Dundee to release the veteran questionnaires. They have.
Finally, I must share with you a window into the mind-set of the false scientists who work for the military and nuclear operation. As the fallout Strontium-90 built up in milk and in childrens’ bones and was being measured, they renamed the units of contamination, (picoCuries Sr-90 per gram of Calcium) ‘Sunshine Units’.
Can you imagine? I would ship them all to Nuremberg for that alone.

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Dr Chris Busby is the Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Riskand the author of Uranium and Health – The Health Effects of Exposure to Uranium and Uranium Weapons Fallout (Documents of the ECRR 2010 No 2, Brussels, 2010). For details and current CV see chrisbusbyexposed.org. For accounts of his work see greenaudit.org, llrc.org and nuclearjustice.org.

More articles by:Chris Busby

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Uranio impoverito: l'eterna battaglia per la giustizia

Uranio impoverito: l'eterna battaglia per la giustizia, un convegno a Galatina

Categoria: Cronaca

Scritto da com.stampa

Pubblicato il 02 Marzo 2016 

 http://www.inondazioni.it/attualita/cronaca/2710-uranio-impoverito-l-eterna-battaglia-per-la-giustizia,-un-convegno-a-galatina

• galatina

Mentre la minaccia di una guerra ad ampio raggio in Siria e Libia è sempre più reale, migliaia di militari italiani da oltre vent’anni combattono quotidianamente nella loro stessa patria una guerra dimenticata: quella contro l’uranio impoverito, con le cui polveri sono venuti in contatto inconsapevolmente nel corso di missioni in paesi quali Croazia, Bosnia-Erzegovina, Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan e Iraq. Una guerra dimenticata dalle istituzioni, che hanno dapprima negato l’utilizzo di tale materiale bellico da parte dei militari americani e che oggi fanno di tutto perché un velo d’oblio copra l’intera vicenda, e dimenticata anche dalla stessa opinione pubblica, a causa di uno “spostamento” di interesse da parte dei media nazionali e internazionali sulle vicende legate alla guerra al terrorismo nei paesi arabi da un lato e al soccorso e all’assistenza di migranti e profughi nel Mare Mediterraneo dall’altro.
Attualmente sono 3.763 i militari che hanno contratto in servizio una malattia per la quale sono in corso procedimenti legali per il riconoscimento del nesso di causa-effetto da esposizione a uranio impoverito, e 328 sono i decessi accertati (10 solo negli ultimi due mesi), quasi il doppio di tutti i caduti nelle missioni all’estero (Nato e Onu) a cui l’Italia ha finora partecipato.
Insieme agli esperti dell’Osservatorio Militare, associazione senza scopo di lucro che dal 1999 sta monitorando quanto avviene e sta tenendo alta l’attenzione sulla vicenda, il periodico Belpaese ha organizzato un convegno dedicato alle vittime dell’uranio impoverito, in programma venerdì 4 marzo alle 18 presso la sala conferenze del Palazzo della Cultura a Galatina, in piazza Dante Alighieri n. 51. L’incontro, patrocinato dal Comune di Galatina, vedrà la partecipazione del sindaco Cosimo Montagna, dell’assessore comunale alla Cultura Daniela Vantaggiato, di Stefania De Paolis e Gioacchino Di Lillo, rispettivamente referente per la Puglia e delegato dell’Osservatorio Militare, del presidente provinciale della Lilt Giuseppe Serravezza e di parenti di militari salentini deceduti per patologie contratte in seguito a missioni all’estero e causate all’esposizione a polveri di uranio impoverito, come è stato loro riconosciuto al termine di lunghi ed estenuanti procedimenti legali.

L’incontro sarà moderato dal Direttore responsabile del periodico “Belpaese” Andrea Colella.