Posted by Alli (160.129.202.48) on December 04, 2001 at 16:58:27:
gee, after the Bangladeshi incident, i don't know if i trust the British Geological Survey...
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Nature vol. 413, p. 97,
13 September 2001
"WHO plans study of Gulf War fallout"
ALISON ABBOTT
[MUNICH] The World Health Organization (WHO) is to work with Iraqi scientists to assess claims that the incidence of
certain diseases has increased in Iraq as a result of NATO's use of weapons
containing depleted uranium.
A group of WHO experts visited Iraq late last month to discuss how best to
design a study to investigate the claims.
Iraqi scientists say that the use of depleted uranium during the 1991 Gulf War has
led to an increased occurrence of at least six types of cancer, and to changes in
their characteristics. Renal disease and congenital malformations have also
increased, they claim.
Abdelaziz Saleh, from the WHO regional office in Cairo, led the visiting group.
"It is not possible to comment on the Iraqi data yet," he says. "But we are
preparing a good study design that will allow the questions to be answered
definitively."
But definitive answers could be difficult to obtain. An expert on depleted uranium at the Vienna-based International Atomic
Energy Agency says the situation in Iraq is an "epidemiological nightmare".
Not only is it unclear whether Iraq has a reliable basis for collecting health data, the expert says, but there are many
possible agents that could influence health statistics in postwar Iraq, including poor nutrition and other contaminants left by
the war, such as residues from burning oilfields. Moreover, he says, there is no clear account of where the uranium used in
the war was deployed.
Barry Smith, of the British Geological Survey, who helped to prepare a WHO report on depleted uranium published in
April, says that epidemiology is a useful tool that, together with risk assessment, can help to answer these questions. But
such studies require careful investigation of contaminated environments and any potential routes of human exposure. "Both
of these can be particularly difficult in post-conflict situations," he says.