DU study suppressed

The Sunday Herald reports that a WHO report on the effects of depleted uranium in Iraq before last year's war was suppressed. Had it been published, it might have had an effect on the way Washington handled the invasion of last March:

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.

Yeah, DU just might have adverse effects on the Iraqi people. After all, the CSM's Scott Petersen found radioactivity levels nearly 1,000 times higher than normal when he visited Iraq just after the last war, in May 2003.