Fallujah - Genocide?

I've just been reading a paper, Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009
by Chris Busby, Malak Hamdan and Entesar Ariabi.

We and the US bombarded Iraq with tonnes of depleted uranium. 

Using depleted uranium is not only radioactive, it is a toxic metal.  We know radioactive materials are really nasty.  They are a threat to your DNA.  And that means they are a threat to your life and to the health of any children you may have.  We control radioactive materials very carefully.  Think about it.  Imagine someone took just a little bit of radioactive material and left it lying in the city centre.  How do you think the authorities would behave?  And if you were the nasty individual who left it there, deliberately, how many years to you think you would serve in jail? 

If it was a lump of radioactive metal, once it was identified the authorities could easily take it away and place it in safe storage.  Imagine, instead it was radioactive powder?  The wind would blow it all over the place.  Rain would wash deeper into the soil and the groundwater. 

That's what happens to DU shells - they pulverise, they burn and they turn into powder.  How simple would that be to clean up?  And if you were the sorry soul who was cleaning it up, what protective equipment would you demand?

It's been a long time since I opened up my school physics books and studied nuclear science.  But here's the first two things that come to mind other than nuclear power:

1. Becquerel left uranium on top of an unexposed photographic plate, later noticed the fogging and hence discovered radioactivity.  That's why he, along with Marie Curie and Pierre Curie, won the Nobel Prize in Physics
2. Little Boy, the bomb was a uranium bomb, the one that was dropped on Hiroshima

Because it has been such a long time, to see what kind of emmitter uranium is.  It's an alpha emmitter, so at least in metal form, uranium won't get to your DNA because the alpha particles can't get through your skin.  But what happens when it gets into your body?  Through your lungs, into a cut (you'll have those in a war zone), or via your digestive system?   Well it has an affinity for phosphate so that means bone; it will get to your bones.  And this metal has an enormous half-life!

It's nasty stuff.  How do we know?  Well, we could dig out all our old books and re-learn them, or we could take a whizz over to wiki.  Wiki lists the studies some saying it isn't so bad and others saying it is.  What seems to be the issue here is:   we can see how nasty it is with rodents and in in vitro studies looking at cell cultures.  But since we haven't got really good data on what happens when we spray it over populations, we can't say it is dangerous?

From a human perspective (take the science hat off) then I'll say this.  Nonsense!  It's a known toxin, never mind it's radioactive properties.  At the very least we've dusted a country with a chemical weapon, a chemical suspected of causing genetic defects.  That means people will suffer the effects for generations.  That means people civillians will have their chances of having healthy children reduced, of living a healthy life reduced.  And as long as that chemical, the chemical we put there stays there, that will continue.

Anyone who wants to quibble, can pack up their families and move to Iraq!  Any takers among our decision makers?  Nope, didn't think so.

We are responsible for cleaning that mess up.  If that is possible, which I doubt we can.  What parts of the country were not subjected to this weapon?  And where has all that dust gone?  Everywhere, presumably.  Dust doesn't settle and become 'glued down', does it? 

We, and the US have taken us to new depths of disgraceful, sickening, cruel behaviour.  And now the dreadful effects are being measured. 

I'd ban those weapons.  We could have done so at the UN Security Council but we didn't.  That says is that we don't have the necessary qualifications I'd expect for any country to be sitting on that council: not the morals, not the the intellect.