pyrophoric – Eideard

The armed forces minister has been forced to apologise over misleading statements he made regarding the legality and dangers of depleted uranium weapons…

Nick Harvey admitted that he had inadvertently misled MPs about a Ministry of Defence review that he said had concluded the weapons were permissible on humanitarian and environmental grounds under the Geneva conventions.

It subsequently emerged that the review had never happened, and Harvey has apologised for the error, which he said had been made “in good faith”. He has ordered that a review into the weapons’ legality be carried out by civil servants. The department is facing calls for the weapons to be suspended until it is completed.

The revelations come as a cross-party campaign is launched to pile pressure on the MoD to phase out the use of depleted uranium (DU). The tank shells that depend on it have to be renewed in 2013.

DU is a chemically toxic and radioactive heavy metal produced as waste by the nuclear power industry that is included in weapons because it is an extremely hard material capable of piercing armour. Once the frontline has moved on, however, it can contaminate the environment, and has been linked to health problems in civilian populations.

Uranium is a pyrophoric metal – which simply means if sufficient heat is generated to provide ignition, it will burn to completion leaving nothing behind but radioactive dust. Blowing in the wind.

In 1998 the UK government ratified additional protocol 1 of the Geneva conventions. Article 36 of that requires that all weapons are subject to a legal review to assess whether they are “capable of being used discriminately”, or cause “widespread and severe damage to the natural environment”…

Labour MP Katy Clark accused the MoD of misleading the public, and demanded a public apology. “Compliance with the Geneva conventions has been used to reassure people on the legality of DU weapons, however no review has taken place to ensure that the munitions used by UK armed forces meet the conventions’ criteria,” she said. “I am pleased that the government has stated that a review will now take place and believe it should use this opportunity to carry out a detailed study into the long term impact of DU use.”

Clark is one of the sponsors of an early day motion in the House of Commons calling on ministers to stop using DU weapons before Charm3 expires in 2013. The motion is backed by other Labour, Liberal and nationalist MPs, as well as the Conservative MPs Peter Bottomley and Zac Goldsmith.

The military predictably will try to justify every weapon that ever existed in the demented mind of any general. They are the stock in trade of Death and Destruction and care for the environment or [perish the thought] combatants or civilians doesn’t really enter the equation. Politically, yes. In reality – hardly.

White phosphorus being used in Falluja

A study examining the causes of a dramatic spike in birth defects in the Iraqi city of Falluja has for the first time concluded that genetic damage could have been caused by weaponry used in US assaults that took place six years ago.

The research, which will be published next week, confirms earlier estimates revealed by the Guardian of a major, unexplained rise in cancers and chronic neural-tube, cardiac and skeletal defects in newborns. The authors found that malformations are close to 11 times higher than normal rates, and rose to unprecedented levels in the first half of this year – a period that had not been surveyed in earlier reports…

“We suspect that the population is chronically exposed to an environmental agent,” said one of the report’s authors, environmental toxicologist Mozhgan Savabieasfahani. “We don’t know what that environmental factor is, but we are doing more tests to find out.”

The report identifies metals as potential contaminating agents afflicting the city – especially among pregnant mothers. “Metals are involved in regulating genome stability,” it says. “As environmental effectors, metals are potentially good candidates to cause birth defects.

The findings are likely to prompt further speculation that the defects were caused by depleted uranium rounds, which were heavily used in two large battles in the city in April and November 2004. The rounds, which contain ionising radiation, are a core component of the armouries of numerous militaries and militias…

The report acknowledges that other battlefield residues may also be responsible for the defects. “Many known war contaminants have the potential to interfere with normal embryonic and foetal development,” the report says. “The devastating effect of dioxins on the reproductive health of the Vietnamese people is well-known….”

The United States has owned up to nothing to help the victims of that environmental poisoning.

The researchers believe that the figures understate what they describe as an epidemic of abnormalities, because a large number of babies in Falluja are born at home with parents reluctant to seek help from authorities…

“An epidemic of birth defects is unfolding in Fallujah, Iraq,” said Savabieasfahani. “This is a serious public health crisis that needs global attention. We need independent and unbiased research into the possible causes of this epidemic.

RTFA. Having worked at thwarting the testing and development of DU weapons in New Mexico, I don’t need to be convinced of the dangers of depleted uranium ammo. It’s a pyrophoric metal that burns to dusty completion after ignition leaving it’s deadly structure blowing in the wind.