[From the diaries by susanhbu: Diane’s contribution, slightly edited for series continuity, to our BooTrib series based on the U.N.’s just-published list of the 10 most under-reported stories. You can sign up to do a story too.]
I was going to try to write some sort of happy diary tonight, but I could not come up with a good idea for one so instead I decided to write this diary on Enviromental Pollution. Not a happy diary.
Having earlier committed to Susanbhu to do a diary on Environmental Pollution, I have been thinking for a number of days about just what point from which to attack the subject.
Searching around the internet and in my mind I came to the conclusion this story is just too huge to cover in any one diary no matter how long it is, it will not take just one diary to cover this but a multitude of diaries. Perhaps hundreds.
Faced with this now daunting task I thought; there is no way I can even do this subject justice so spinning off of Susan’s earlier diary about the 10 most ignored stories, I thought I will start off a series with this diary today and then others, you bootribe members can pick this up and do another and another.
There is pollution everywhere, the ocean, rivers, streams, lakes, air, forests, everywhere and even in our homes and schools. What to pick to write about first. There is no dearth of material.
While researching this subject today, I came across this article related to Depleted Uranium and the worldwide health effects related to its use in the war in Iraq. No, the effects of DU are not limited to Iraq and surrounding countries; it can travel anywhere in the world, anywhere the wind goes and where ever it goes it will pass its minute particles of destruction.
So here is a bit of an excellent ariticle and a link:
thetruthseeker.co.uk
Iraq
“I’m horrified. The people out there – the Iraqis, the media and the troops – risk the most appalling ill health. And the radiation from depleted uranium can travel literally anywhere. It’s going to destroy the lives of thousands of children, all over the world. We all know how far radiation can travel. Radiation from Chernobyl reached Wales and in Britain you sometimes get red dust from the Sahara on your car.”
The speaker is not some alarmist doom-sayer. He is Dr. Chris Busby, the British radiation expert, Fellow of the University of Liverpool in the Faculty of Medicine and UK representative on the European Committee on Radiation Risk, talking about the best-kept secret of this war: the fact that, by illegally using hundreds of tons of depleted uranium (DU) against Iraq, Britain and America have gravely endangered not only the Iraqis but the whole world. For these weapons have released deadly, carcinogenic and mutagenic, radioactive particles in such abundance that-whipped up by sandstorms and carried on trade winds – there is no corner of the globe they cannot penetrate-including Britain. For the wind has no boundaries and time is on their side: the radioactivity persists for over 4,500,000,000 years and can cause cancer, leukemia, brain damage, kidney failure, and extreme birth defects – killing millions of every age for centuries to come. A crime against humanity which may, in the eyes of historians, rank with the worst atrocities of all time.
These weapons have released deadly, carcinogenic and mutagenic, radioactive particles in such abundance that there is no corner of the globe they cannot penetrate – including Britain.
Yet, officially, no crime has been committed. For this story is a dirty story in which the facts have been concealed from those who needed them most. It is also a story we need to know if the people of Iraq are to get the medical care they desperately need, and if our troops, returning from Iraq, are not to suffer as terribly as the veterans of other conflicts in which depleted uranium was used.”
If you would like to do a future diary on this subject please list your subject below or just that you are willing to do one or whatever feelings or views you have on the subject.
So I am asking the question, is our world cup half full, or half empty. You tell me.