The charges of American-caused health defects in Iraq are fairly standard anti-American rhetoric around the world. The new twist is that Deputy Shokreh-Khoda Musavi is saying the problem has now reached Iran.
An even newer twist, however, is that the government this week said publicly that such assertions are nonsense. It is presumed the government is not interested in saving the US military from criticism, but is concerned about public panic.
At issue is depleted uranium (DU), a very hard metal that is a waste product of the uranium enrichment process. The US Army started using DU decades ago for making shells used by US tanks because their hardness helps them penetrate tank armor.
The US Army says DU shells have a modest amount of radioactivity—but so does the air around us. Tank crewmen handle the DU shells every day as they load and unload their tanks of ammunition. The Army says DU has only 60 percent of the radioactivity of natural uranium found in the ground all over the world because the enrichment process keeps almost all the radiation in the enriched uranium used to make bombs or generate electricity.
The charges of DU radioactivity injuring Iraqis were promoted in 1991 after the war to expel Iraqi troops from Kuwait. The government of Saddam Hussein promoted the charges and said that birth defects had soared in southern Iraq. Somehow they did not seem to soar in Kuwait, where the shells were actually fired at Iraqi tanks.
The latest iteration came earlier this month when Deputy Musavi, who represents Ahvaz, said, “Unfortunately, in a number of births children are born paralyzed due to the dust and depleted uranium in the air flying to Iran from Iraq.” He said the equipment in Ahvaz hospitals cannot cope with the problem.
PressTV last week reported that Iranians living in the southwest near the war zone are suffering from eye infections, chronic lung ailments, chest pains and other problems.
It said that “every day” government officials receive more and more reports of toxic air filled with DU in the southwestern provinces of Khuzestan, Ilam and Lorestan.
That was too much for the Environmental Protection Organization (EPO). On Monday, EPO chief Mohammad-Javad Mohammadi-zadeh told the Mehr news agency in an interview, “This is absolutely not true.”
He said both the EPO and the Health Ministry had investigated the allegation. “The investigation has shown there is no scientific proof and essentially no confirmation that fine dust contaminated with depleted uranium has been dispersed.”
He said Majlis deputies may have spoken out of compassion, but since the allegation has no scientific foundation such talk does no good and only leads to public fears.
The World Health Organization has said that no risk of reproductive, developmental or carcinogenic effects have been reported in humans due to DU exposure.