Cancer is more common than flu in the Iraqi city of Najaf, about 160 km south of Baghdad, one local doctor told RT. After the start of the war rates of leukemia and birth defects “rose dramatically” due to use of depleted uranium by the US military.

“Every single residential street that we’ve visited in several neighborhoods, we found multiple cases of families whose children were ill, families who had lost children who had to bury children, families who had many relatives who were suffering from cancer,” RT correspondent Lucy Kafanov said.

Dr. Chris Busby has researched the effects of depleted uranium in detail. He says the only source of uranium in Iraq was the use by the American-led forces of uranium weapons.

“We went to Fallujah and we found the levels of cancer. We looked at the parents of children with congenital malformation and we did analysis of their hair to see what was inside their hair that might be genotoxic, that might be the sort of thing that can cause congenital malformation. The only thing that we found was uranium. We found uranium in the mothers of the children with congenital malformations,” he told RT.

From 2009 onwards, credible media reports from the city of Fallujah, which had been the scene of intense urban warfare in 2004, brought reports of high rates of congenital birth defects in the city to the world’s attention. At least two platforms that utilize DU munitions were employed in ‘Phantom Fury’, the most intense operation since the official end of major combat operations in 2003.

At least 440,000kg of DU was used in Iraq, some ending up as DU dust, some as corroding penetrators and leaving a still unknown number of sites with contaminated vehicles, buildings and soils, according to a Dutch report.

“The exposure risks to civilians from the use of DU in populated areas have been compounded by the US’s persistent refusal to release the data that could have helped facilitate the effective assessment and clearance work, providing that the Iraqi government had the capacity and finances to undertake it. Taken as a whole, these issues cast serious doubts over the legitimacy of the use of DU,” the Dutch report says.

READ MORE HERE: http://rt.com/news/iraq-depleted-uranium-health-394/

25mm rounds of depleted uranium ammunition (AFP Photo / Stan Honda)