Seinforma Canada

The atomic war has brought terrible and palpable consequences for the humanity and specifically for people who are economically, politically and military subjugated by the United States. Toxic particles, effects of the war and the industry, have left genetic deformities in several countries in the world, such us Afghanistan, Iraq, Mexico and Ecuador; a war that threatens to spread around the world.

By Narabeth Aingerh/Seinforma Economics Editor

Bogota, Colombia.- As if the general environmental damage that the earth is suffering, due to millions of contaminating particles expelled by the industries everyday weren’t enough, to the ecological tragedy we have to add another tragedy of huge proportions for the humankind: the nuclear war propelled mainly by the United States, disguised under the every day war and the capitalistic mass production.
   The “Holy” War: After 9/11, the terrorist threat seems to be established in the West, but it is actually happening in the East. Thousands of bombs are being thrown and the power is proved to destroy but no to win. It bothered Afghanistan and Iraq, from the rebel Taliban to the war orphans, and it thrown the Armageddon over the sons of Ala.
   Most of the American manufactured weapons contain radioactive uranium, impoverished and non-impoverished. In 2003, Iraq was bombed with more than four million of radioactive uranium pounds, the equivalent of 1.84 tons of that element and in Afghanistan several hundred thousands pounds. According to Professor Katsuma Yagasaki, scientist at the University of Ryukyus, Okinawa, 0.800 tons in Afghanistan the equivalent to 83,000 Nagasaki bombs in radioactivity and 250,000 in Iraq.
   According to the investigator Leuren Moret, in 2003, “scientist from the Uranium Medical Investigation Center took urinalysis tests from Afghan civilians. They found that 100% of the samples contained non-impoverished uranium (NDU) 4 to 20 times over the normal values.” Several Iraq and Afghanistan citizens presented poisoning symptoms for exposure to the uranium radioactivity: pain in the spine, shoulders, skull, and kidneys, joint and muscular weakness, insomnia, memory and disorientation problems.
   The uranium dust causes radioactive poisoning in an organism after being inhaled. This element remains in the environment for 4.5 billion years and it can be spread by the wind and contaminate the ground, water and other living organisms apart from humans, like it happened in different areas invaded by North American troops, also exposed to this danger.
    In fact, several secret reports, with a shy spreading that has been distorted in the United States (the so called “Censored Project” from the University of Sonoma, California and an article from the “New York Daily News” from April 3^rd, 2004), indicate that at least nine soldiers that belonged to the Military Police Regiment # 442 in Iraq would have been contaminated with uranium. It wouldn’t be the first time, after the Gulf War, a lot of soldiers returned home contaminated and they would have caused genetic disorders in more than the 67% of their descendants.
    Behind the serious poisoning suffered by a human being exposed to uranium, terrible aftereffects are suffered, some die, sometimes quickly, sometimes more slowly, trough different types of cancer. In Iraq the incidence of cancer has increase more than 1000%. The most terrible consequences are the mutations and genetic disorders that had increased in the same way, because the uranium fragments the information contained by the DNA.
    According to Moret, within the genetic consequences we can find being born “without eyes (anophthalmos), ears or other organs, legs and/or arms, no fingers, thyroid disorders and other organ malformations (…) In Iraq is much worse. There, babies are even born without brains, organs out of the body, or women are giving birth to pieces of flesh.”
   The war has brought to the real world the possibility of massive mutations. Now, the fear is that not only the Iraqi and Afghan resources are contaminated but like the wind moves around the world, countries like South Arabia, Azerbaijan, China, Georgia, India, Iran, Israel, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Palestine, Pakistan, Russia, Syria, Turkmenistan, Turkey and Uzbekistan; could also be in danger.

Terrible consequences
   The industry doesn’t fall behind. The underlying contamination from the industrial processes or the mismanagement of factors of production that represents serious health risks, like pesticides mainly in the agribusiness of developing countries, has also significantly contributed in terms of genetic degradation.
   According to Dr. Javier Esteinou in the article Environment, Media and the changing of human conscience, the increase in Mexican contamination due to industrial activity has taken more than 20,000 lives for respiratory diseases and in the State of Oaxaca “there have been 31 cases of new born with “Anencephaly”, meaning babies born without brains because the mothers are drinking water contaminated with agrochemicals from the Mazatenango River.”
   Some other areas bordering the United States present this type of genetic disorders, just like those suffered by the Iraqis and also mental disabilities, spinal lesions that go from paralysis of certain limbs to the complete spinal bifurcation and hip problems. Some researches assure that this is a 33% more likely to happen in the frontier than in the rest of the United States, especially next to the Colorado, Grande and Conchos rivers.
   Genetic malformation cases for exposure to industrial contamination have also occurred in Quito, Ecuador, where agro industrial workers reported cases of genetic aberrations, manifested to be exposed to more than 27 pesticides classified as extremely toxic by the World Health Organization, such as aldicarb and phenamifos. This story was corroborated for a research done by the Pontificia Catolica University of Ecuador. The result of this research said that besides this there is a high risk of getting cancer and in pregnant women a 30.77% of them looses their babies.
   This unspoken genetic war added to the ecological disasters coming from the oil industry and without knowing the consequences that introducing transgenic products might have for the future generations, disclosures a black future for the human kind in terms of preservation of the desired genetic features for the living organisms in general and for the human kind. The war has just begun.

1 Dr. Javier Esteinou Ecología, medios de comunicación y cambio de conciencia humana de El Universal de 18 de septiembre de 1995.
2 Cesar Paz-y-Miii,Gabriela Bustamante, Maria Eugenia Sanchez y Paola E. Leonel, Cytogenetic Monitoring in a Population Occupationally Exposed to Pesticides in Ecuador. Laboratorio de Genetica Molecular y Citogenetica Humana, Departamento de Ciencias Biologicas, y Unidad de Genetica, Facultad de Medicina, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, Quito.