Sunday, July 25, 2010

Toxic Legacy in Fallujah: SICKENING

America, winning friends and fans everywhere by launching all-out assaults against civilians while supporting Israel's similar efforts in Gaza.

This time someone with "scientific" credentials has gone in to survey the ongoing "collateral" damage.

http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/7/7/2828/
Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009
Chris Busby 1,* , Malak Hamdan 2 and Entesar Ariabi. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 2010, 7(7), 2828-2837.

Abstract: There have been anecdotal reports of increases in birth defects and cancer in Fallujah, Iraq blamed on the use of novel weapons (possibly including depleted uranium) in heavy Fighting which occurred in that town between US led forces and local elements in 2004. In Jan/Feb 2010 the authors organised a team of researchers who visited 711 houses in Fallujah,
Iraq and obtained responses to a questionnaire in Arabic on cancer, birth defects and infant mortality. The total population in the resulting sample was 4,843 persons with and overall
response rate was better than 60%.


Relative Risks for cancer were age-standardised and compared to rates in the
Middle East Cancer Registry (MECC, Garbiah Egypt) for 1999 and rates in
Jordan 1996–2001. Between Jan 2005 and the survey end date there were 62 cases of cancer alignancy reported (RR = 4.22; CI: 2.8, 6.6; p < rr =" 12.6;" rr =" 38.5;" rr =" 9.24;CI:" rr =" 9.7;CI:" rr =" 7.4;CI:">


Infant mortality was based on the mean birth rate over the 4 year period 2006–2009 with 1/6th added for cases reported in January and February 2010. There were 34 deaths in the age roup 0–1 in this period giving a rate of 80 deaths per 1,000 births. This may be compared with a rate of 19.8 in Egypt (RR = 4.2 p <>

Whilst the results seem to qualitatively support the existence of serious mutation-related health effects in Fallujah, owing to the structural problems associated with surveys of this kind, care should be exercised in interpreting the findings quantitatively.

FOR A LESS ACADEMIC AND MORE GRAPHIC DISCUSSION SEE THE FOLLOWING LINKS
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/07/24-0
also at Global Research


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