Iraqi civilians were never warned about depleted-uranium hazards

Evidence

How were troops and their families—not to mention Iraqis permanently domiciled in the area—supposed to reconcile such contradictory messages? While U.S. troops in the 2003 war had received warnings about the hazards of getting closer than seventy-five yards to scorched tanks and spent munitions without respiratory and skin protection, Iraqi civilians had received no such warnings. The implications are clear. When Scott Peterson was roaming Baghdad with his Geiger counter he happened to pause by a roadside vegetable stand and chatted with a woman selling parsley, mint, and onions. Five yards away from her vegetable stand stood the scorched hulk of an Iraqi tank; some children were frolicking inside. When Peterson entered the tank, his Geiger counter started singing, registering almost 1,000 times normal background radiation. Peterson asked the vegetable vendor how often the children play inside the tank. She shrugged and replied, “Every day.” — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 657

Categorization

• XREF: Grounds the eco-justice thread on withholding chemical data from exposed communities (ch11) and legal delay eroding pollution victims’ claims (ch10).