Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Sorpresa: Uranio in Afghanistan

Prima l'Iraq.   Poi il Kosovo.   Ora, l'Afghanistan.  (Domani l'Iraq?)
http:/
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3050317.stm
Afghans' uranium levels spark alert By Alex Kirby 
BBC News Online environment correspondent 
A small sample of Afghan civilians have shown "astonishing" levels of
uranium in their urine, an independent scientist says.
He said they had the same symptoms as some veterans of the 1991 Gulf
war.
But he found no trace of the depleted uranium (DU) some scientists
believe is implicated in Gulf War syndrome.
Other researchers suggest new types of radioactive weapons may have
been used in Afghanistan.
The scientist is Dr Asaf Durakovic, of the Uranium Medical Research
Center (UMRC) based in Washington DC.
Dr Durakovic, a former US army colonel who is now a professor of
medicine, said in 2000 he had found "significant" DU levels in
two-thirds of the 17 Gulf veterans he had tested.
In May 2002 he sent a team to Afghanistan to interview and examine
civilians there.
The UMRC says: "Independent monitoring of the weapon types and
delivery systems indicate that radioactive, toxic uranium alloys and
hard-target uranium warheads were being used by the coalition forces."
Shock results 
It says Nangarhar province was a strategic target zone during the
Afghan conflict for the deployment of a new generation of
deep-penetrating "cave-busting" and seismic shock warheads.
The UMRC says its team identified several hundred people suffering
from illnesses and conditions similar to those of Gulf veterans,
probably because they had inhaled uranium dust.
To test its hypothesis that some form of uranium weapon had been used,
the UMRC sent urine specimens from 17 Afghans for analysis at an
independent UK laboratory.
It says: "Without exception, every person donating urine specimens
tested positive for uranium internal contamination.
"The results were astounding: the donors presented concentrations of
toxic and radioactive uranium isotopes between 100 and 400 times
greater than in the Gulf veterans tested in 1999.
"If UMRC's Nangarhar findings are corroborated in other communities
across Afghanistan, the country faces a severe public health
disaster... Every subsequent generation is at risk."
It says troops who fought in Afghanistan and the staff of aid agencies
based in Afghanistan are also at risk.
Scientific acceptance 
Dr Durakovic's team used as a control group three Afghans who showed
no signs of contamination. They averaged 9.4 nanograms of uranium per
litre of urine.
The average for his 17 "randomly-selected" patients was 315.5
nanograms, he said. Some were from Jalalabad, and others from Kabul,
Tora Bora, and Mazar-e-Sharif. A 12-year-old boy living near Kabul had
2,031 nanograms.
The maximum permissible level for members of the public in the US is
12 nanograms per litre, Dr Durakovic said.
A second UMRC visit to Afghanistan in September 2002 found "a
potentially much broader area and larger population of contamination".
It collected 25 more urine samples, which bore out the findings from
the earlier group.
Dr Durakovic said he was "stunned" by the results he had found, which
are to be published shortly in several scientific journals.
Identical outcome 
He told BBC News Online: "In Afghanistan there were no oil fires, no
pesticides, nobody had been vaccinated - all explanations suggested
for the Gulf veterans' condition.
"But people had exactly the same symptoms. I'm certainly not saying
Afghanistan was a vast experiment with new uranium weapons. But use
your common sense."
The UK Defence Ministry says it used no DU weapons in Afghanistan, nor
any others containing uranium in any form.
A spokesman for the US Department of Defense told BBC News Online the
US had not used DU weapons there.
He could not comment on Dr Durakovic's findings of elevated uranium
levels in Afghan civilians.

 your common sense."
Lampante: hanno usato una bomba atomica :)))))  (e nessuno l'ha notato,
oppure un complotto pluto-giudo-massonico ha messo tutto a tacere)
*LOL*
-Stefano