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June 30, 2006
Vet extends help, hope to former enemy
JOSEPH R SCHWARTZ, GREENSBORO NEWS RECORD
What a difference 30 years makes.
In his younger days, Butch Elkins flew planes in the Vietnam War spraying Agent Orange and losing part of his intestine during the conflict.
This week he hosted a handful of Vietnamese men in his home.
The board chairman of Hannah’s Promise , a Greensboro-based nonprofit providing humanitarian aid to Vietnam, Elkins and his guests took a whirlwind Piedmont tour aiming to find used medical equipment.
It is part of an effort to address problems from the war that still plague the country, such as the land mines left behind and health problems associated with Agent Orange.
The week’s effort was specifically aimed at supporting Tai Binh , one of the poorest communities in Vietnam and the hometown of Nguyen Van Kien , one of the guests.
"We really need assistance from our friends," said Kien, director general for the People’s Aid Coordinating Committee .
"At big district hospitals we need all kinds of equipment … X-ray machines, beds, table examiners, ambulances."
They made headway during their visit, which started Saturday and ended Wednesday.
They trekked to Duke University Hospital and met with Dr. Jonathan Weiner , a psychiatrist who treats Vietnam veterans.
Weiner, also a member of Hannah’s Promise, is helping the group get an inside track to Duke’s older equipment.
Elkins wants to fill 100 containers, 20 feet by 8 feet , with medical equipment and is offering to pick up anything that’s donated.
He even bought a new truck for the project.
Kien said steps like this are important leaps for a country that’s been struggling throughout history.
"The people have suffered so much by the wars and natural calamities," he said. "Now we have peace and we’re trying to keep that and rebuild our country."
Both men stressed that achieving their goal will take more than medical supplies.
New schools, markets and industries are needed.
The hope is that with that infrastructure in place, tranquility will follow.
To achieve this, the Vietnamese are looking for foreign aid, particularly from nongovernmental agencies such as Hannah’s Promise.
"We have shed so much blood for independence so we really know the value of freedom," Kien said.
"We’re trying to work with other countries to preserve peace. Without peace you will hardly do anything."
The collaboration takes understanding between cultures, which Kien said people are eager to develop.
Elkins said he hasn’t experienced any negative sentiments directed toward him on his 19 visits to Vietnam since 2002.
Any concern he had was assuaged on his first visit.
"I didn’t know what I’d find," he said. "What I found was a people who can’t afford to live in the past."
He discovered a camaraderie with his former enemies.
"If the soldiers can meet and embrace each other with a hug and a handshake," Elkins said, "there’s no reason why the governments can’t."
Contact Joseph Schwartz at 373-4441 or jschwartz@news-record.com.
Posted by bhola at 01:09 AM | Comments (0)
June 29, 2006
Eating fish or going hungry
SAGINAW BAY TIMES, JUNE 28, 2006
Old Saginaw fish decoy
The state Department of Community Health last week released a discouraging report that anglers continue to ignore fish advisories in the Saginaw Bay watershed.
Why would Saginaw Valley residents risk eating fish from contaminated rivers?
We can think of three reasons:
1. They don't care -- or don't believe the state's science on the harmful health effects of eating fish from the watershed.
For those willingly playing a kind of piscatorial Russian roulette, probably no amount of education will help.
2. They aren't aware of the risks of consuming fish from the bay or the Saginaw, Tittabawassee and Shiawassee rivers.
More signs along the rivers and a better focused education efforts could make a difference.
3. They're poor and they need to eat and feed their families.
So while state and local officials intend to increase efforts to educate residents about the dangers of eating carp, catfish and other fish from the watershed -- pregnant women and children are acutely at risk -- it won't stop a person desperate to feed a family from taking the risk.
A child is hungry today; the health effects of regularly consuming toxic fish may fester for years before they show up, if at all.
Neill D. Varner, medical director of the Saginaw County Department of Public Health, smartly notes that fish purchased at the supermarket is not always safe either -- high mercury levels in tuna, for example. Pregnant women are best advised to avoid fish completely.
The region's economic woes also play a role in the decision to ignore the warnings and consume river fish, carp and catfish in particular. Varner, a well-read man with an ear for a pithy phrase, notes that makes solutions more elusive.
"The difference between theory and practice is smaller in theory than in practice," Varner says.
Any educational effort directed at fish consumption must also include counseling and advice for families who need help buying food. The information campaign must offer advice such as where to sign up for food stamps and the location of the nearest church pantry or food bank. And the more fortunate among us can donate to the United Way, pantries, food banks and soup kitchens.
No child, pregnant mother or struggling father should have to eat contaminated fish for want of safe food. Hunger will override long-term health concerns. Starvation isn't a choice.
Posted by bhola at 09:16 AM | Comments (0)
Mines closed, but mercury flows up food chain
DIANE DIETZ, THE REGISTER GUARD, JUNE 27, 2006
The last of Oregon's commercial mercury mines shut down years ago, yet mining is still the major source of mercury pollution in the state's waterways.
Mercury-laced waters pouring from abandoned mine tunnels and washing out of old mine tailings piles have made it unhealthy to eat a steady diet of some Oregon fish.
Douglas County's Cooper and Plat I reservoirs and Lane County's Dorena and Cottage Grove reservoirs are tainted with mercury caused, in part, by the work of miners.
It's all legacy now.
Mercury mining ceased in the United States 14 years ago, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Driven by health worries, manufacturers have replaced mercury in thermometers, auto battery switches and paint. Recyclers produce much of the mercury that's still needed. Domestic consumption continues to drop.
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The mercury in Cottage Grove Lake originates from cinnabar, a naturally occurring ore in Oregon mountains.
At the old mercury mines, such as Black Butte in Lane County and Bonanza in Douglas County, waste mercury-tainted tailings washed into creeks and lakes. In the murky depths, bacteria convert the mercury into a dangerous form: methylmercury.
Plants and bugs draw in this form of mercury, and fish take it on when they eat the plants and bugs. It doesn't kill the fish. Rather, it concentrates in their muscle tissue.
The accumulation stops at the top of the food chain. In the case of fishing, that's the bodies of human beings who eat the fish.
Mass poisoning that came to light in the mid-1950s in Japan showed what consuming mercury-laden fish can do. A resin company dumped 27 tons of mercury into Minamata Bay over a 30-year period. More than 3,000 people who ate fish from the bay suffered severe neurological damage. Their children were born with crippling birth defects.
Just this April, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi formally apologized to the victims because the government waited decades to stop the pollution.
The fish in Minamata Bay "were 20 to 40 times more contaminated" than Cottage Grove Lake fish, state toxicologist Dave Stone said, but even small amounts can be a risk for children and fetuses.
Methylmercury can be carried in the blood of a pregnant woman to a developing child, can travel through breast milk to a nursing child, can enter the mouth on the fingers of an infant, can enter the bloodstream through the stomach and can pass through the protective blood-brain barrier.
Researchers link exposure to even small amounts of methlymercury to developmental deficits in children, including delayed walking and impaired language, memory and attention span.
Posted by bhola at 12:24 AM | Comments (0)
June 26, 2006
Dow stooge says dioxin risk to residents should be based on science
The evidence of a million malformed Vietnamese children to the contrary, dioxin isn't that bad for you. This is what Dow Chemical would like Tittabawassee residents to believe.
The company view has once more been given an uncritical airing in Dow's home town newspaper. The author is Russ Harding, former director of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality who quit that post after a scandal created by his attempts to engineer a secret "sweetheart deal" with Dow, in which Michigan pollution standards would be readjusted to suit the company. Harding these days describes himself as a senior environmental policy analyst at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, but doesn't tell you that the Mackinac Center is a Dow-supported propaganda factory which received more than $1 million from Dow in 2003 alone.
Dow, speaking through Harding, contends that the clean-up of the dioxin-polluted Tittabawassee basin should be based on "best science", by which it means the bent science it has always employed to whitewash its crimes. Dioxin isn't really all that bad for you, this "best science" will inevitably conclude. It has happened before.
On May 5, 1990, a classified report submitted to Secretary Derwinski of the Department of Veterans Affairs, by Admiral E.R. Zumwalt Jr, concluded that the US corporations that manufactured dioxin-laden Agent Orange not only knew that the herbicide was dangerous but actually falsified their research in an attempt to show that the chemical was less dangerous than they knew it was. He notes in the report:
Dow Chemical, a manufacturer of Agent Orange, was aware as early as 1964 that TCDD was a byproduct of the manufacturing process. According to Dow’s then medical director, Dr. Benjamin Holder, extreme exposure to dioxins could result in “general organ toxicity” as well as “psychopathological” and “other systemic” problems.
The report states that Dow knew of the threat to humans posed by Agent Orange years before the US military build up in Vietnam. It also notes that US government agencies conducted research on Agent Orange in such a skewed manner as to make it appear harmless. The Zumwalt report notes “dioxin is regarded as one of the most toxic chemicals known to man.”
Keep that quote in mind as you read Harding's crap, below.
MIDLAND DAILY NEWS, JUNE 25, 2006
There may be no more important issue affecting the future of property values in the Midland area than how the dioxin question is resolved. The risk posed by dioxin remains contentious. Some environmentalists contend that dioxin is the most dangerous compound known to man, a claim refuted by scientists from The Dow Chemical Co. and elsewhere. However, one area where there should be common agreement is that public health risks associated with exposure to dioxin should be determined by the best science.
The Michigan Legislature is poised to do just that by considering legislation that would require assessments of dioxin risk to be based on the best available science. The House Government Operations Committee passed House Bill 5872, sponsored by Rep. John Moolenaar of Midland, as did the House of Representatives. The one-paragraph bill directs the Department of Environmental Quality to utilize a soon-to-be-released National Academy of Science report entitled, "Review of EPA's Exposure and Human Health Reassessment of TCDD and Related Compounds" to recalculate relevant cleanup criteria. It is hard to imagine that the DEQ or Gov. Jennifer Granholm's administration could be opposed to utilizing sound science on dioxin.
Dioxin is comprised of a family of 210 chemical compounds that are byproducts of industrial combustion and natural activities such as forest fires and volcanic eruptions. A likely source of dioxin in Midland is from Dow emissions that occurred decades before air emission controls were installed on chemical incinerators and before the potential risks were known.
The National Academy of Science is composed of scientific experts, many from universities that are independent from the government agencies to which they make recommendations. At the request of the federal Interagency Working Group on Dioxin, the Academy is considering whether EPA's risk assessments are scientifically robust and present a clear delineation of the substantial uncertainties and variability. The Academy will also address the scientific evidence for classifying dioxin as a human carcinogen and the validity of the statistical model used to quantify human cancer risk.
Midland residents have a right to expect that state regulators and policymakers will utilize the best available science on dioxin cleanup issues; the future of Midland depends on it.
RUSS HARDING
The secret "sweetheart deal" with Dow
In 2001 the administration of Michigan Governor Engler learned that dioxin levels in the Tittabwassee River floodplain, downstream from Midland's Dow Chemical were found at over 7,000 parts per trillion near parks and residential areas (80 times Michigan's cleanup standards). But they didn't bother to tell anyone. Finally the Lone Tree Council and the Michigan Environmental Council filed a Freedom of Information Act request to get the data, alerted by conscientious DEQ insiders. In January 2002 the FOIA revealed that MDEQ Director Russ Harding had blocked further soil testing and was suppressing a state health assessment that called for aggressive state action. Later the Engler administration secretly tried to work out a "sweetheart deal" with Dow to raise the clean-up level of dioxin to 831 parts per trillion, thus circumventing clean-up of the dioxin in most areas. A judge later threw this out.
According to Michelle Hurd Riddick of the Lone Tree Council, Harding could not jump through enough hoops to do Dow Chemical’s bidding.
1. He removed the Tittabawassee River and floodplain from Dow’s Corrective Action License in 2002.
2. Lied to the public about a Consent Order being negotiated with Dow Chemical (October 2002)
3. Blackened out and redacted public documents that made any reference to Dow’s dioxin in the Tittabawassee River (Nov. 2001)
4. Advocated raising the clean up standard for dioxin (March 2002)
5. Denied comment from DEQ toxicologists on the Dow studies in the Consent Order (PRA Nov. 2002)
6. Removed DEQ Toxicologist from public meeting panel because she did not agree with Dow’s study parameters (Nov. 2002)
Russ Harding on the cost of cleanup for Dow Chemical: "That would be a huge expense for them for what they think is not money well-spent." (Chemical Policy Alert Magazine October 2004)
If you feel like emailing Harding you can get him on harding@mackinac.org
Posted by bhola at 07:43 AM | Comments (0)
June 25, 2006
Dedicated group hopes to prove chemicals killed Kurds
ELISABETH ROSENTHAL, NEW YOUR TIMES, JUNE 24, 2006
GHENT, Belgium — For 18 years, Dr. Aubin Heyndrickx has tended the sealed jars containing strands of hair and scraps of clothing he gathered from a dead woman's body.
Collected in Halabja, one of many Kurdish towns in northern Iraq that were attacked with chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein's army in 1988, the jars have been stored in a blue plastic drum in his lab ever since, waiting.
Now, as prosecutors prepare to try Mr. Hussein in Baghdad on charges of genocide against the Kurds, Mr. Heyndrickx, who has retired as director of the toxicology lab at the State University of Ghent, would like the material to be analyzed. "May I insist these proofs are mentioned at the trial?" the doctor asks.
He is one of a small group of doctors, scientists and Middle East experts who have studied chemical weapons use by Iraq against its Kurdish citizens in the 1980's. They are dusting off evidence and attempting to collect new data in an effort to define the scope of a distant tragedy that is only now coming under scrutiny in court.
But proving that the victims died from chemical weapons is a daunting task: all the firsthand proof was gathered nearly 15 years ago, and many records have been lost or destroyed. The attacks occurred in remote areas where little testing was available.
"Unfortunately, we'll never know how many people were killed or exposed," said Dr. Joanne al-Talabani, who for the past three years has visited the area to study the long-term health problems of Kurdish children exposed in the attacks, including scarred lungs and eyes as well as birth defects. "There are no medical records from that time — none. Most people can't remember: they were delirious, running, in shock."
The study of chemical weapons is an arcane, imperfect corner of forensic science, where lab results and doctors' physical exams yield hints of exposure, but rarely direct legal proof. Chemical weapons break down quickly in the environment or in the body, and scientists are unsure what, if any, tracks they should look for nearly 20 years after the fact.
Mr. Hussein is already on trial in Baghdad in another case, involving the execution of 148 Shiite men and youths after an abortive assassination attempt against him in Dujail in 1982. That trial, which began eight months ago, moved into closing arguments on June 19, with the prosecution demanding the death penalty for Mr. Hussein.
Iraqi prosecutors have said they expect the so-called Anfal case — the term, meaning "spoils" in Arabic, was the code name for the Iraqi military's attacks on the Kurdish villages — to begin this summer or in early autumn. The formal indictment focuses on attacks in 1988 that are suspected of killing 50,000 Kurdish villagers, though Kurdish leaders say that perhaps three times as many Kurds died in the attacks.
The Anfal trial, which includes the chemical weapons charges, "will be the most important public reckoning, but in court you can't just say, 'I know it happened,' " said Alastair Hay, a professor of chemical pathology at the University of Leeds in England who has studied soil samples from Kurdistan. "You need solid, irrefutable scientific evidence. But it's very difficult to establish something like nerve-gas exposure at this stage. I can't tell you how frustrating this is, since nothing concrete has ever appeared."
An American-led team of forensic specialists working for the Iraqi court spent weeks examining one mass grave of victims at Hatra, near Mosul, a northern city. But those deaths, including women and children, were the result of gunfire at the grave site, not chemical weapons.
Almost all experts now contend that Mr. Hussein's armies used chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians: mustard gas and probably two nerve agents, tabun and sarin. C.I.A. documents refer to chemical weapons use, and former top Iraqi military officers have confirmed the suspicion, said Joost Hiltermann, a former senior researcher at Human Rights Watch whose exhaustive book on the topic is scheduled to appear in 2007. Mr. Hussein has repeatedly denied the allegation.
Iraq's use of chemical weapons, banned by the 1926 Geneva Convention, against Iranian soldiers during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88 was confirmed in a series of United Nations verification reports. Iran is still monitoring 30,000 people who were exposed.
But it is more complicated to tally the effect of such banned weapons against the Iraqi Kurds. Estimates of the number of victims range from the thousands to the hundreds of thousands.
"Twenty years later it is difficult to prove on the basis of physical evidence, but the total picture in my eyes doesn't leave any doubt that it occurred," said Dr. Jan Willems, a retired professor of environmental medicine at Erasmus Hospital in Brussels. He said he examined several Kurdish patients who had traveled to Europe shortly after gas attacks in 1988, displaying burns associated with mustard gas.
Testimonials are plentiful: Iraqi Kurds have consistently described how, in 1998, Mr. Hussein's warplanes delivered bombs filled with sweet-smelling gases to put down the Kurdish insurgency, with harrowing results.
Shorsh Haji, a researcher who now lives in London, still recalls the night of Feb. 22, 1988, when the bombardment went on for two hours near his home in the Jafati Valley; he assumed it was conventional weapons. When he emerged in the morning, he discovered otherwise. "People on the streets were coughing, vomiting, their eyes were weeping," Mr. Haji said. "Some had blisters on their legs and under their arms."
"A family of five down the road had died instantly," he said.
The United Nations did not investigate charges of chemical use against the Kurds in those early days, when it would have been far easier to prove, because it was regarded as an internal Iraqi conflict, Mr. Hiltermann said.
The world viewed with some skepticism testimonials from Kurdish guerrillas. At the time, Mr. Hussein was an ally of the United States, and the components of his chemical arms were often supplied by European businessmen.
On the medical side, proof of the attacks is scant because Kurds were afraid to go to local Iraqi hospitals, where doctors had been told not to treat them, said Dr. Talabani, who emigrated in 1977 and is now a pediatrician with the British National Health Service.
Those who slipped over the border to Iran for diagnosis and treatment often destroyed their medical records documenting chemical exposure before returning, for fear it would open them to persecution, the doctor said. Also, while Iran quickly sent hundreds of its soldiers to hospitals in Belgium and Austria, which helped prove attacks there, only a very few Kurds got out for evaluation.
In the days after an attack, mustard gas exposure is relatively easy to document. Used extensively in World War I, it causes unusual blistering burns of the skin as well as severe irritation of the eyes and lungs. Breakdown products of the gas can be detected for weeks in the urine, making recent exposure simple to prove in a sophisticated lab.
The use of nerve agents like tabun and sarin, the chemical used in the Tokyo subway attacks in 1995, is far trickier to prove because these gases are short-lived and deadlier. "Mustard leaves lots of physical evidence," Mr. Hiltermann said. "With sarin, people die or get better fast, so it's very difficult to prove."
Despite charges by Kurdish groups of mass killings by chemical weapons in 1988, the only specific physical proof is four soil samples collected in 1992, from two bomb craters near the Kurdish village of Birjinni, by a team from Middle East Watch and Physicians for Human Rights that included Mr. Hay.
After meticulous testing at the Porton Down Naval Laboratory in England, two samples were found to contain degradation products of mustard gas, and two showed breakdown products of sarin. Other attempts to analyze soil samples after the fact have all turned up negative.
"We looked in the bomb crater itself — in one case under a piece of shell — where concentrations were higher," Mr. Hay said.
The long-term health problems of patients from the area offer indirect evidence of chemical weapons use. But survivors tend to have vague conditions, like chronic bronchitis or pain, that have many other possible causes. Mustard gas causes breathing problems, but no studies have been performed to define the link between exposure to nerve gases and long-term health problems, experts said.
Dr. Talabani said that more than 300 patients she has been studying, who were exposed in childhood, seemed to have an "extremely high incidence of illness." She determined exposure according to the history patients relayed: a history of chemical burns indicated exposure to mustard gas, while lack of coordination or seizures after an airstrike indicated a nerve agent.
"Unfortunately little is known because this is the first group studied," Dr. Talabani said. "There are very severe breathing problems, skin problems and eye problems, such as corneal scarring that has already required transplants."
Over the years, a large number of former Iranian soldiers and a smaller number of Kurds who say they were exposed to chemical weapons have been seen at European hospitals with a broad range of medical complaints. There are no blood tests that serve as markers for chemical exposure, though scientists like Mr. Hay say such "tracks" could be discovered with research.
"Diagnosis was based on clinical history and signs and symptoms," Mr. Willems said.
Because of the lack of hard data and the imprecise testing, there is some disagreement about how many people were affected and what chemical compounds were used.
Dr. Heyndrickx says he believes that the Iraqi Army used cyanide and biological toxins as well as mustard gas and sarin, making him somewhat of a maverick in the field, since most other scientists feel that the evidence doesn't support this claim.
Still, he was one of the few Western experts in Halabja just after the attack, and the samples in his lab, particularly the clothing, could still provide valuable clues if they were properly sealed and stored, Mr. Hay said.
"People now tend to say it's obvious that Saddam committed crimes, but for legal and international standards we need to have evidence," said Mr. Haji, the researcher, whose testimony has been accepted by the court. "Only then can people who were exposed be compensated."
Posted by bhola at 10:52 AM | Comments (0)
Survey shows people eating fish they shouldn't
THE BAY CITY TIMES, JUNE 24, 2006
People are eating fish they shouldn't in the Saginaw Bay watershed, the Michigan Department of Community Health says.
The agency on Monday released preliminary findings from a fish consumption survey of people fishing and eating fish from the Saginaw Bay and Saginaw, Tittabawassee and Shiawassee rivers.
From March 2005 through March 2006, 1,088 people who were fishing in the watershed were asked to complete a survey about their fish consumption habits.
The Bay City-based Saginaw Bay Watershed Initiative Network provided funding for the study.
Survey results suggest there is a general awareness of the existence of a state fish consumption advisory on what fish are safe to eat due to environmental contamination. But many people are not using the advisory to the fullest extent, officials say.
The study found that many people are eating fish from the Saginaw and Tittabawassee rivers that the state advises against eating.
Many people also reported eating catfish from the Tittabawassee and Saginaw rivers, which flow into Saginaw Bay. These fish contain dioxins, furans and polychlorinated biphenyls at levels that could cause harmful health effects if eaten too often, the state says.
The Department of Community Health and the First Ward Community Center in Saginaw plan to work this summer to better inform the urban minority fishing community about choosing safe sport-caught catfish and other species to eat from the watershed. The work is funded by a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grant.
The advisory can be found online at www.michigan.gov/
Posted by bhola at 10:38 AM | Comments (0)
50 years on, Minamata stigma lingers
JAPAN TIMES, JUNE 20, 2006
People with Minamata disease still face discrimination and prejudice half a century after the official recognition of the mercury-poisoning disease, they said at a public forum in Tokyo.
Speaking at the forum Sunday -- in which more than 100 people, including patients and their supporters, took part -- Hideki Sato, 51, head of a patients group, said there still are people who hesitate to reveal the disease, once considered rare and infectious, out of fear of discrimination.
"We want people to be aware that the disease is the origin of Japan's pollution history," said Sato, from Minamata, Kumamoto Prefecture.
The disease was caused by Chisso Corp., which discharged mercury-tainted waste water into Minamata Bay and contaminated fish used as food. The city of Minamata marked the 50th anniversary of the official recognition of the disease May 1.
Yukimi Kuramoto, 51, who grew up in the city, said: "I have been refused by hospitals in Chiba nine times when I showed a document that I am a Minamata disease patient. . . . They said they cannot take responsibility for treating me.
"One doctor even said, 'Isn't that an endemic disease? Go back to Minamata and go to a local hospital,' " she added.
Posted by bhola at 10:22 AM | Comments (0)
Chemical bomb found in the Kurdish town of Halabja
KURDISHASPECT.COM, JUNE 19, 2006
Halabja, June 17– a Kurdish Farmer in Seirawan area found a chemical bomb Saturday near Halabja in northern Iraq as he was reconstructing his house that had been torn down in the eighties by the former Iraqi regime, reported Awene the independent newspaper from southern Kurdistan.
A source, that did not want to be recognized, said the bomb is the size of a propane tank which is 120 cm wide.
According to the people who live in that area, the bomb was leftover from the eighties Anfal campaign. The Anfal Campaign was an anti-Kurdish campaign led by the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein between 1986 and 1989 (during and just after the Iran-Iraq war). The campaign takes its name from Surat Al-Anfal in the Qur'an, which was used as a code name by the former Iraqi Baathist regime for a series of military campaigns against the peshmerga rebels, as well as the mostly Kurdish civilian population of southern Kurdistan.
The Halabja poison gas attack was an incident on March-16 1988 during a major battle in the Iran-Iraq War when chemical weapons were used by the Iraqi government forces to kill a number of people in the Iraqi Kurdish town of Halabja (population 80,000). Estimates of casualties range from several hundred to 7,000 people. Halabja is located about 150 miles northeast of Baghdad and 8-10 miles from the Iranian border
Posted by bhola at 10:20 AM | Comments (0)
Russia to float atomic reactor
ST PETERSBURG TIMES, JUNE 6, 2006
Russia to Float Atomic Reactor
By Judith Ingram
Associated Press
MOSCOW — An Arctic military shipbuilding plant and the Federal Atomic Energy Agency signed a contract Wednesday to build the world’s first floating nuclear reactor.
The 9.1 billion ruble ($330 million) reactor will be built by the Sevmash plant in the Arctic port of Severodvinsk beginning next year, and will be commissioned in October 2010, said Sergei Obozov, head of Rosenergoatom, the state-controlled consortium in charge of nuclear power plants.
He said the reactor — to provide heating and electricity to Sevmash — was the perfect solution for supplying energy to remote Arctic sites, and that authorities were looking at 11 other possible sites for such reactors.
Federal Atomic Energy Agency chief Sergei Kiriyenko denied that the reactor would pose a security or safety risk, saying that the Sevmash plant — the only Russian plant where atomic submarines are manufactured — was sufficiently well-guarded.
“There will be no floating Chernobyl,” Kiriyenko said, Itar-Tass reported.
“It is no secret that the question has arisen repeatedly: ‘Is such a thing at all possible?’” Kiriyenko was quoted as saying by his ministry’s press service.
“But today, the government’s position is such ... that we are obliged to use our experience. ... No one else in the world has such experience as we have accumulated over the years in our atomic fleet of safely operating small-capacity reactors.”
Environmental groups have sharply criticized the proposed floating reactors.
“Floating nuclear power plants are absolutely unsafe, inherently so. There are risks of the unit itself sinking, there are risks in towing the units to where they need to be,” said Charles Digges, editor of the Norway-based Bellona web site.
The Russians “are sitting on so much oil and have so many other avenues to alternative sources of energy for these particular regions where they would use floating nuclear power plants, which are cheaper to build, cheaper to research,” he said.
Russia has in recent years overcome a public backlash against nuclear power that followed the April 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and the government has supported efforts to revive the nuclear power industry.
The country currently has 31 reactors at 10 nuclear power plants, accounting for 17 percent of the country’s electricity generation, and President Vladimir Putin has called for raising the share to 25 percent.
Posted by bhola at 10:11 AM | Comments (0)
David & Layla screens on opening night
KURDISHMEDIA.COM, JUNE 6, 2006
Kurdish 'Layla'- a survivor of Halabja genocide - in David & Layla screens on opening night - Avignon Film Festival, France.
Iranian Hollywood actress SHIVA ROSE playing Kurdish Layla - a survivor of Halabja genocide - in DAVID & LAYLA screens on Opening Night with John Turturro’s film at 23rd Annual Avignon Film Festival, France.
June 22nd @ 22hr.30 (10.30 PM) at CINÉMA VOX, Place de l'Horloge, Avignon.
Shiva Rose as Layla's film among among Kate Winslet's & Susan Sarandon's:
http://www.avignonfilmfest.com/PressePhotos2006.html
A New York independent film inspired by a true story. Star-crossed lovers David & Layla: Romeo & Juliet in New York with a twist - spice, comedy & politics...via Iraq, Kurdistan & Jerusalem!
Avignon Film Festival: http://www.avignonfilmfest.com/
Film Reviews: http://www.newrozfilms.com
Posted by bhola at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)
Minamata mercury victims, 50 years later, step up legal fight
June 9 (Bloomberg) -- Hideki Sato was a toddler when the cats in his native Minamata city started "dancing" in the streets. He was 13 before Japan's government said pollution was to blame and chemical company Chisso Corp. stopped dumping methyl mercury in the bay. By then, 1,573 people were dead or dying.
Supreme Court Ruling
The country's Supreme Court, the highest judicial arbiter, ruled that the government failed to prevent the disease from spreading. Some people who don't meet the official classification standard also should be recognized as victims, it said.
About 1,000 people filed suit in Kumamoto District Court in October, seeking 8.5 million yen ($75,600) each from the national and local governments and Chisso, according to Hirofumi Masuda, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.
Two other suits are being prepared, Masuda said, and more may be filed if the current case is successful. Sato, whose compensation application was rejected, said he may be one of them.
"The bureaucrats in Tokyo seem to think Minamata disease is a thing of the past," said Hironori Yamaguchi, a plaintiff in the October suit. "But for us, it's very real."
Yamaguchi, a 52-year-old construction worker from Goshoura, an island town near Minamata Bay, said his fingers are deformed and increasingly numb because of mercury poisoning. He keeps the television on when he goes to bed at night to drown out a constant ringing in his ears, he said.
Hurling Against Walls
Domestic cats that began jumping and hurling themselves against walls alerted the people of Minamata in 1956. A 5-year- old girl was among the first human victims that year. A Kumamoto University team suggested pollution may be the culprit.
Tokyo-based Chisso had been making acetaldehyde, a chemical used in synthetic resins, since the 1930s. Methyl mercury, a byproduct, was released into the bay with wastewater.
The company stopped producing acetaldehyde in 1968, four months before the government confirmed that mercury was causing the illnesses. Similar poisoning was reported in Niigata city northwestern Japan in 1965
Chisso now makes liquid crystal compounds and fertilizer chemicals in Minamata. It paid 300 billion yen to compensate some victims and to clean up the environment, said Toshiya Horio, a spokesman.
The company also spends about 2.4 billion yen each year on medical care for some sufferers, Horio said. Chisso executives visit Minamata every year to express their remorse.
One-Off Settlement
In 1995, Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama offered a one-off settlement to about 2,000 people who had sued for compensation. About 11,000 victims then qualified for 2.6 million yen each from Chisso. The national and local governments agreed to pay their medical expenses.
In addition, 2,453 people receive free medical care under a program that began in October, said Shigekazu Komoto, a spokesman at the Environment Ministry's Special Environmental Disease Office. In return, they agreed not to sue.
The government doesn't recognize them as Minamata disease victims, Komoto said. "But we give them free medical care anyway to help them put their minds at ease," he said.
The panel that classifies Minamata victims has been dormant since 2004, when members' terms expired, said Miwako Konno, an Environment Ministry spokeswoman. The government won't broaden its definition of the disease, she said.
`Chaos'
"The government doesn't have a coherent policy," said Ekino, the professor. "They refuse to acknowledge scientific data. The whole thing is chaos."
The Kumamoto government declared Minamata Bay clean in 1997, removing a net that had prevented fish from leaving the area since 1974. Fish from the bay now are sold in western Japan, said Yoshito Tanaka, a deputy director at the prefecture.
Many sick people in Minamata are reluctant to complain because Chisso remains a major employer and their relatives work at its factory, said Toshio Oishi, 66, who also joined the October suit.
Oishi, who worked at Chisso for 18 years, said he has lost his sense of pain and taste. "I could get into boiling water and not feel a thing," he said.
To contact the reporter for this story:
Tak Kumakura in Tokyo at tkumakura@bloomberg.net.
Posted by bhola at 01:53 AM | Comments (0)
Dutch businessman convicted in arms case
TOBY STERLING, JUNE 7, 2006
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - A Dutch businessman was convicted of defying a U.N. embargo on the regime of former Liberian President Charles Taylor and sentenced to eight years in prison Wednesday.
A human rights group called the conviction of Guus Kouwenhoven a fresh warning that merchants who deal with pariah states will be held accountable for war profiteering.
Kouwenhoven, 64, traded guns for logging rights and used his lumber company to smuggle weapons used by militias to commit atrocities against civilians in West Africa, The Hague District Court ruled. He was acquitted of war crimes charges.
In December, the same court imprisoned Dutch businessman Frans van Anraat for 15 years for selling chemicals to Saddam Hussein's regime that were later used for deadly gas attacks on Iraqi Kurds in Halabja.
``These proceedings are setting the international legal precedent that exposes the role played by some businessmen in armed conflicts,'' said Alex Yearsley of the nonprofit group Global Witness, which helped bring the Kouwenhoven case to the attention of Dutch authorities.
Presiding Judge Roel van Rossum said Kouwenhoven ``contributed significantly to violations of international peace and to the destabilization and danger in the region around Liberia,'' which led to ``countless victims.''
Kouwenhoven ``acted only with regard to his financial interests ... even though he knew about the embargo.''
The ruling said Kouwenhoven imported AK-47 assault rifles, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades using the Oriental Timber Co., in which he held a 35 percent share.
Kouwenhoven acknowledged cooperating closely with Taylor, who received half of the company's proceeds. Taylor's regime was embargoed by the U.N. in 2001, and Kouwenhoven was on a U.N. travel ban for trading with him.
Taylor, who is awaiting a war crimes trial in Sierra Leone, is accused of funding Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front fighters, infamous for hacking off the lips, ears and limbs of their civilian victims before that country's 10-year civil war ended in 2001.
Kouwenhoven, wearing a black suit and tinted glasses, sat calmly while the verdict was read. After consulting with his lawyer, he raised his fingers in a victory salute to friends in the public gallery before being led off. He has been in jail since his arrest in March 2005.
Defense lawyer Inez Weski said she likely would appeal.
The ruling ``said that he was involved with the company, that he had financial interest in it, and so did Mr. Taylor, and then suddenly made this huge leap to 'and so therefore he's responsible''' for importing weapons, she said.
Prosecutors sought a 20-year sentence, and spokeswoman Digna van Boetzelaer said they also were considering an appeal. They had argued that by providing militias with weapons used to slaughter and maim civilians, Kouwenhoven shared in the guilt for war crimes.
But the court found that Kouwenhoven's links with the crimes were too far removed, and that witness testimony was unreliable.
The Dutch government has said that, as host nation to the several international tribunals, it has a duty to set an example by aggressively prosecuting such crimes.
In Liberia, many welcomed the ruling.
``What he did was grave. He was the conduit for arms into the country and sub-region,'' Information Minister Johnny McClain said. But ``the sentence should have been longer.''
Activist groups also said the ruling did not go far enough.
``We would have liked to have seen a conviction for war crimes, but we know it's extremely complicated to prove,'' Yearsley, of Global Witness, said.
The environmental group Greenpeace said in a statement that: ``Europe's biggest timber traders, who flatly refused to terminate business with Kouwenhoven's logging companies, must share his guilt.''
Associated Press Writer Jonathan Paye-Layleh contributed to this story from Monrovia, Liberia.
Posted by bhola at 01:43 AM | Comments (0)
Is the Chernobyl reactor really empty?
MOSCOW, TATYANA SINITSINA
German newspaper Berliner Zeitung published articles about the Chernobyl disaster on April 3 and 26 (Die unverstandene Katastrophe; Die Katastrophe nach der Katastrophe), which have been reprinted by many Internet publications.
Journalists Frank Nordhausen and Christian Esch cite Konstantin Checherov of the Russian Kurchatov Institute, who has "spoken the truth" at long last, they say. Checherov said "nobody studied the Chernobyl disaster more carefully" than he.
Thousands of specialists from many states have visited the accident site in the 20 years since the disaster. Nuclear physicists joined forces to get to the truth, recreating the picture, studying the situation, and analyzing the containment envelope. About 600 staff members of the Kurchatov Institute have visited the site and continue monitoring the "sleeping" reactor.
What does Checherov say?
According to Berliner Zeitung, he has visited the destroyed Unit 4 "more than 1,500 times", making measurements and doing research there. Surprisingly, he has not registered any excessive radiation at the site.
However, Yevgeny Velikhov, president of the Kurchatov Institute, says: "Radiation was extremely high at the disaster site. I flew over the area, accompanying Hans Blix, then head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Blix's long-time second-in-command Morris Rosen. They had a great number of gauging instruments on them and asked me what range they should set out on them. I said a hundred would be fine. A hundred milliroentgens? they asked. A hundred roentgens, I replied. This made a huge impression on them."
Velikhov is worried: "It is one thing for Checherov as a private individual to say what he likes. But it is quite another matter when he says he works for the Kurchatov Institute - this makes him our spokesman. Some people may think that what he says is our conclusion, though this is not true at all."
Dr. Alexander Borovoi, a nuclear physicist from the Kurchatov Institute, had been head of the Chernobyl group for 20 years. "I know Konstantin Checherov; we are colleagues, though he is not a nuclear physicist" he said. "He graduated from the aviation institute. It is true that he had come to Chernobyl in the first few days after the accident, but the next time he came there 18 months later, in late 1988."
Borovoi said that by that time scientists had completed the picture of fuel layout in Unit 4, described it in numerous documents, and filmed the site. "We were absolutely sure then that about 95% of fuel remained within the containment envelope," he said. "The analysis of soil samples, which was made a thousand times in the industrial zone of the nuclear power plant and outside it, including in many European states, reaffirmed that conclusion. All data checked by different methods showed that less than 5% of fuel had been involved in the accident."
But Checherov claims there is no radioactive fuel left in the reactor. According to him, more than 90% of fuel, which is about 200 tons of uranium and plutonium, were blown out of the reactor and are still flying somewhere over Europe. Checherov presumes that a nuclear explosion took place at the reactor, which vaporized the fuel at a temperature of 40000°C (72032°F).
"Checherov is arguing as an amateur who knows nothing about the laws of nuclear physics," said nuclear physicist Boris Gorbachev from Kiev, who had worked in Chernobyl for 18 years. "Every nuclear physicist knows that slightly enriched uranium with a 235U concentration of up to 2% (which was used in the Chernobyl reactors) cannot explode in principle. To be able to explode, uranium should be enriched to 80%. The speed of the chain reaction in a nuclear explosion is millions of times quicker. If there had been a nuclear explosion, it would have vaporized more than just fuel. I cannot bear to think about the potential consequences of such an explosion."
Edvard Pazukhin, a researcher at the Khlopin Radium Institute in St. Petersburg, wrote his doctorate on the fuel of Unit 4. "The explosion created a mixture that was like volcanic lava, which filled the space under the reactor," Pazukhin said. "We have determined its precise location, and used four independent methods to determine its amount and the physical and chemical composition. We have no doubt that less than 5% of fuel was blown out of the active zone."
If Checherov is right and the reactor is truly empty, why build a new containment envelope, for which the European Union has allocated hundreds of millions of euros? To believe Checherov, Russia is deceiving Europe in order to get more money from Europe. However, common people can be deceived, but facts speak the truth.
"One proof of the presence of radioactive fuel in the reactor is temperatures of up to 40°C (104°F) registered in the destroyed buildings. The reason for this can be only the continuing nuclear fission," said Boris Gorbachev.
"The reactor is a nuclear threat," warns Edvard Pazukhin. "Suffice it to recall the neutron accident (in 1990), when our Finish system registered a dramatic increase in the neutron flow, which means that the reactor is alive. Emergency measures where taken then, with the premises where the accident was registered filled with a special mixture to absorb neutrons."
From 1998 to 2001, the research institutes of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus collected, at the initiative of German and French scientists, all information about the Chernobyl fuel, which they jointly analyzed again.
"The databank included more than 6,000 entries and photo and television documents," said Alexander Borovoi. "The final conclusion was that the containment envelope contained about 150,000 tons of fuel from the destroyed reactor. There should be 30,000 tons more, but we have not found them so far. This does not mean that they do not exist; it may mean that they are located in the epicenter, which we could not reach because of high radiation levels. The price to pay would be prohibitive."
The second containment envelope, which is to be built in Chernobyl with international assistance, should cover 180 tons of fragments of the ruined reactor. The new reliable envelope should keep the radioactive remains calm for about a hundred years, as well as play a strong psychological role, putting an end to the Chernobyl fears.
Posted by bhola at 01:10 AM | Comments (0)
Oak Ridge plant dismantling warheads at faster pace
May 30, 2006
OAK RIDGE (AP) -- Workers at the Y-12 National Security Complex are dismantling nuclear warheads faster than ever before.
They're trying to comply with arms-control agreements and reduce a backlog of old warheads.
Dan Linehan, a manager in the plant's Directed Stockpile Work organization, says historically it's been filler work. That's changed this year.
The increase coincides with the construction of a $350 million storage center for bomb-grade uranium that is about half-finished.
There are also plans for a $1 billion Uranium Processing Facility that's scheduled for completion around 2015.
Linehan says workers will still be dismantling warheads well beyond the time the facility is open.
Posted by bhola at 01:06 AM | Comments (0)