Fallujah cancer rate up by 3800%

One of the scientists, whose study revealed the devastating effect of US weapons in Fallujah, says in some cases cancer rates were 38 times higher than expected among Iraqis.

Dr. Chris Busby a scientist with a three-member team to conduct a study, titled “Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009,” discussed some if the aspects of the research with Press TV on Saturday.

“In the case of leukemia…we found that the rates of leukemia were 38 times higher than what we expected in the population that we sampled,” said Busby, the director of the environmental consultancy agency, Green Audit.

“And we had very high levels, 10-fold and so on levels of childhood caners, breast cancer, lymphomas. All cancer types that were associated with radiation and which were found following the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. But actually these were much higher rates and they occurred much sooner after the event,” told Press TV.

“And the other thing that we found…was this peculiar sex ratio change which is a sure indicator of genetic damage and which was also found after Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” Busby said.

As opposed to a normal population, the plagued Iraqis were shown to have given birth to more females than males, he was quoted last-month by British newspaper The Independent as saying. The proportion, the like of which has been found in Hiroshima, shows genetic damage which affects boys more than girls.

“Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009,” survey sampled 4,800 people among the residents of the central Iraqi city that came under two wholesale American attacks in 2004.

The US troops have already admitted using phosphorous munitions during the operations.

When asked what kind of weaponry can bring about the extent of genetic damage in Fallujah, he said, “Well, as a scientist, all we can say is that it is a very serious mutagen. And we are not experts in weaponry, but I am something of an expert in effects of uranium and I have to say that all of these findings would be consistent with exposure to variously large amounts of uranium.”

“To produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred,” he was cited by the daily as saying, referring to the cancers and birth defects.