As I continued reading Riverbend's book Baghdad Burning, I stumbled across something that caught my attention. Many horrific events were occurring in Baghdad, and that included malnutrition and diseases leading to unhealthy births. People were dying from diseases that could be cured with nothing but medication, but they were forbidden causing people to die. Babies being born were now experiencing major birth defects. She had claimed, "I remember seeing babies born with a single eye, 3 legs, or no face- a result of DU [ depleted uranium] poisoning" (Riverbend, 47). This was more of a result in 1991 when uranium weapons were being used to harm people. Depleted Uranium is highly radioactive, this is why it was causing so many birth defects. This substance contains heavy metals in which the compounds are harmful towards mammals, proven by many lab studies. The most common way that this is misled is in ammunition. Since this substance was released in large quantities, it affected people without even touching them. It was highly toxic in the air, causing it to be a major substance to be inhaled. With millions of people breathing in this toxic waste, it caused women to deliver the toxins to their fetus while impregnated. Seeming that Riverbend claimed to have seen this happen more than once, it must have been a large problem in Baghdad at the time.
A link to my information site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium
Works Cited
"Depleted Uranium". Wikipedia. 4 Nov. 2007. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium
Riverbend. Baghdad Burning. New York: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2005.
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