remember, tuesday is soylent green day
Anonymous military officials say Iran and Syria are supplying the insurgency with Soylent Green! And these same officials say it's made of people!
Not only is freedom untidy, it's apparently pretty fucking unhealthy: (via the mighty mighty Cursor)
Iraq's government has identified hundreds of polluted sites that pose huge health hazards, but insecurity and lack of funds are stifling attempts to make them safe, a minister said on Wednesday.
With violence gripping the country, campaigners are struggling to draw attention to environmental damage caused by the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, the 1991 Gulf War and waste discharges by industry struggling during years of sanctions.
"We have identified more than 350 priority polluted areas, which include amounts of hazardous chemicals and depleted uranium," Environment Minister Nermeen Othman said on the sidelines of a major U.N. environment conference in Kenya.
Environmentalists and anti-nuclear activists have linked depleted uranium used in U.S. and British munitions to higher Iraqi cancer rates and birth defects after the 1991 war and called for swift clean up campaigns. But Othman said her staff were also at risk from violence.
"The situation is not easy. Even a team going to record soil samples is taking their lives in their hands just by going to many of these areas," she told reporters.
With the help of U.N. Environment Programme experts, two dangerous sites -- the 50-hectare Al Qadissiya metal plating facility south of Baghdad and the Al Suwaira pesticides warehouse east of the capital - had been cleaned, Othman said.
But she said more funds were urgently needed to tackle four other polluted "hot spots", like the Khan Dhari petrochemicals site west of Baghdad that was partly burned down by looters during the war in March 2003.
Others include one of the world's biggest sulphur mines, Al Mishraq south of Mosul, which was also put out of action by a fire and looters in 2003, and the Ouireej military scrap yard on the southern outskirts of the capital, which remains piled high with unexploded bombs and bits of destroyed Iraqi tanks.
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