Iraq faces huge environmental cleanup job

GENEVA -- Iraq faces a massive $40 million environmental cleanup campaign to tackle the lethal toxic and radioactive legacy of more than two decades of conflict and neglect, a U.N. agency and Iraqi authorities said Thursday.

Five sites near Baghdad, described by the United Nations Environment Program, UNEP, as "the tip of the iceberg," have been identified for an initial cleanup, but there are thought to be thousands more.

"There are thousands of polluted areas in Iraq, either from industrial or military pollution," Iraq's environment minister, Narmin Othman, said at the launch of a UNEP assessment of environmental hot spots in Iraq.

The UNEP report highlighted the Al-Qadyissa metal plating facility, bombed during the U.S. invasion, where several tons of cyanide pellets are scattered around a site accessible to children.

Other immediate priority areas include pesticides and petrochemical warehouses and a military scrap yard. Many of them have been contaminating farmland and drinking water, or are close to impoverished communities where residents looted sites without knowing the risks.

The Ouireej site was a military ammunition dump. Two people have been killed by explosions and by poisoning during cleanup attempts there over the past two years, according to the report, which included pictures of children playing in the site.

"Wars, conflicts, instability and the poor environmental management of the previous regime have left their scars on the Iraqi people and the Iraqi environment," UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer said.

A UNEP expert, Muralee Thummarukundy, said the five sites were not the worst cases of pollution but were chosen initially because of their proximity to local communities and security conditions.

The report did not cover pollution caused by uranium-hardened shells used during tank battles or aerial bombardments in Iraq in 1991 and 2003.

"We do not only have chemicals, we even have radiation. We have depleted uranium radiation -- our program has identified 311 sites polluted by depleted uranium, especially in the south," Othman told journalists.

Toepfer said a project was being set up with British funding to train Iraqis to deal with depleted uranium, which was used to harden munitions.

He declined to comment on the level of danger the depleted uranium might represent.

Five key causes of severe pollution by chemicals and heavy metals were identified, ranging from the 1980 Iran-Iraq war, the two gulf wars, to years of environmental neglect under Saddam Hussein's regime and looting that spread contamination.

"We are still at the beginning," said Othman. "The challenge now is to identify and assess all such areas of contamination in Iraq and systematically restore them."