ORGANISMO ONU AVVERTE:
CONTAMINAZIONE DA URANIO IMPOVERITO NELL'ARIA
ANCORA DUE ANNI DOPO I BOMBARDAMENTI DELLA NATO

Particolarmente preoccupanti i rischi per le falde acquifere.

UN BODY WARNS ON DEPLETED URANIUM POLLUTION

GENEVA, March 28 (B92) Three years after NATO's bomb attacks on
Yugoslavia, UN experts have revealed that soil, plants and even air
in some regions of the country are still contaminated by depleted
uranium.
The executive director of the UN Ecology Program, Klaus Toepfer,
presenting the two-hundred page report, said that precautionary
measures were recommended.
US forces are known to have used missiles containing depleted uranium
during the 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia, as well as in Bosnia in 1994
and 1995.
"Our team was surprised to find particles of depleted uranium still
in the air, two years after the conflict," said the head of the UNEP
team, Pekka Haavisto.
Of greatest concern, according to the Ecology Program study, are
underground waters, which should be checked every year because the
metal shells containing the depleted uranium corroded over time,
releasing more of the radioactive contaminant.
The UN team, financed by the Swiss Government, collected samples
from 11 locations in Serbia and one in Montenegro between October
27 and November 5 last year.
The 161 samples were analyzed in laboratories in Switzerland and
Italy.