Pollution Caused By War - Research Proposal Example

Radioactivity, toxic chemicals, unexploded devices, and unsanitary health conditions will continue to scar the war zone for decades into the future. The human cost of this pollution is enormous and little is being done to hold the warring parties responsible for repairing the damage left behind. Landmines litter the playgrounds, toxins invade the food chain, and a plethora of health problems arise to further burden civilian population in the previously occupied lands. Recent decades have seen an explosion in wartime pollution and little has been accomplished to gain international agreement on the treatment and cleanup of affected areas.

Wars have always left behind some form of pollution, usually in the form of unexploded ordinance that littered the landscape. During the US Civil War smoke was a major pollutant, but its effects were temporary as the smoke would clear and nature would reclaim the landscape scarred with craters. However, Vietnam would change that as "It is generally accepted that the extensive use of environmental destruction as a strategic practice in war dates from the use of defoliants during the war in Southeast Asia" (McCally 278).

The forests in Vietnam were cleared with a chemical agent known as Agent Orange, a deadly herbicide that denied the enemy of food and cover. The amounts left behind in the soil and food chain had the greatest effects on the civilian population, which had little protection from the Geneva Convention or similar international agreements. Modern warfare had taken a leap and could no longer control the devastating effects of the pollution left behind. Another devastating pollutant has recently come in the form of depleted uranium (DU), a highly dense metal used for armament and armor plating in military applications.

DU illegally litters the battlefields in Kosovo and Iraq and is spread throughout the environment after a contamination event. "Over the days and years following such an event, the contamination normally becomes dispersed into the wider natural environment by wind and rain. People living or working in affected areas may inhale contaminated dusts or consume contaminated food and drinking water" (Depleted Uranium). The effects of exposure to DU can range from kidney problems to lung cancer, and the World Health Organization warns that, "Small children could receive greater exposure to DU when playing in or near DU impact sites.

Their typical hand-to-mouth activity could lead to high DU ingestion from contaminated soil" (Depleted Uranium). The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has been active in attempting to clean up DU contaminated sites, but Henk van der Keur of the Laka Foundation1 contends that the use of DU is in direct violation of international law (A Day to Prevent Environmental). Cleaning up the damage may come to late for many that have already been exposed, and international groups are calling for an outright ban on DU.

While the effects of Agent Orange and DU may linger unnoticed as an odorless and colorless poison, the effects of oil pollution in the Mideast have been more profound. The widespread fires from the ignited oil wells after the Kuwait War could be seen for miles, and "Iraq's release of about 10 million barrels of Kuwaiti oil into Gulf waters caused great stress to an ecosystem already suffering from decades of abuse" (McCally 278). At the time, there was little international