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 THE STAT 26Percentage of wireless customers who use their cell phones to take picturesMore Vitals
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MAY 1, 2003
Healing Iraq's Wounded Earth After wars and years of neglect, the country is an environmental nightmare. New technology is helping to repair the damage
U.S. missile strikes were reasonably precise as such things go -- though not enough so to avoid killing several thousand innocent civilians, according to various estimates. And the dozens of companies and agencies from the U.S., Britain, and Ukraine, among other countries, that were poised to extinguish oil fires and combat chemical or nuclear contamination have had little to do but wait and bake under the Iraqi sun. In the 1991 war, more than 700 oil wells burned relentlessly for months in Kuwait. This time, Iraq's nine oil-well fires were extinguished within days. As hopeful as all that sounds, though, Iraq today is still "an environmental disaster," declares Pekka Haaeisto, the chairman of the U.N. Environment Program Iraq task force. In its initial damage assessment, published on Apr. 24, the UNEP detailed widespread water and soil contamination, lingering air pollution, and unexploded ordinance. The effect is compounded by leftover damage from Iraq's war with Iran in the 1980s and the detritus of Gulf War I -- as well as Saddam Hussein's gross mismanagement of everything except his private fortune. "There's an immediate need for environmental assistance," Haaeisto says. RELIEVING THE THIRST. To businesses around the world, that need spells opportunity. The U.S. Office of Management & Budget estimates that $3.6 billion in funding from Washington is available for the Iraq cleanup effort. The environmental evaluations could take two more months to complete, but already in Poland alone, more than 500 companies are lining up to participate in the effort to restore Iraq and its environment. Indeed, many companies and research centers hope to use the country to test their latest cleanup products and gear -- including new land-mine detectors and chemicals that purify water tainted with everything from depleted uranium used in U.S. shells to human remains. Providing clean drinking water to Iraq's 23.3 million citizens is the first priority. U.N. sanctions imposed in 1990 meant that Iraq, which derived 95% of its foreign currency from oil, could sell only that commodity in exchange for food. Thus, it could no longer get enough spare parts to keep all of its water-treatment plants working, according to the UNEP. In 1990, some 800 garbage trucks served Baghdad. By 2000, that number dropped to 80 because of a lack of spare tires, the U.N. says. Sewers were channeled directly into streams in some parts of the country, causing periodic outbreaks of cholera and typhoid fever. BUCKET BRIGADE. In Nasariya, which is located on the Euphrates River in southeastern Iraq, the U.N. estimates that about 20% of the city's 500,000 residents are in peril because they can't get enough safe drinking water. Humanitarian organizations distribute about a gallon of clean water a day to each resident who requests it. That's still short of the 1.5 gallons or so that's considered adequate for good health, notes Frank Broadhurst, senior technical adviser for environmental health at the New York-based International Rescue Committee, which provides aid to refugees. As a result, many people are drinking water from Iraq's contaminated rivers. That's where Procter & Gamble (PG ) comes in. The Cincinnati-based maker of household products has developed a powder, soon to be tested in Iraq, that comes in ketchup-like mini-packets. When dissolved in a 10-gallon bucket of river water, it attaches itself to impurities so they fall to the bottom of the bucket. The clean water can them be poured out, and the sediment thrown away. The 350,000 packets the IRC has bought for 3.5 cents each should enable the agency to provide 3.5 million gallons of clean water, says Broadhurst. P&G hasn't made the product commercially available yet, says Greg Allgood, associate director of its Health Sciences Institute. LISTENING FOR LAND MINES. Unexploded bombs and mines are another concern. U.S. Army officials estimate that about 3% to 5% of the bombs dropped didn't explode, though this number could reach 15% because Iraq's sands soften the impact, according to industry experts. The UNEP estimates that unexploded weapons number 10,000 to 40,000 pieces, including weapons left over from Gulf War I. Ordinary retrieval methods -- such as a person walking around with a metal detector -- are risky and often unreliable. So the military is switching to robots and so-called combination detectors. Privately held CyTerra in Waltham, Mass., recently released the first handheld land-mine detector that combines a metal detector with ground-penetrating radar, which uses radio waves to "listen" for buried nonmetallic objects. The product, which resembles a regular treasure-hunting device, offers nearly 100% detection of metal and plastic anti-tank and anti-personnel mines. That's a big step up from the 60% or so success rate for the old technology, says Dan O'Donnell, CyTerra's vice-president for business development. It also has a much lower false-alarm rate, he adds, though he won't say how much lower. CyTerra manufactured the first batch of 210 devices for the Army in December (some are likely already being used in Iraq) and plans to go into full production in 2004, but it declines to say how large its output will be.
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