Original-text of the interview with
Dr. ROSALIE BERTELL in 2010

Interviewer: I think you did a lot of research about the radiation, even when it is a low radiation where usually it is said: “Don’t worry, no problem at all”. What have you found out about the effects of low radiation in the long run?

Bertell: Well, my background is as a researcher. And I started by studying the effects
of medical diagnostics x-ray, dental x-ray and chest x-ray. We had a huge population that was
followed over three years. So we had about 64 million person years in the study, it is very big.
If you have a big population like that and you have measurable x-ray exposures, you can see
what happens in the population. I am coming from looking at medical x-rays, and then seeing
environmental pollution as bigger. With many other researchers studied the atomic bomb and
they go down to these low levels and I said: Oh it´s not anything! So a lot depends on your
perspective. So when you look at a large population and you start saying and you ask what
happens when they were exposed to radiation, I think generally the question has been wrong.
People ask: How many cancers does it cost. I don’t think that is the answer. Because if you
look at live in general, the most obvious thing is we grow old. And we grow old in a kind of
systematic way and even the cancers are old age diseases. So what I did was to change the
question. And I said: How much medical x-ray would you need to be exposed to so that you
get the equivalent of one year of natural aging. That is a very different research question. In
order to measure natural aging I use the non-lymphatic leukaemia. They go up in a large
population like compound interest, ranging from about age 15 every year there is a 3% to 4 %
increase in the rate of the non-lymphatic leukaemia. It is just when you have money in the
bank that interest is not very big when you are 16 or 20 years old, but by the time you get to
60 that is a large amount of money, it is also a large rate of this cancer. That is why they come
at the end.

So I used that as my measuring stick and asked: how much medical x-ray would be
the equivalent? I actually measured the aging effect of having dental x-rays or chest x-ray.
What was surprising to me: It’s the same amount as you would get background in a year. So it
didn’t make any difference if you got that radiation exposure very fast, because you got a
chest x-ray or whether you had it slowly over a year. You still in terms of vulnerability you
were aged. What that means then practically: If you are in your 20s or 30s and you have an
accident and need extensive x-rays probably you won’t feel much in terms of the difference.
However if you are vulnerable like 60, 70 years old, the annual level of what you experience,
you will experience more vulnerability from the x-rays because it is a percentage and a higher
rate if incidents. So you are more vulnerable as you get older.

And so I started looking at young people who got leukaemia and I mean the cases
under 45 years of age. And I found within certain groups they are something like six times as
likely to get leukaemia in that younger age group. And if you have young people with things
like diabetes arthritis, often we associate them with old age. There it is 12 times as likely to be
in a young group to have leukaemia. So there are some signals to us that a person is
prematurely aged and those people are more vulnerable to radiation exposure. It’s like they
have already moved further on the list. And it’s not exactly medical x-ray, because for
example with people who have heart-disease, some are treated more aggressively with respect
to x-ray. Some people with heart-disease are x-rayed every year. Other have an x-ray may be

five or six years and it was the once who had the x-rays more frequently that came up with the
leukaemia. So I started moving people at the age line according to their own personal record
of medical diagnostic x-ray. And it explains very many biological phenomena. There seems to
be a whole lot of aging processes connected with this.

One of the most remarkable things is very often in radiation studies that men and
women radiation measurements are different. I put them on the exposure age which was your
ordinary age plus your medical exposure. When I did them with exposure age many women
were the same and I found that it had much to do with the cultural difference in the use of xrays.
Many young men had x-rays because of sports. They had all these sport injuries. Women
don’t start to get x-rays until they are pregnant. And then it is mostly dental. And then you get
to the midlife-crisis. So where is a difference in the way we treat men and women and boys
and girls with x-rays.

Interviewer: Could this relate also to this kind of radioactive radiation which we have through atomic testing or Chernobyl?

Bertell: When we get into the nuclear industry whether it is uranium mining or milling
or the reactors or use of weapons or even the radioactive waste, you are into particular
radiation which we can either breathe in or take in in water and food. It can stay in the body
and differentially expose some organs and not other organs. So, you get these small amounts
of radiation operating in the body, and you get what I would call „differential aging“. So
many of the problems we see come from who long this material stays in the body and where it
goes.

Interviewer: So would you say these general reactions of the governments if there is any accident that there is no danger for the citizens, that this is basically wrong?

Bertell: It is basically wrong. It is basically wrong because this particles release energy.
The DNA that carries all your genetic material or the RNA which are the messenger
molecules which run our body, which make our body work. So we have to ask: how much
energy will it take to break them? It only takes 6 to 10 electron-volts of energy to break these
big molecules. If you take something like uranium, which is not considered very radioactive,
just one atom and one event releasing an alpha-particle is over 4 million electron-volts. You
cannot release that in tissue that is living and not do damage. So when you talk probabilities,
you are moving from the fact that you break DNA, you break RNA, you can destroy the
membrane of a cell, you can break things like the mitochondria that can do the energy of the
cell.

You can say, we do not care about all the damage, we only care if this damage leads to a
fatal cancer. So that is the only one will count. You can start making the probability smaller if
you make the end point more particular and say: I don´t care if I get diabetes, I don´t care if
my immune system is down, I don´t care for all these other things.

Interviewer: Iraq DU (Depleted Uranium) Can you say something about DU in weapons as they were used during the Iraq war?

Bertell: Depleted uranium is the waste from the uranium enrichment process, which is a
process needed both for a nuclear reactor and for nuclear weapons. In term for the United
States the greatest amount of waste is depleted uranium. If it is radioactive, it requires a
licence to be able to even handle it. And when they do the tests of these weapons in the

United States they do it in a superbox, which is totally sealed, in the same way they would
experiment with biological warfare, chemical warfare agents. So it is a level for high
protection for even to test it.

It is chemical warfare, because uranium is a heavy metal, a very toxic heavy metal, and
it is also radiological warfare, because these things are radioactive. Something special
happens to it in the field. It is not just like radioactive dust in a mine or a mill. Because if you
put it in a bullet or a missile and it hits the target this friction is enough to set it on fire and it
goes to very high temperature. What happens is it forms an aerosol, which is ceramic or glass.
It is like pottery and putting it in an oven it becomes ceramic. So what you have are very
small particles of glass which are radioactive, which can be breathed, which are light, so they
can move a great distance from the point of impact. It is easily measured 40 kilometers from
impact.

Because of being glass they are highly insoluble in water and that is very important,
because it means they stay in the body longer. To understand that: If you sit in the sun for 15
minutes is not same as if you sit there for 12 hours. So if you take very soluble uranium it can
pass through the body in 12 hours and be gone. Some of the more insoluble may take to years.
But this stuff looks like it is taking 10 years or more. So right now the veterans from the gulf
war – they were exposed in 1991, this is 1999 (in the research) and they are still excreting
between 4 and 5 microgram of this depleted uranium every day in urine. That is totally
unacceptable. It is no wonder they have medical problems. It does damage to the blood, the
bone, the lever, the spleen, the lymph-knots, the kidney. You got this material which is
radioactive inside the body for nine years, ten years. That is why you are dealing with such a
massive and such a mysterious kind of medical syndrome.

According to the Pentagon 400.000 of the American veterans where exposed with
depleted uranium: on the map is the whole southern part of Iraq. So you had 400.000 exposed.
They say 200.000 have sought medical care through the veterans-administrations since they
are home. Of that a 115.000 have been diagnosed with gulf war syndrome, which means these
man are unable to work. Many have died. I have had various estimates that the number of
those that have died reaches upwards 8000 to 10.000. The others can’t work. They have
chronic fetite (fatigue?), vomiting, blinding, headache, inability to sleep, respiratory
problems, various kinds of pain, cramps – just general disability. They also had an abnormal
number of deformed children. And this depleted uranium has been found in seminal fluid. So
it is a very serious problem. If I have to say how much of the gulf syndrome would be due to
depleted uranium, I would guess about 50% of the damage. (.....)

What they like about the uranium is it is free. They get it free because it is radioactive
waste. And it saves the company money because they would have to properly keep it away
from the biosphere. They like it because it is free. (...) 600) It is very much like landmines,
because it will continue to kill long after the war is over. It differentially will kill the women
and the children, because women have high risk tissue, breast and uterine tissue which are
more radiation sensitive. Children are growing so they incorporate more in bones and will
have the long term cancer effects. It is also a violation of the international law because it has
very broad pollution effect that will go across national boundaries. It also makes the
„precision-bombing“ lutecrice (ridiculous?). It is not precision bombing. And I think it also
undermines NATO’s claim of this being a humanitarian war, because what they are doing it
terms of poisoning the land and the people and the water and the food is certainly not
humanitarian. So it is a complete contradiction to everything they claim to be standing for.

I understand from international lawyers that we do not even need a new convention for
it, it is already condemned under international law. The opinion of the human rights tribunal
in Geneva (it is in Strasbourg) is that it is a weapon of „mass and indiscriminate destruction
and therefore it is unlawful“. The United Nations has appointed a reporter for this issue and
they are going to present their brief in August this summer. The World Health Organisation is
trying to set up an Investigative Committee to look at Iraq´s claim, because they now have six
times the rate of childhood cancer and some of the Iraqi Veterans, that were exposed now
have between five and six times the lymphomia and leukaemia rate of veterans that where not
exposed. So the World Health Organisation has asked for funding and volunteers and wants to
do a three year study in Iraq. All of that supportive information is not in, but it is already clear
that it violates the international laws and it certainly violates the public relations material
coming out on this war.

Interviewer: …Severe consequence for future generations?

Bertell: It will have consequences. I have done a lot of work on the Marshall Islands where
they got the fallout from the weapon testing. And the Rongalap people are people that are
dying out, that whole clan.

Interviewer: …Marshall Islands- example

Bertell: It increases infertility and inability to have children. They went for about five
years without even being able to get pregnant. Then they started having spontaneous
abortions, what they call jelly-fish-babies. It is a pregnancy of something like a tumour, a
child is not formed. It is a molar pregnancy. Then they started having deformed birth. But the
birth rate is dramatically down at this whole clan of people and there next generation is
physically less fit. Their birth rate is down, they die younger, in the 30s and 40s. So it is
obvious that this whole line of people is dying, it is not going to survive. What I think we are
doing is that our generation is making a decision on how many future generations there will
be. How much in shorted depends on how careless we are. So we already shortened future
generations because whenever you introduce genetic defect then this line will eventually die
out. But some will go two generations, some will go seven generation.

When you are talking about constant low radiation exposure, what you are doing is
introducing mistakes into the gene-pool. And those mistakes will eventually turn up by killing
that line, that cell line, that species line. The amount of damage determines whether this
happens in two generations or in seven generations or 10 generations. So what we are doing
by introducing more mistakes into the DNA or the Gene pool is we are shortening the number
of generations that will be viable on the planet.

We have shortened the number of generations that will follow us. We have
shortened that already. So we reduced the viability of living systems on this planet,
whether it can recover or not. We don’t have any outside source to get new DNA. So
have the DNA we have, whoever will live on this planet in the future is present right now
in the DNA. So if we damage it we don’t have another place to get it.

There will be no living thing on earth in the future that is not present now in a seed, in
a sperm and the ovum of all living plants and animals. So it is all here now. It is not going to
come from Mars or somewhere. Living things come from living things. So we carry this very
precious seed for the future. And when you damage it you do two things. You produce a less
viable harmonized organism with the environment; at the same time we are leaving the toxic

and radioactive waste around. So you are going to have a more hazardous environment and a
less capable organism. That is a death syndrome for the species, not only for the individual. It
is going to be harder to live. And the body will be less able to take stress and you are
increasing the stress at the same time.

We are responsible for what we turn over to the next generation. It is amazing to me
because I am the daughter of people that came from Europe, migrated to Canada and the
United States for a better life for their children. And it seems that our generation does not care
for the future. It is not our heritage. Our heritage was to give something better to our children,
than we received. And we seem not to care. I find these very strange and I think most of our
grandparents would turn over in their graves, if they would know what we are doing.

Yes we certainly have to chance our heads and there are very good ways to carry this
message. I think we even need a legal protection. We are thinking in terms of a „Seven
Generations Law“, which means that everything that is passed through legislation, you have
to answer the question what is the impact of this to our great grandchildren´s great
grandchildren. You have to be asked an answer this question before you take any major
planning or major changes or major laws. It is the North American indigenous peoples´ rule
that it has to (be) safe for grandchildren´s grandchildren. Otherwise it is not acceptable.

There is no real protection from it but you can reduce the effects by some things.
Certainly stay in the house with windows closed during these bombing episodes and as long
afterwards as possible. But your main concern will be getting it through the food chain. They
are same key-leading agents. They take inorganic material out of living tissues. One very
simple key-leading agent and a mild one is distilled water. You can use distilled water to cook
your vegetables. If there were any uranium in the vegetables it will go out with the liquid.
You can also drink the distilled water instead of either bottled or filtered or regular water.
Distilled water will do the same thing in the body. It will tend to take out the unwanted
inorganic chemicals. Another thing that available generally is „spirulina“, which is a bluegreen
algae you can usually get in a health-food-store. That is also mild key-leading agent and
will help to rid the body of some of these toxins, included the depleted uranium.

Or try to get rid of it through sweat respiration: Saunas. If you get it out through the skin
you save the kidneys. The idea is to get it out of the tissue and out of the blood and then out of
the body instead of going back into storage.

We need to learn to get along with each other, because we live on a small planet. If we
fight over it nobody is going to have it. Another thing is: We are straining the natural ability
of the earth to generate itself. The earth can usually take it back within a year. But when we
measure what we now take out (as) resources (fish, food, iron, coal, oil), all these resources
which we take for our lifestyle. We are now taking out about 1.33 times what the earth can
replenish in a year. So we are running an ecological deficit. In 1992 we were at 1.25, so is
going up. People worry about financial deficit, but that is nothing compared to an ecological
deficit. It means constantly reducing the carrying power of the globe. At the same time we are
increasing in the number of people. If we don’t do something this will be a global dimension
crisis. That´s the reason to say: the most important thing to do is to eliminate the military
globally. The military is one of the most rapid consumer of resources. If you got rid the
military globally you would immediately get rid of the ecological deficit, that we are running
up every year. This is buying us time to set up a better way to live on this planet. Yes, we
need globalisation in the heads. We don’t need Mono-culture, but we need to learn how to
live together on this earth, how to use conflict resolution in place of military, yes we need a
police-force, yes we need laws and courts and that sort of thing. But we don‘t need military.
Military is an abnormality. It is destroying our culture, it is destroying our environment, it is
destroying everything we want. And it is time to get rid of it.

Interviewer: 7 Generations?

Bertell: I would maximize the health of this beautiful living planet as much as I could
and I would say: I give you this with love. Keep it and give it to as many generations as you
can. Life can be good. And live is really a beautiful gift. Not of us has asked for it. None of us
deserves it. It shouldn’t be something that is a disaster for everybody. It should be something
enjoyable and that means that we have to do it differently from the way we are doing it now.
For most people live is a terrible thing. People are committing suicide, because it is so ugly
for them. That is not life. That is not the way it should be. No other species is going around
committing suicide like humans. So there is something very radically wrong with the way we
are behaving.