The children are hungry, clamouring around their mother in the hot, dusty home. Their mother dusts her hands with flour and begins to flatten out the dough, pressing it into discs with her strong fingers before opening the tannour to press them against the hot, clay walls. A few minutes later she pulls the steaming bread from the oven, and the children squeal in delight as she hands out the fresh loaves. It's the pink bread, the bread made with the special flour their father brought home, and the bright colour delights them even more than the flavour. Their mother smiles, brushing the pinkish flour from her hands. She has no way of knowing that she has just fed poison into the mouths of her children. The children have no way of knowing that the bright pink colour that so enchants them is a sign that this bread is deadly. And as the mother nurses her newborn and marvels at what a well-behaved, quiet baby she has, she cannot know that her daughter never cries because she has already suffered crippling brain damage.
The Iraq Poison Grain Disaster was a mass poisoning that occurred in rural Iraq during late 1971 and early 1972. Join me as I take a deep dive into why poisoned wheat and barley was released to the public, why the public didn't understand the danger of what they had received, and how the government made everything worse. Like so many other disasters, the Iraq Poison Grain Disaster could have been prevented, and I'm going to tell you how.
The children are hungry, clamouring around their mother in the hot, dusty home. Their mother dusts her hands with flour and begins to flatten out the dough, pressing it into discs with her strong fingers before opening the tannour to press them against the hot, clay walls. A few minutes later she pulls the steaming bread from the oven, and the children squeal in delight as she hands out the fresh loaves. It's the pink bread, the bread made with the special flour their father brought home, and the bright colour delights them even more than the flavour. Their mother smiles, brushing the pinkish flour from her hands. She has no way of knowing that she has just fed poison into the mouths of her children. The children have no way of knowing that the bright pink colour that so enchants them is a sign that this bread is deadly. And as the mother nurses her newborn and marvels at what a well-behaved, quiet baby she has, she cannot know that her daughter never cries because she has already suffered crippling brain damage.
The Iraq Poison Grain Disaster was a mass poisoning that occurred in rural Iraq during late 1971 and early 1972. Join me as I take a deep dive into why poisoned wheat and barley was released to the public, why the public didn't understand the danger of what they had received, and how the government made everything worse. Like so many other disasters, the Iraq Poison Grain Disaster could have been prevented, and I'm going to tell you how.