National Network to End the War Against Iraq

 

Depleted Uranium

 

Table of Contents (the newest documents are listed last)

 

1. Depleted Uranium: Huge Quantities of Dangerous Waste (excerpt), Dr. Michio Kaku, 

From “Metal of Dishonor,” Int’l Action Center, 1997

 

2. Depleted Uranium Weapons: Lessons from the 1991 Gulf War, By Dan Fahey, May 1999

 

3. Depleted Uranium and the Gulf War Syndrome, by Scott Taylor, Esprit de Corps Magazine (Canada), Volume 8 Issue 3, 2000

 

4. Silver Bullet: Depleted Uranium, by Dan Bjarnason, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, January 2001

 

5. These children had cancer. Now they are dead. I believe they were killed by depleted uranium, 

By Robert Fisk, 10 January 2001

 

6. MEDIA ADVISORY: Depleted Coverage of NATO's Depleted Uranium Weapons, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, January 10, 2001

 

7. Thinking About DU, by Michael Albert, Daily Z Commentary, January 16, 2001

 

8. Iraq: The Great Cover-Up, John Pilger, The New Statesman, 1/22/01

 

9. U.S. expert says use of DU munitions a "war crime,” Reuters, 1/30/01, By Kate Kelland

 

10. WHO launches appeal for DU research in Iraq and the Balkans, Agence France-Presse,

2/1/01

 

11. UN-BACKED COVER UP, The chemical effects of DU, by JACQUES BRILLOT, Le Monde diplomatique, February 2001

 

12. UN-BACKED COVER UP, Deafening silence on depleted uranium, Le Monde diplomatique

February 2001, by ROBERT JAMES PARSONS

 

13. Time to Ban Depleted Uranium Weapons Used in Gulf, Kosovo, by Rahul Mahajan, 2/4/01

 

14. DU: Cancer as a Weapon, Radioactive War, by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair,

Counterpunch Magazine, 2/5/01

 

15. Depleted Uranium in Iraq, by Damacio A. Lopez, Executive Director of IDUST, Guild Theater,

March 16, 2001, Albuquerque, New Mexico

 

16. Depleted uranium: a reply by the World Health Organisation, April 2001, Le Monde Diplomatique, Letters Section

 

17. WHO, Iraq Agree To Collaborate On Study, Agence France-Presse, 4/13/01

 

18. WHO Study of Depleted Uranium Urged, by EMMA ROSS, AP Medical Writer, 5/21/01

 

19. WHO studies depleted uranium in Iraq, BBC News, 8/23/01

 

20. Iraq, WHO agree method for depleted uranium probe, Reuters, 8/30/01

21. Propaganda for Depleted Uranium - a Crime against Humankind, Piotr Bein, PhD and Peđa Zorić. MSc, International Conference "Facts on Depleted Uranium," Praha, November 24-25, 2001

 

* Top Secret Memos online at:  http://www.ccmep.org/hotnews/memos.html

 

 

Depleted Uranium: Huge Quantities of Dangerous Waste (excerpt)

Dr. Michio Kaku

From “Metal of Dishonor,” Int’l Action Center, 1997

 

U.S. troops were used as human guinea pigs for the Pentagon. Thousands must have walked through almost invisible clouds of uranium dioxide mist, not realizing that micron-sized particles were entering into their lungs.

 

The use of depleted uranium for military purposes is a deplorable development that, if unchecked, could have serious consequences. The widespread use of DU in the Gulf War can be directly linked to the Gulf War Syndrome. Although most of the publicity has gone to plutonium-239, uranium-235, and uranium-233 (the only substances in the universe which can sustain an uncontrolled chain reaction), the dangers of waste uranium-238 are much more pervasive, simply because there are huge quantities of waste U-238 lying around and because most people do not think it is that dangerous. Now that DU is being used in warfare, steps must be made to prevent its use.

 

It has been known for over three hundred years that U-238 harms people's health. For example, Bohemian miners in what is now the Czech Republic would often come across pitchblende ore in their work. Pitchblende ore contains uranium-238. Because of its unusual weight, it would often be used as doorstops in Europe. It was also used to create beautiful colors in ceramic glazes. However, the Bohemian miners would often come down with a mysterious "mountain disease."

 

We now know that this mountain disease is really lung cancer, caused by the radioactive emissions of radon gas, a standard byproduct of radioactive decay. Even today the emission of radioactive radon gas and the dispersal of uranium particulates poses a health risk. In the American Southwest, there are hundreds of millions of tons of waste uranium "tailings" left over from the mining and milling of uranium ore. Unscrupulous contractors would sell the uranium tailings to Native Americans, who would then use them to build their adobe homes. It was also sold to developers, who would use the waste uranium for landfill for suburban housing tracts.

 

It is one of the great unpublicized scandals in this country that Native Americans would breathe the radon gas and uranium particulates, both as miners in unventilated mines, as well as residents in their own radioactive homes. Illness and death have ravaged those in the Native American community who came in contact with uranium waste. But most of the publicity went to several middle-class housing tracts (like Grand Junction, Colorado), which were actually built on top of waste uranium. Much to the embarrassment of the old Atomic Energy Commission, measurements of the radioactive waste uranium showed high levels of radiation and radon gas, so the basements of many of these homes had to be dug up at the taxpayers expense.

 

Even today, uranium ore poses a problem. During the scandals related to human radiation experimentation, it was revealed two years ago that several million pounds of uranium dust were dispersed over an area near Cincinnati, near suburban homes, in an experiment conducted by the U.S. government to determine the dispersal of radioactive materials in the atmosphere in populated areas. Not long ago, there was a truck accident where uranium "yellow cake" (uranium ore after being processed) spilled onto an interstate in the Midwest. Local, state, and federal officials argued for days as to who was responsible for cleaning up this radioactive mess, even as cars drove through the dust left by the yellow cake ore.

 

Even in many homes in the Northeast, a persistent problem is radioactive radon gas that seeps into people's basements, contaminating the house. Radon gas is quite radioactive but is also an inert gas, so it will seep right through the cracks in people's walls and floors. It will also go right through activated charcoal in a gas mask as if it weren't even there, so gas masks provide no protection whatsoever.

 

Today the military has found a new use for waste uranium—as a weapon of war. Precisely because uranium is quite heavy as a metal, it has ideal armor-piercing capabilities against tanks and artillery. If you hold uranium, you are surprised how dense it is.

 

 

 

DEPLETED URANIUM

A POST-WAR DISASTER FOR ENVIRONMENT AND HEALTH

- Part 2 -

Laka Foundation, May 1999

( http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/dhap992.html )

 

Depleted Uranium Weapons:

Lessons from the 1991 Gulf War

By Dan Fahey

 

The 1991 Persian Gulf War included an array of the twentieth century's most frightening and devastating weapons. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons were all poised for use, each with the ability to cause massive casualties among friend and foe alike. When hostilities subsided in March, 1991, the world breathed a collective sigh of relief that weapons of mass destruction had not been used. Or had they?

 

During the Gulf War, American and British forces introduced armor-piercing ammunition made of depleted uranium, a radioactive and toxic waste. By war's end, more than 290,000 kilograms (640,000 pounds) of depleted uranium contaminated equipment and the soil on the battlefields of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and southern Iraq.[1] Though investigations are ongoing and additional research is needed, it now appears that some veterans and civilians exposed to depleted uranium contamination are suffering health problems including kidney damage and cancers.

 

The use of a radioactive and toxic waste in ammunition heralds a dangerous new era in land warfare, one in which the line between conventional and unconventional warfare is irreversibly blurred. The increasing proliferation and use of depleted uranium weapons ensure their part in armed conflict for the foreseeable future. Accordingly, we must learn from the lessons of the use of depleted uranium weapons in the Gulf War and take steps to minimize and prevent the adverse effects on soldiers, civilians, and food and water supplies.

 

Depleted uranium (DU) is the waste product of the process to enrich uranium ore for use in nuclear weapons and reactors. Depleted uranium is chemically toxic like other heavy metals such as lead, but it is also primarily an alpha particle emitter with a radioactive half-life of 4.5 billion years.[2] The U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute states "DU is a low-level radioactive waste, and, therefore must be disposed in a licensed repository."[3]

 

In the 1950's, the United States Department of Defense became interested in using depleted uranium metal in weapons because it is extremely dense, pyrophoric, cheap, and available in huge quantities in the United States.[4] During the 1960's and 1970's, research and open-air testing at various locations in the United States demonstrated the effectiveness of using depleted uranium in kinetic energy penetrators, which are rods of solid metal shot from guns. Kinetic energy penetrators do not explode; they fragment and burn through armor "due to the pyrophoric nature of uranium metal and the extreme flash temperatures generated on impact."[5] In the 1980's, depleted uranium was also developed for use in tank armor.

 

During Operation Desert Storm, American M1A1, M1, and M60 tanks and British Challenger tanks fired thousands of large caliber depleted uranium penetrators.[6] American A-10 and AV-8B aircraft shot hundreds of thousands of small caliber depleted uranium rounds.[7] American snipers shot 7.62mm and possibly .50 caliber depleted uranium bullets.[8] In addition, one-third (654) of the American tanks used in the war (2,054) were equipped with depleted uranium armor.[9] Depleted uranium penetrators enhanced the tactical advantage of American and British forces over the Iraqi Army's inventory of tanks, but the effectiveness of depleted uranium tank armor was never tested on the field of battle.[10] Iraq did not have DU armor or munitions in its inventory.[11]

 

Amidst post-war hype over the success of expensive, high tech weaponry, depleted uranium weapons received surprisingly little public praise from Pentagon and U.S. defense industry officials. A possible motivation for this cautious silence is expressed in pre-war U.S. Army reports which warned the use of DU weapons could have severe health and environmental consequences and create "adverse international reaction."[12] However, post-war reports have promoted a policy of "proponency" to guarantee the unrestricted use and proliferation of depleted uranium weapons. The Pentagon's focus on proponency has forestalled investigation and research of illnesses among veterans of the American-led expeditionary force and populations in southern Iraq possibly related to exposure to depleted uranium.

 

The lessons of the use of depleted uranium weapons in the Gulf War are unsettling, but understanding them will enable us to prevent or minimize the effects of depleted uranium weapons in the future.

 

 

LESSON 1: Depleted uranium weapons contaminate impact areas with extremely fine radioactive and toxic dust. U.S. Army testing found that 18 to 70% of a depleted uranium penetrator rod burns and oxidizes into extremely small particles during impact.[13] The impact of one 120mm depleted uranium penetrator fired from an American Abrams tank therefore creates between 900 and 3,400 grams (roughly 2 to 7 pounds) of uranium oxide dust. U.S. Army testing further found "[t]he DU oxide aerosol formed during the impact of DU into armor has a high percentage of respirable size particles (50 to 96%)," and 52 to 83% of those respirable size particles are insoluble in lung fluids.[14] Respirable size particles (less than 5 microns in diameter) are easily inhaled or ingested. Insoluble particles are not readily excreted from the body, and may remain in the lungs or other organs for years.[15]

 

U.S. Army research recently found that some respirable size uranium dust remains suspended in the air for hours after an impact.[16] As demonstrated in the 1970's by the release of depleted uranium during the manufacture of DU ammunition near Albany, New York, depleted uranium dust can be carried downwind for 40 kilometers (25 miles) or more.[17] Most of the dust created by an impact comes to rest inside, on, or within 50 meters of the target. However, U.S. Army testing also discovered depleted uranium dust can be resuspended by the wind, or the movement of people and vehicles.[18]

 

The long-term dangers of depleted uranium contamination are discussed in a U.S. Army Chemical School training manual:

 

DU's mobility in water is due to how easily it dissolves. Soluble compounds of DU will readily dissolve and migrate with surface or ground water. Drinking or washing or other contact with contaminated water will spread the contamination . . . The end result of air and water contamination is that DU is deposited in the soil. Once in the soil, it stays there unless moved. This means that the area remains contaminated, and will not decontaminate itself.[19]

 

No cleanup of depleted uranium in the soil has taken place in Iraq or Kuwait. Surprisingly, the U.S. Department of Defense claims it tested soil in Kuwait and found no presence of depleted uranium contamination.[20] However, in 1995 and 1997, documentary film teams detected depleted uranium contamination on destroyed vehicles and in the soil in southern Iraq.[21]

 

In addition to the fine uranium dust created by impacts, depleted uranium fragments and intact DU penetrators also pose a hazard. In March, 1991, an internal U.S. Defense Nuclear Agency memorandum noted: "Alpha particles (uranium oxide dust) from expended rounds is a health concern but Beta particles from fragments and intact rounds is a serious health threat, with a possible exposure rate of 200 millirads per hour on contact."[22] One depleted uranium penetrator found in April, 1991 at the Port of Dammam, Saudi Arabia had a radiation reading of 260-270 mrad/hour.[23] The corrosion rate for a DU penetrator in soil depends upon the chemical makeup of the soil and other environmental conditions. Weathered DU penetrators principally corrode into uranium dust that is soluble in water.[24]

 

Established limits on intake of depleted uranium dust attest that just a small amount poses a serious health threat. The limit for intake by an occupational worker has been set at 0.01 gram/one week (U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission) and 0.008 gram/one year (UK Ministry of Defense). The limit on intake for a member of the public is set at 0.002 gram/one year (UK Atomic Energy Authority).[25]

 

The route of depleted uranium in the body depends upon the method of exposure (inhalation, ingestion, implantation, or wound contamination), and the size and solubility of the particles. Recent research found depleted uranium particles may remain in the lungs if inhaled, or travel in the bloodstream and deposit in the brain, kidney, bone, reproductive organs, muscle and spleen.[26] Insoluble depleted uranium particles (up to 83% by volume of the total dust created by an impact), if inhaled, "pose primarily a radiological, as opposed to a chemical, toxicological hazard."[27] In 1997, depleted uranium was found in the semen of five out of twenty two American veterans who had been wounded by depleted uranium fragments in 1991.[28]

 

Though additional studies on depleted uranium's health effects are needed, internalized DU is acknowledged to cause kidney damage, cancers of the lung and bone, non-malignant respiratory disease, skin disorders, neurocognitive disorders, chromosomal damage, and birth defects.[29] A July, 1990 report from the U.S. Army Armament, Munitions, and Chemical Command notes depleted uranium is a "low level alpha radiation emitter which is linked to cancer when exposures are internal, [and] chemical toxicity causing kidney damage."[30] In August, 1993, the U.S. Army Surgeon General's Office confirmed the "[e]xpected physiological effects from exposure to DU dust include possible increased risk of cancer (lung or bone) and kidney damage."[31] A June, 1995 U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute report adds: "The radiation dose to critical organs depends upon the amount of time that DU resides in the organs. When this value is known or estimated, cancer and hereditary risk estimates can be determined."[32]

 

The end result of the use of depleted uranium weapons is contamination of damaged equipment and the environment with dangerous levels of depleted uranium dust and debris. Respirable size particles formed during impacts and soluble uranium oxide dust formed by corroding penetrators may be transported by the wind or water, and may contaminate food and water supplies. Friend and foe alike may inhale or ingest depleted uranium dust and suffer severe short and long term health problems.

 

 

LESSON 2: Armed forces are unlikely to be protected from exposure to depleted uranium contamination. As far back as 1974 - seventeen years before depleted uranium weapons were used in the Gulf War - a U.S. Department of Defense study group predicted: "In combat situations involving the widespread use of DU munitions, the potential for inhalation, ingestion, or implantation of DU compounds may be locally significant."[33] In July, 1990, a U.S. Army contractor further warned: "Aerosol DU exposures to soldiers on the battlefield could be significant with potential radiological and toxicological effects . . . Under combat conditions, the MEI's [most exposed individuals] are probably the ground troops that re-enter a battlefield following the exchange of armor-piercing munitions, either on foot or motorized transports."[34]

 

Despite the blunt admonitions of pre-war U.S. Army reports, no warnings about the dangers of depleted uranium were provided to the U.S. and coalition forces expected to encounter DU contamination on Gulf War battlefields. Combatants and support person-nel were not informed of the need to check soldiers' wounds for depleted uranium contamination, or told of the requirement to don full protective suits during contact with contaminated equipment and soil.[35] In violation of operative U.S. Army and U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations, no medical testing or follow-up was provided to soldiers who were wounded by depleted uranium fragments, or who may have inhaled or ingested DU dust.

 

Though American military commanders have never offered an explanation for their failure to warn troops about the hazards of depleted uranium weapons, it appears their inaction was inspired by a desire to avoid creating concern within the ranks and among the public. After a 1992 inquiry, U.S. General Accounting Office investigators reported that "[U.S.] Army officials believe that DU protective methods can be ignored during battle and other life-threatening situations because DU-related health risks are greatly outweighed by the risks of combat."[36] When it became clear U.S. military commanders disregarded all DU protective methods during and after the Gulf War, the U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute expressed concern about the costs of providing medical care to exposed veterans: "When DU is indicted as a causative agent for Desert Storm illness, the Army must have sufficient data to separate fiction from reality. Without forethought and data, the financial implications of long-term disability payments and health care costs would be excessive."[37]

 

In January, 1998, the U.S. Department of Defense expressed its first and only admission of responsibility for Gulf War depleted uranium exposures:

 

Our investigations into potential health hazards of depleted uranium point to serious deficiencies in what our troops understood about the health effects DU posed on the battlefield . . . Combat troops or those carrying out support functions generally did not know that DU contaminated equipment, such as enemy vehicles struck by DU rounds, required special handling . . . The failure to properly disseminate such information to troops at all levels may have resulted in thousands of unnecessary exposures.[38]

 

A map released by the U.S. Department of Defense in November, 1998 shows both the primary areas where depleted uranium was released during the Gulf War, and the movements of hundreds of thousands of American and coalition fighting forces through these contaminated areas.[39] Though the U.S. Department of Defense admits "thousands" of American forces may have been unnecessarily exposed to depleted uranium contamination, it also asserts that not even one American veteran could possibly be sick from a depleted uranium exposure.[40]

 

The case of the July, 1991 munitions fire at the U.S. Army base in Doha, Kuwait illustrates the hazards of accidental releases of depleted uranium. Among the large quantity of equipment and munitions destroyed in the twenty-four hour fire were 660 tank rounds containing 3,200 kg (7,000 lbs) of depleted uranium. While the fire raged, the U.S. Central Command acknowledged that "burning depleted uranium puts off alpha radiation. Uranium particles when breathed can be hazardous. 11ACR [The U.S. Army command at Doha] has been informed to treat the area as though it were a chemical area, i.e. stay upwind and wear protective mask in the vicinity."[41] Despite this and other warnings, U.S. soldiers were not informed of DU's hazards or instructed to wear protective gear, even during post-fire cleanup operations.[42] Further, the smoke from the fire drifted toward nearby Kuwait City, potentially exposing downwind populations to airborne depleted uranium.[43]

 

Adequately protecting armed forces from exposure to depleted uranium contamination requires training, use of protective suits in a contaminated environment, and distribution of radiation detection devices to medical personnel. Unfortunately, since cancers and other health problems related to a depleted uranium exposure may not develop until after a battle or war is over, military commanders have little incentive to adhere to safety procedures which could impinge on a soldier or Marine's battlefield performance. The Gulf War proved that military commanders will not be held accountable for the uncontrolled release of a radioactive and toxic waste, or for violating safety regulations requiring medical testing and care of exposed troops.

 

The 1991 Gulf War demonstrated that members of armed forces are unlikely to receive adequate protection from exposure to depleted uranium during or after future conflicts or accidental releases. In addition, governments are unlikely to provide long-term medical care for depleted uranium-related health problems among war veterans.

 

 

LESSON 3: Local civilian populations are unlikely to be warned when depleted uranium weapons are used - even if depleted uranium contaminates their food or water supplies. Prior to the Gulf War, the U.S. Army was aware of the potential for depleted uranium contamination to cause health problems among civilian populations. However, during and after the Gulf War, the U.S. Department of Defense took no steps to warn the inhabitants of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iraq about depleted uranium contamination on their lands. In contrast, U.S. Army reports express more concern about public outcry and future restrictions on the use of depleted uranium weapons than with contaminating foreign lands and poisoning civilians.

 

A July, 1990 U.S. Army report predicted: "Following combat, the condition of the battlefield, and the long-term health risks to natives and combat veterans may become issues in the acceptability of the continued use of DU kinetic energy penetrators for military applications."[44] This concern was reiterated in March, 1991 just as the war was ending: "There has been and continues to be a concern regarding the impact of DU on the environment. Therefore, if no one makes a case for the effectiveness of DU on the battlefield, DU rounds may become politically unacceptable and thus, be deleted from the arsenal . . . I believe we should keep this sensitive issue at mind when after action reports are written."[45]

 

Once hostilities subsided and the scale of the depleted uranium contamination in southern Iraq and Kuwait became known, further concern was expressed by the U.S. Defense Nuclear Agency: "As Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD), ground combat units, and the civil populations of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq come increasingly into contact with DU ordnance, we must prepare to deal with the potential problems. Toxic war souvenirs, political furor, and post conflict clean-up (host nation agreement) are only some of the issues that must be addressed."[46]

 

In April, 1991, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority also expressed concern about depleted uranium contamination in Kuwait:

 

It would be unwise for people to stay close to large quantities of DU for long periods and this would obviously be of concern to the local population if they collect this heavy metal and keep it. There will be specific areas in which many rounds will have been fired where localized contamination of vehicles and the soil may exceed permissible limits and these could be hazardous to both clean up teams and the local population. . .Furthermore, if DU gets into the food chain or water then this will create potential health problems.[47]

 

Potential political problems were also noted:

 

"The whole issue of contamination in Kuwait is emotive and thus must be dealt with in a sensitive manner. It is necessary to inform the Kuwait Government of the problem in a tactful way and this . . . is probably best done in conjunction with the UK Ambassador to Kuwait."[48]

 

The United States established a precedent during the Gulf War which permits an armed force to use depleted uranium weapons without warning civilian populations about contamination of the land. The United States is continuing this practice in the Kosovo war. Nations involved in conflicts in which depleted uranium weapons are used may find themselves faced with the "excessive" costs of long-term health care for exposed soldiers and civilians. The health and environmental consequences of depleted uranium weapons will likely receive less attention in nations where the populations are unaware of its use, or unable to voice their concerns and assert their rights.

 

 

LESSON 4: Depleted uranium weapons are proliferating and are likely to become commonly used in land warfare. A 1995 U.S. Army Chemical School training manual notes: "The United States' success with using DU in combat leads us to conclude that other nations, not all of them friendly, will be using DU in the future."[49] Further, "it is likely that DU may also become the primary tank-killing munition for our potential enemies . . . in the next battle, potentially all stricken tanks or fighting vehicles will possibly contain DU contamination."[50]

 

Another 1995 U.S. Army report notes: "Since DU weapons are openly available on the world arms market, DU weapons will be used in future conflicts . . . The number of DU patients on future battlefields probably will be significantly higher because other countries will use systems containing DU."[51] American soldiers and Marines are likely to be among the DU patients on future battlefields, as noted in a 1998 U.S. Department of Defense report: "DU's battlefield effectiveness has encouraged its steady proliferation into the arsenals of allies and adversaries alike. There is little doubt, therefore, that DU will be used against our troops in some future conflict."[52]

 

Since 1991, the United States has led the world in using and proliferating depleted uranium weapons. After Operation Desert Storm, the U.S. started using depleted uranium rounds in the M2 and M3 Bradley Fighting Vehicles (25mm), the Light Amphibious Vehicle (25mm), the Apache attack helicopter (30mm), and the AH-1W "Whiskey Cobra" helicopter gunship (20mm). In 1994 and 1995, American fighter planes fired depleted uranium rounds against Serb targets in Bosnia, and during training near Okinawa, Japan.[53]

 

In April, 1999, the US Department of Defense would neither confirm nor deny the use of depleted uranium ammunition by the A-10 aircraft in Kosovo.[54] Interestingly, however, the US Army stated the Apache helicopter would not fire depleted uranium rounds because their analysts determined high explosive rounds were sufficient to destroy Serb tanks.[55] Increased public and media interest in the use of DU weapons in the Kosovo war has evidently forced military commanders to reconsider their use of depleted uranium ammunition.

 

The growing list of nations possessing or manufacturing depleted uranium weapons includes the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Thailand, Taiwan and Pakistan.[56] The 'interoperability' of NATO military forces could also enable armed forces throughout Europe to obtain and use depleted uranium weapons.

 

With little discussion or fanfare, depleted uranium weapons have found their way into the arsenals of nations powerful and poor in some of the world's most volatile regions. The U.S. Department of Defense anticipates the use of depleted uranium weapons in future conflicts, and increasing numbers of depleted uranium exposures among friend and foe alike. Long after the guns fall silent and the survivors march home, the casualties and costs of using depleted uranium weapons will continue to mount.

 

 

LESSON 5: Depleted uranium contamination is unlikely to be cleaned up by victor or vanquished because of the extreme cost and the prospect of further environmental damage. As noted by the U.S. Army, "[DU] contaminated soil . . . should be scraped up and containerized for removal as radioactive waste."[57] This is the procedure used in the United States during cleanup of depleted uranium contamination at the Starmet plant in Concord, Massachusetts (where DU penetrators are manufactured), and at Sandia National Laboratory and Kirkland Air Force Base in New Mexico (where DU penetrators were test fired).[58]

 

The U.S. Army states cleanup involves removing the "the top layer of soil,"[59] which could be potentially devastating to an environment, especially if depleted uranium contaminates arable land or wetlands. Further, the cost involved in removing the topsoil from contaminated areas could be astronomical. As an example, the cost of cleaning up and disposing of the estimated 69,000 kg (152,000 lbs) of depleted uranium dust and debris on 200 hectares (500 acres) of the U.S. Army's Jefferson Proving Ground in Indiana has been placed at $4 to 5 billion (U.S.$).[60] The cost of cleaning up 290,000 kg (640,000 lbs) of depleted uranium on thousands of hectares in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq could therefore easily be tens of billions of dollars (U.S.$).

 

A July, 1990 U.S. Army report warned: "Assuming U.S. regulatory standards and health physics practices are followed, it is likely that some form of remedial action will be required in a DU post-combat environment."[61] However, once the scale and cost of cleaning up depleted uranium in the Persian Gulf region became clear, the U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute informed American policymakers that "no international law, treaty, regulation, or custom requires the United States to remediate the Persian Gulf War battlefields."[62] As the most powerful nation in the world today, the United States established a standard of behavior in the Gulf War which allows nations and armed forces to use depleted uranium weapons without taking any responsibility for cleanup, environmental restoration, or provision of health care to exposed combatants or civilians.

 

In the last hundred years since the first The Hague conference, the devastating results of war have been multiplied in proportion to the increased mobility of armed forces, and the unparalleled destructiveness of the weapons used. In the conflicts of the next century and beyond, huge expanses of land and countless numbers of soldiers and civilians may be poisoned by radioactive and toxic waste shot from armored vehicles, aircraft, small arms, and ships. Depleted uranium weapons are the offspring of nuclear weapons, and the newest weapon capable of causing mass destruction. If the international community accepts the use of depleted uranium weapons in warfare, it must also accept the moral obligation to fully address the health and environmental consequences, regardless of the cost.

 

Contact: Dan Fahey, c/o Swords to Plowshares, 1063 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94130, USA.

Tel: +1-415-252-4788; Fax: +1-415-252-4790

E-mail: duweapons@hotmail.com

 

Sources:

1. "Environmental Exposure Report: Depleted Uranium in the Gulf;" Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses, U.S. Department of Defense; July 31, 1998; Tab F - DU use in the Gulf War.

 

2. Health and Environmental Consequences of Depleted Uranium use in the U.S. Army; U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute; June, 1995; p. 10, 24.

 

3. Health and Environmental Consequences of Depleted Uranium use in the U.S. Army; U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute; June, 1995; p. 154.

 

4. Development of Depleted Uranium Training Support Packages: Tier I - General Audience; U.S. Army Chemical School; October, 1995; p. 21. See also Kinetic Energy Penetrator Long Term Strategy Study (Abridged); U.S. Army Armament, Munitions, and Chemical Command Task Force; July 24, 1990; Chapter III.

 

5. Kinetic Energy Penetrator Environmental and Health Considerations (Abridged); Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC); July, 1990; Vol. 2, 2-4.

 

6. U.S. Army tanks fired 504 105mm and 9,048 120mm rounds; UK armed forces fired less than 100 120mm rounds; the number of DU rounds fired by U.S. Marine Corps tanks is not known. "Response to Questions from Mr. Dan Fahey;" letter from Bernard Rostker, Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Gulf War Illness; Nov. 4, 1997; p. 1 - 2. "Technical Response to FOIA Case Number 97-F-1524, Question Eleven;" Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense; February 11, 1998.

 

7. U.S. Air Force A-10 aircraft fired 783,514 30mm DU rounds; U.S. Marine Corps AV-8B Harrier jets fired 67,436 25mm rounds. Ibid.

 

8. Several American snipers had reported they used depleted uranium rounds during the Gulf War. During a September 28, 1998 meeting of the U.S. Presidential Special Oversight Board, Jeff Prather from the Office of the Special Assistant on Gulf War Illnesses confirmed the use of 7.62mm depleted uranium rounds during the war, but stated he had seen no information confirming the use of .50 caliber depleted uranium rounds. In July, 1998, the U.S. Department of Defense confirmed: "[U.S.] Army Special Forces also use small caliber DU ammunition on a limited basis;" Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses; "Environmental Exposure Report: Depleted Uranium in the Gulf;" July 31, 1998; p. 63.

 

9. Of the 2,054 American tanks used in combat, 654 had depleted uranium added to their armor. Conduct of the Persian Gulf War: Final Report to Congress; U.S. Department of Defense; April, 1992; p. 750.

 

10. Health and Environmental Consequences of Depleted Uranium use in the U.S. Army; U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute; June, 1995; p. 76.

 

11. "Environmental Exposure Report: Depleted Uranium in the Gulf;" Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses, U.S. Department of Defense; July 31, 1998; p. 69. Operation Desert Storm: Army Not Adequately Prepared to Deal With Depleted Uranium Contamination; U.S. General Accounting Office; GAO/NSIAD-93-90; January, 1993; p. 14.

 

12. Kinetic Energy Penetrator Environmental and Health Considerations (Abridged); Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC); July, 1990; Vol. 1, 2-5.

 

13. "Summation of ARDEC Test Data Pertaining to the Oxidation of Depleted Uranium During Battlefield Conditions;" U.S. Army Armament Research, Development, and Engineering Center (ARDEC); 8 March 1991; p. 2. Health and Environmental Consequences of Depleted Uranium use in the U.S. Army; U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute; June, 1995; p. 78.

 

14. "Summation of ARDEC Test Data Pertaining to the Oxidation of Depleted Uranium During Battlefield Conditions;" U.S. Army Armament Research, Development, and Engineering Center (ARDEC); 8 March 1991; p. 2.

 

15. "Environmental Exposure Report: Depleted Uranium in the Gulf;" Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses, U.S. Department of Defense; July 31, 1998; p. 13.

 

16. "Environmental Exposure Report: Depleted Uranium in the Gulf;" Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses, U.S. Department of Defense; July 31, 1998; p. 157.

 

17. "Colonie Uranium Plant Closes as Radiation Continues Unchecked;" The Schenectady Gazette; February 6, 1980.

 

18. Development of Depleted Uranium Training Support Packages: Tier I - General Audience; U.S. Army Chemical School; October, 1995; p. 28. "Environmental Exposure Report: Depleted Uranium in the Gulf;" Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses, U.S. Department of Defense; July 31, 1998; p. 157.

 

19. Development of Depleted Uranium Training Support Packages: Tier I - General Audience; U.S. Army Chemical School; October, 1995; p. 28.

 

20. Rostker, Bernard; Special Assistant on Gulf War Illnesses; testimony to the U.S. Presidential Special Oversight Board; Washington, DC; November 19, 1998.

 

21. "Riding the Storm", ITN TV, United Kingdom, aired January 3, 1996 in the UK. "Desert Storm's Deadly Bullet", Gabriel Films (New York) and BBC (UK), aired November 8, 1997 in the USA.

 

22. "Depleted Uranium (DU) Ammunition;" Lt. Col. Gregory Lyle, U.S. Defense Nuclear Agency; March, 1991.

 

23. "Radiation Protection;" Memorandum for Commander, 22nd Support Command, Department of the Army; 20 April 1991.

 

24. Health and Environmental Consequences of Depleted Uranium use in the U.S. Army; U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute; June, 1995; p. 141.

 

25. U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, Standards for Protection Against Radiation., 1997. 10 CFR 20.1502(b), Subpart F - Surveys and Monitoring, and 10CFR 20.1206(c)(1)(2)(3), Subpart C - Occupational Dose Limits. Also UK Ministry of Defense, The Lord Gilbert's Answer to the Coutness of Mar, March 2, 1998. Also "Kuwait - Depleted Uranium Contamination." UK Atomic Energy Authority, April 30, 1991.

 

26. Federally Sponsored Research on Persian Gulf Veterans' Illnesses; Annual Report to Congress of the Research Working Group of the Persian Gulf Veterans Coordinating Board; April, 1997; p. A-64.

 

27. "Summation of ARDEC Test Data Pertaining to the Oxidation of Depleted Uranium During Battlefield Conditions;" U.S. Army Armament Research, Development, and Engineering Center (ARDEC); 8 March 1991; p. 1.

 

28. McDiarmid, Dr. Melissa; Transcript of March 25, 1998 VA/DoD teleconference on the DU Program.

 

29. Encyclopaedia of Occupational Health and Safety; 3rd Edition, Vol. 2; 1991; p. 2238. Development of Depleted Uranium Training Support Packages: Tier I - General Audience; U.S. Army Chemical School; October, 1995; p. B-5. Assessment of the Risks from Imbedded Depleted Uranium Fragments; Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute; Lt. Col. Eric Daxon and Capt. Jeffrey Musk; March 25, 1992; p. 3 - 4. "Minutes of Meeting, November 17 and 18, 1997;" Department of Veterans Affairs Gulf War Expert Scientific Advisory Committee. Public Health Statement: Uranium; US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry; December 1990. "HHIN Responds to Questions on Radioactive Materials and Health"; Hazardous Substances and Public Health; US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry; Spring 1998; Part I

 

30. Kinetic Energy Penetrator Environmental and Health Considerations (Abridged); Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC); July, 1990; Vol. 1, 2-2.

 

31. "Depleted Uranium Safety Training;" Memorandum for Headquarters, U.S. Army Chemical School from Col. Robert G. Claypool, Director, Professional Services, Army Surgeon General's Office; August 16, 1993.

 

32. Health and Environmental Consequences of Depleted Uranium use in the U.S. Army; U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute; June, 1995; p. 108.

 

33. Medical and Environmental Evaluation of Depleted Uranium; Ad Hoc Working Group on Depleted Uranium of the Joint Technical Coordinating Group for Munitions Effectiveness; April, 1974; p. ix.

 

34. Kinetic Energy Penetrator Environmental and Health Considerations (Abridged); Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC); July, 1990; Vol. 1, 4-5; Vol. 2, 3-4.

 

35. Development of Depleted Uranium Training Support Packages: Tier I - General Audience; U.S. Army Chemical School; October, 1995; p. B-10. Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical (NBC) Vulnerability Analysis; U.S. Army Field Manual 3-14; U.S. Army Chemical School; July 1, 1996.

 

36. Operation Desert Storm: Army Not Adequately Prepared to Deal With Depleted Uranium Contamination; U.S. General Accounting Office; GAO/NSIAD-93-90; January, 1993; p. 4.

 

37. Health and Environmental Consequences of Depleted Uranium use in the U.S. Army; U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute; June, 1995; p. 4.

 

38. Annual Report of the Office of the Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense for Gulf War Illnesses; January 8, 1998; p. 29.

 

39. "Primary Areas of DU Expenditure;" map released by U.S. Department of Defense; November 19, 1998.

 

40. Rostker, Bernard, Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense for Gulf War Illnesses (U.S.); remarks at the American Legion Washington Conference, Washington, DC, March 23, 1998. "Environmental Exposure Report: Depleted Uranium in the Gulf;" Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses, U.S. Department of Defense; July 31, 1998; p. 44.

 

41. "11 ACR Fire in Doha: Updates from CENTCOM Forward;" U.S. Central Command Log. July 12, 1991, entry 10.

 

42. See Fahey, Dan, Case Narrative: Depleted Uranium Exposures. September 20, 1998 (3rd Edition), "Personnel present at the July, 1991 fire at Doha, Kuwait," pp. 137-142.

 

43. "Environmental Exposure Report: Depleted Uranium in the Gulf;" Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses, U.S. Department of Defense; July 31, 1998; p. 99.

 

44. Kinetic Energy Penetrator Environmental and Health Considerations (Abridged); Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC); July, 1990; Vol. 2, 3-4.

 

45. "The Effectiveness of Depleted Uranium Penetrators;" Los Alamos National Laboratory memorandum; Lt. Col. M.V. Ziehmn; March 1, 1991.

 

46. "Depleted Uranium (DU) Ammunition;" Lt. Col. Gregory Lyle; Defense Nuclear Agency; March, 1991.

 

47. "Kuwait - Depleted Uranium Contamination," United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. April 30, 1991.

 

48. Ibid.

 

49. Development of Depleted Uranium Training Support Packages: Tier I - General Audience; U.S. Army Chemical School; October, 1995; p. 9.

 

50. Ibid.; p. 37.

 

51. Health and Environmental Consequences of Depleted Uranium use in the U.S. Army; U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute; June, 1995; p. 119-120.

 

52. "Environmental Exposure Report: Depleted Uranium in the Gulf;" Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses, U.S. Department of Defense; July 31, 1998; pp. 5-6.

 

53. "NATO warplanes blast Serb targets;" Press-Republican; August 6, 1994. Ammunition Produced from Depleted Uranium; D. Ristic et. al.; December 8, 1997. "Uranium bullets fired on Okinawa;" San Francisco Examiner; February 11, 1997.

 

54. Telephone conversation with Margaret Gidding, US Air Force public affairs, April 8, 1999.

 

55. Telephone conversation with Lt. Col. Bill Whellehan, US Army public affairs, Weapons and Environment division, April 7, 1999.

 

56. Health and Environmental Consequences of Depleted Uranium use in the U.S. Army; U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute; June, 1995; p. A-11. "Desert Storm's Deadly Bullet;" Gabriel Films (usA) and BBC (UK); aired November 8, 1997 in USA.

 

57. Guidelines for Safe Response to Handling, Storage, and Transportation Accidents Involving Army Tank Munitions and Armor Which Contain Depleted Uranium; TB 9-1300-278; Headquarters, Department of the U.S. Army. September, 1990, p. 7-3.

 

58. "Starmet cleanup proceeds on target," The Concord (MA) Journal; Richard Fahlander; October 2, 1997. "Sandia says nearly all uranium-tainted sites cleaned;" The Albuquerque (NM) Tribune; Brent Hunsberger; June 10, 1995.

 

59. Guidelines for Safe Response to Handling, Storage, and Transportation Accidents Involving Army Tank Munitions and Armor Which Contain Depleted Uranium; TB 9-1300-278; Headquarters, Department of the U.S. Army. September, 1990, p. 4-4.

 

60. Kinetic Energy Penetrator Environmental and Health Considerations (Abridged); Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC); July, 1990; Vol. 1, 9-1. Health and Environmental Consequences of Depleted Uranium use in the U.S. Army; U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute; June, 1995; p. 47. Shelton, Dr. Stephen, University of New Mexico; Testimony to the (U.S.) Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses; Denver, CO; August 6, 1996.

 

61. Kinetic Energy Penetrator Environmental and Health Considerations (Abridged); Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC); July, 1990; Vol. 1, 4-6.

 

62. Health and Environmental Consequences of Depleted Uranium use in the U.S. Army; U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute; June, 1995; p. 154.

 

 

 

Depleted Uranium and the Gulf War Syndrome

Esprit de Corps Magazine (Canada), Volume 8 Issue 3, 2000

(http://www.espritdecorps.on.ca/news8-3.htm)

Story and photos by Scott Taylor

 

For the past ten years the medical staff at the Basra Pediatric Hospital have compiled a very disturbing photographic record that catalogues thousands of patients born with congenital anomalies. Due to its strategic location – it is situated just north of Kuwait – Basra was one of the most heavily targeted Iraqi cities during the Coalition Forces’ massive aerial bombardments in the 1991 Gulf War. In the decade since Operation DESERT STORM, the lethal legacy of that conflict continues unabated in the form of widespread cancer, an epidemic of renal disease and a tremendous increase in genetic birth defects. The collection of photos which line the walls of the Basra Hospital’s "memorial gallery" are horrific: grotesque babies born with two heads; tiny infants with internal organs protruding through their chest cavities; numerous limbless children; and an alarming number of newborns who reached full term without developing any skin.

 

"To find similar congenital anomalies we have had to research the radioactive aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki," said Dr. Khalid Al-Abidi, Iraq’s Deputy Minister of Health.

 

DOCTOR'S OPINION

Iraqi doctors are firmly convinced that many of their population’s current health woes stem from the U.S. military’s use of depleted uranium (DU) munitions during Desert Storm. "The majority of our leukemia cases and birth defects can be regionalized to areas [like Basra] which were directly targeted, and to our soldiers who served in the frontlines," said Dr. Al-Abidi.

 

Iraqi officials readily admit that the ability to scientifically research the extent of the radiation poisoning is beyond their current capability. This is largely due to the dire shortage of medical supplies caused by the ongoing economic sanctions imposed against Iraq by the UN. However, the results of a 1999 World Health Organization (WHO) initial probe into the health risks posed by depleted uranium in Iraq concluded that a full-scale study was warranted. To date, such a large-scale initiative continues to be blocked by the U.S. government.

 

Ever since tens of thousands of Coalition troops returned from service in the Persian Gulf and began complaining of various illnesses, the U.S., British and Canadian military medical authorities have vehemently denounced the existence of a Gulf War Syndrome. There can be no denying that a tremendous proportion of these veterans are suffering from symptoms such as chronic fatigue, respiratory disease and chronic dysfunction. Numerous official studies conducted to date have examined possible links between such health problems and Gulf War veterans’ exposure to various vaccines, poison gas and depleted uranium. All have tabled results deemed to be "inconclusive."

 

STUDIES NOT EXHAUSTIVE

Despite claims by military medical officials that these studies represent "exhaustive" research, that is not the case. Virtually all of the testing done in these studies had been conducted under the auspices of the Pentagon and British Ministry of Defence, through their departments of Veterans Affairs.

 

To date, the Canadian government has not funded any separate research, but instead relies on U.S. and British results. Many of those veterans who are suffering from Gulf War Syndrome symptoms feel that any such probe should not be conducted by those who would be the most implicated by a positive result. (If tens of thousands of servicemembers were found to have been willfully contaminated by either experimental mandatory anthrax vaccines or through exposure to radioactive depleted uranium fallout, the legal liability to the U.S. and British governments would be enormous.) The data accompanying the latest inconclusive study, tabled on September 8th by the National Academy of Sciences, revealed that the majority of those examined were not even actual Gulf War veterans.

 

STARTLING EVIDENCE

In contrast to official results, independent research laboratories have turned up some startling evidence. Following the April 1997 death of Canadian Gulf War veteran Terry Riordan, his widow had the body tested by the Uranium Metal Project – a private research initiative. In February of this year, it was confirmed that Riordan’s tissue, hair and bones contained levels of isotope 236 – weapons grade depleted uranium.

 

A few weeks ago, Dr. Asaf Durakovic, the head of the Uranium Metal Project (and former U.S. army colonel), tabled some preliminary findings at the European Association of Nuclear Medicine. Durakovic’s team of Canadian and American scientists had tested 17 Gulf War veterans and detected disturbing amounts of depleted uranium in over 70 per cent of their case studies. These statistics run in stark contrast to the urine testing conducted this past spring by the Canadian military’s medical branch.

 

TESTING PROGRAM

In February 2000, in response to public pressure following the startling revelations of Terry Riordan’s toxic results, Defence Minister Art Eggleton established a Forces-wide program to test Gulf War veterans. Some 69 soldiers volunteered to provide samples, which were then tested at two "government approved" laboratories.

 

According to Louise Richard, "The ‘inconclusive’ results of these tests were a foregone conclusion." A former lieutenant, Richard has been suffering from a wide range of debilitating ailments (tuberculosis, incontinence, hair loss, etc.) ever since serving as a nurse in a field hospital during Desert Storm. "All you had to do was read the official disclaimer which accompanied each of the test kits," said Richard.

 

Those instructions read, in part: "Based on a careful review of all known science concerning depleted uranium, there is essentially no chance that depleted uranium is [affecting] the health of CF members who served in the Gulf…" It was subsequently announced by Colonel Ken Scott, the individual responsible for the depleted uranium testing, that the levels of uranium detected were so low as to deem further testing "unnecessary."

 

TOTAL NONSENSE

In response to Colonel Scott’s claims that these service-members had lower levels of depleted uranium than the general population, Dr. Asaf Durakovic urged Canadian veterans to seek additional testing at independent laboratories. Durakovic denounced Scott’s statement as being "total and complete nonsense."

 

The credibility of the Pentagon’s denials of toxic exposure were dealt a similarly serious blow last year when they were forced to admit having imperiled their own soldiers through the destruction of an Iraqi chemical weapon stockpile during Desert Storm. For nine years, the U.S. military had denied such an incident, but, under the weight of testimony presented at a U.S. Congressional Committee, they were forced to admit that as many as 100,000 soldiers may have been exposed to chemical fallout.

 

Ironically, as the evidence continually mounts to define the "toxic environment" into which our Gulf War veterans were deployed, it is the official denunciations which hold the potential key to solving the depleted uranium debate. In a sternly worded, 9 September letter to the editor of the Fredericton Daily Gleaner, Colonel Ken Scott asked the rhetorical question: "Canadians served in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and with the Naval blockade in Sector Charlie of the Gulf. Canadians returned home within a few weeks of the end of hostilities. If depleted uranium was a factor in their illnesses, why are civilians who live in these countries not similarly unwell?"

 

BOMBED VEHICLES THE PROBLEM

Of course, Colonel Scott is aware that these civilians, unlike our servicemembers, did not deploy into, nor did they overfly, the bomb-impacted areas. (A 1997 study estimated that 82 per cent of Gulf War veterans had entered captured or disabled Iraqi vehicles which had been hit by depleted uranium rounds – see photo, page 6.) Most interesting is the fact that Colonel Scott, along with his U.S. counterparts, consistently fails to mention the impact the bombardments have had on Iraqi citizens. How can anyone proclaim an examination of Gulf War Syndrome to be exhaustive – without a single test being conducted at the proverbial Ground Zero?

 

If the Canadian government is to be seen as serious in its claims of concern for the health and welfare of these ailing soldiers, they must establish an independent, scientific, medical commission. Rather than continuing to rely upon "inconclusive results" from our Allies who employ depleted uranium munitions, perhaps it is time for Canada to take a leading role in studying the deadly effects of such weapons.

 

This article was first published in the Globe and Mail. In August 2000, Scott Taylor spent two weeks in Iraq reporting on the ten-year aftermath of the Gulf War.

 

Silver Bullet: Depleted Uranium

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

January 2001

 

(1) Depleted uranium is the super weapon of the '90s; used in the Gulf War and the conflict in Kosovo.

But now Canadian troops, soldiers and peacekeepers alike, may be exposed to depleted uranium with its potential danger. Now this threat wasn't one raised by a hostile enemy, but by the arms used by the United States and other NATO allies. They defeated the toughest armoured vehicles with the use of depleted uranium. It packed a knockout punch, but what soldiers often didn't know was that depleted uranium poses a threat to victor as well as vanquished. Dan Bjarnason reports this cautionary tale. The story producer was Marijka Hurko.

 

Jerry Wheat went off to war in the Gulf, He drove a Bradley armoured personnel carrier for the Third armoured Division. Then the war followed Jerry home to New Mexico.

 

"I have had real bad joint pain, abdominal problems," Wheat says. "I get real bad headaches. I went from 220 pounds down to 160 pounds for no reason, and that's when I started suspecting that it was something related to the Gulf."

 

The shadows of that war eight years ago still haunt him. Wheat brought back more than victory from the front. Awarded a Purple Heart after being wounded in combat, Wheat came home with pieces of shrapnel embedded in his body and with mysterious body pains. Jerry Wheat is convinced these ominous souvenirs from the firing line are connected.

 

The ground campaign in the Gulf War involved much fighting by armoured forces. Wheat's unit was in the thick of it, and his vehicle was accidentally hit twice by fire from his own side. What Wheat did not know was that the shells that hit him were made from depleted uranium, the pride of the American arsenal.

 

"It blew off my helmet and blew me into the front of the vehicle," Wheat recalls. "I could feel it. I could feel the burning because when the rounds went through, the aluminum melted. And as it goes in you, just burns; it cauterizes as it goes in. At that point, I felt the shrapnel hit me in the back -- hit me in the back of the head. I had second and third degree burns on the back of my head."

 

It's the new wonder weapon the Pentagon calls a "silver bullet."

 

 

What is depleted uranium?  Depleted uranium is still uranium. There are three types of uranium, U238, U234 and U235. Uranium 234 and 235 are fissionable material, the kind used in bombs. Depleted uranium is what is left over when the U234 and U235 is removed. The remaining U238 is still highly radioactive. 

 

Depleted uranium shell A DU round is made from the leftover U238. The killing punch comes from the solid depleted uranium metal rod in the shell. A 120 mm tank round contains about 4000 grams or 10 pounds of solid DU.

 

DU shell hits A DU rod is very dense. At high speed, it slices through tanks like a hot knife through butter. It burns on impact, creating flying bits and dust that are toxic and radioactive with a half-life of 4.2 billion years. 

 

In the Gulf War, the U.S. fired almost a million DU rounds, leaving a battlefield littered with 1,400 wrecked radioactive Iraqi tanks, crawled over by victorious GI's who were breathing in contaminated dust.

 

Jerry Wheat and the other Gulf vets were never told of the risks of being exposed to a DU campaign. But after the shooting stopped and back home in Los Lunas, New Mexico, Wheat -- now out of the army -- grew mystified as his health deteriorated. Military doctors had no answers.

 

Then a year after war's end, Wheat got startling evidence from his father -- a technician at the famous Los Alamos Nuclear Research Centre, who just out of curiosity tested the shrapnel that came from his son's body and gear. The shrapnel was radioactive. Today, eight years after the Gulf War, that shrapnel still lights up a Geiger counter. He also keeps other pieces.

 

"This is shrapnel out of my gear. And there was just a couple pieces that I took out of my body -- a couple small pieces… I kept it since I found out the vehicle was hit with a DU penetrator, I just kept it so I would have it. Just kind of proof," Wheat says.

 

The pieces on the table are not a danger, he says. "But if you actually got a piece that was depleted uranium and you had inhaled it or swallowed it or something, then you would have a potential heavy metal problem," Wheat says.

 

Jerry's great fear is that whatever he brought back with him from the Gulf is now afflicting his family. His older son Joe was hospitalized with breathing problems the day after Wheat dragged his contaminated gear into the house. Derrick, his youngest son, who was born after the war, suffers strange blisters on his hands. His wife suffered a miscarriage. Jerry himself recently had a tumour removed from his shoulder. He now worries continually about cancer.

 

Jerry says the military has never shown any interest in his shrapnel. The military said Jerry's health problems are due to post traumatic stress.

 

At the Pentagon, depleted uranium is no mystery weapon. The American military has been testing it for 40 years, yet no one in the corridors of power gave much attention to ensuring that American GI's knew how to handle the new weapons system. Bernard Rostker is the under secretary of the army, and he admits that over the years, troops were given no proper training. Rostker himself reported in 1998 that American soldiers in their thousands had been unnecessarily exposed to DU; this seven years after the end of the Gulf War, when it was first used.

 

"We were not diligent in training our troops," Rostker says. "That doesn't mean that there were any health consequences. These are men who survived friendly fire incidences and have been traumatized; some had been burned, some have lost limbs. So they are not without health problems. But those health problems are not attributable to the heavy metal toxicity or the radioactivity of depleted uranium."

 

"So what do you tell the vets who are ailing from something and they feel it's because of depleted uranium weapons?" reporter Dan Bjarnson asks.

 

"We, first of all, don't believe that this is people's imagination. We think people are ill. We have an extensive program trying to understand what they may have been exposed to on the battlefield. We have published over 23 reports. Unfortunately, we have not found a smoking gun."

 

The number of Gulf War vets who were in contact with radioactive tanks or breathed in contaminated dust could be in the tens of thousands. Yet so far, only a fraction -- about 200 vets, like Jerry Wheat -- are being monitored. The Pentagon still insists there is not enough evidence to link exposure with illness.

 

Doug Rokke is a thorn in the side of the military today because of what he learned eight years ago in the Gulf, where he served as lieutenant with the U.S. Army Preventitive Medicine Command. There he led army teams that cleaned up contaminated vehicles hit by DU rounds. Now he is collecting evidence that the Pentagon knew of the health hazards to himself and other vets all along. He now teaches at Jackson State University in Alabama.

 

"It's obvious today that the military did know, but they didn't inform anybody," Rokke says. "There were two memorandums that came to us in March of 1991 as we started the cleanup of the contaminated equipment and the casualties in the Gulf. One memo was known as the Los Alamos memorandum."

 

The Los Alamos memo, written by a Lt.Col. M. V. Ziehmn read, in part, "there has been and continues to be a concern regarding the impact of DU on the environment. Therefore, if no one makes a case for the effectiveness of DU on the battlefield, DU rounds may become politically unacceptable and thus, be deleted from the arsenal. ...Keep this sensitive issue in mind when after action reports are written."

 

"The Los Alamos memorandum specifically gave us guidance that said when we are writing a report, or reporting our findings, make sure -- make sure that we don't disrupt the future use of depleted uranium munitions," Rokke says.

 

Then a second memo, from the Defence Nuclear Agency, arrived about the same time. It read "Alpha particles (uranium oxide dust) from expended rounds is a health concern but, Beta particles from fragments and intact rounds is a serious health threat..."

 

"The two memos, added together now after eight years of thought and research and discussions now, in my mind, are very clear. The United States and the world know about the health and the environmental consequences of using this munition and they don't care," Rokke says.

 

We asked Roskter, if there is no DU problem, why these warnings about DU hazards issued as far back as 1991?

 

"There has been concern all along with every weapon," Roster says, "We have done testing on depleted uranium, from the beginning, to determine whether it is of particular concern."

 

After the Gulf War, Doug Rokke was assigned to produce a Pentagon training video to teach soldiers how to handle depleted uranium. It was a video that was ultimately shelved and never shown to the troops.

 

 

"There are four general situations during which depleted uranium may present hazards to soldiers. One: if the equipment is damaged or destroyed in combat or in an accident," the video says.

"This is part of the training video that we finished in 1995," Rokke says. "The important part here, what we learned from our research, is everybody involved in working with depleted uranium contaminated equipment must wear respiratory protection and they must have some kind of coveralls or covering that can protect their clothes. What we learned, is you can't get this off the clothing."

 

"In the Gulf, we basically just had dust masks. We were told that the dust masks and the surgical masks would work and we could wear gloves. And all we had was the uniforms that we had available."

 

"And they knew no better; no one had ever hinted to them they were in peril?" Bjarnason asked.

 

"And that's criminal," Rokke replies.

 

The CBC showed that training video to Bernard Rostker at the Pentagon.

 

"Very interesting film, because you notice something that has been very confusing to some of the troops. Some of them were in full mop gear -- chemical protective gear and a gas mask. But they show other soldiers who were in a bandanna. In fact what you really need is a dust respirator and that's to meet the standards of the EPA. That does not mean anybody who didn't meet the standards during the Gulf War have levels of depleted uranium were likely to be impacted permanently."

 

The Pentagon built a high security, high priced, high tech cocoon at the Savannah River nuclear facility in Georgia to process radioactive materials from contaminated equipment. It has special walls and flooring to prevent any air or dust from escaping into the outside world. It's known as Building 101.

 

"If they're going to spend millions and millions of dollars to clean up the contaminated equipment that's come back from the Gulf, which you have seen here, then how could they say there is no hazard?" Rokke asks.

 

"Look at the amount of effort we do to take asbestos out of a building or lead paint. That doesn't mean that if you walk past a window that has had lead paint that you're going to immediately get lead paint poisoning," Rostker counters.

 

Doug Rokke's experiences in the Gulf ended eight years ago, but he still fights his battles with the Pentagon from his home in Jacksonville, Alabama. He is convinced his health started to slip away because of his work among contaminated vehicles over there in the deserts of Iraq and Kuwait.

 

"The problems that I have are breathing problems. My lungs have scar tissue in them. When I run or exercise, there are secretions -- fluids just fill up in the lungs. I don't have the fine motor control to do all the fine things that I used to be able to do because the nerves don't work like they should. Eye problems, vision problems, kidney problems," Rokke says.

 

Rokke has one important ally in his fight with the Pentagon. He is Dr. Jack Zerimba, head of the Gulf War Clinic at a U.S. Veteran's affairs clinic in Birmingham, Alabama.

 

He studied Rokke's breathing problems and the scar tissue on his lungs and says, "That is consistent with uranium exposure and other things too, such as metal exposure."

 

This official affirmation of a link is for Doug Rokke, his biggest victory in eight years.

 

In Washington, the Gulf War vets have enlisted the attention of many politicians. Wisconsin Democrat Senator Russ Finegold pressed for and got an investigation by the high powered and independent General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

 

"The evidence is contradictory with regard to the connection between depleted uranium and the many soldiers from the Gulf War who are complaining of ill effects," Finegold says. "Some reports indicate a real problem here; others question it. I think we need an independent investigation to determine whether this is really true. We have been through this before with many years of denial with regard to Agent Orange and its use in Vietnam. I don't want to see our government in any way, in fact or in perception, stonewall this issue of the health effects of depleted uranium.

 

In the latest chapter of this revolutionary new weapons system, DU ammunition was fired in this spring's NATO war in Yugoslavia. As usage becomes more frequent, for Finegold, the need for answers becomes more urgent.

 

"Keep in mind that depleted uranium was used recently in Kosovo and may well have effected people there as well," Finegold says, "This is not just old news. It is real current news for those who are ill from the Gulf War. And we may be finding other people, from the Kosovo conflict, who will experience similar problems in the future because of depleted uranium."

 

Canada once had depleted uranium in its inventory shells for the Navy during the Gulf War, but they were never fired and are now being disposed of because of the expense of special handling and storage facilities.

 

But Canadian troops must still deal with DU in Kosovo. Some 1,400 soldiers are now on patrol as part of a NATO peacekeeping contingent. They're equipped with small radiation detection devices and they're also under orders to stay away from any damaged Serb vehicles they come across; vehicles that may have been contaminated by DU ammunition fired by American planes last Spring during the air offensive.

 

At Defence headquarters in Ottawa, Brig.-Gen. David Jerkowski is in charge of all the operations of all Canadian troops overseas; their supplies and movement and safety.

 

"Our soldiers are not at risk," Jerkowski says. "There are other risks that are much greater than depleted uranium: there are many many more threats out there: landmines, diseases, reptiles. It depends on where we work in the world, and there are many greater risks than that."

 

A Canadian Forces routine order refers to "the inhalation of radioactive material as a primary health hazard."

 

"It depends on who wrote that particular order," Jerkowski says. "They are making sure that our troops are going to heed this and stay away from tank hulks, for example."

 

But U.S. Army Reserve Maj. Doug Rokke, who once ran the DU Project for the Pentagon, insists that an order simply to stay away from damaged vehicles is far from enough.

 

"Just staying away from it is only part of an answer, because unless the contamination is completely removed from all areas, how are you going to avoid it? How do you avoid it on a battlefield that's littered with uranium?"

 

Thousands of returning refugees are now fanning out across Kosovo, through a countryside strewn with rubble and war wreckage. No one has the particular task of keeping them clear of high-risk areas. U.N. environmental teams are running tests to check for signs of contamination; they need maps indicating where NATO DU hits were made. The Pentagon has not obliged.

 

"I don't think it's necessary and I don't know whether they could, even with any rigour, be created," Rostker says. " I mean the targets were combat vehicles and I'm not sure the pilots would have known where they were. The best thing you could find is the destroyed vehicle and I don't know of any that have been reported."

 

The stockpiling of DU weapons is spreading. As depleted uranium is becoming more, not less popular with the world's generals, more than 20 countries now have DU In their arsenals. If the lessons from past eras are anything to go by, there is often great ignorance about the path being charted when new weapons come along. For example when atomic testing was all the rage in the '50s, or when Agent Orange was used in Vietnam. When revolutionary new technology is introduced on the battlefield, no one at the time has any real idea of the consequences.

 

"The next time we go to war, the enemy may fire uranium at us," Rokke says. "So whether or not we decide to have it or not, or decide to use it or not, somebody else may decide to use it. We need to make sure that everybody knows what medical care to provide and how to complete the environmental cleanup. Everybody needs to know."

 

The military predict that depleted uranium will shape the battlefields of the future, but the future is already here.

 

 

These children had cancer. Now they are dead. I believe they were killed by depleted uranium

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/World/Middle_East/2001-01/fisk100101.shtml

By Robert Fisk

10 January 2001

 

They smiled as they were dying. One little girl in a Basra hospital even put on her party dress for The Independent's portrait of her. She did not survive three months.

 

All of them either played with explosive fragments left behind from US and British raids on southern Iraq in 1991 or were the children - unborn at the time - of men and women caught in those raids. Even then, the words "depleted uranium" were on everyone's lips. The Independent's readers cared so much that they contributed more than £170,000 for medicines for these dying children. Our politicians cared so little that they made no enquiries about this tragedy - and missed a vital clue to the suffering of their own soldiers in the Balkans eight years later.

 

In March 1998, Dr Jawad Khadim al-Ali - trained in Britain and a member of the Royal College of Physicians - showed me his maps of cancer and leukaemia clusters around the southern city of Basra and its farming hinterland, the killing fields of the last days of the 1991 Gulf War that were drenched in depleted uranium dust from exploding US shells.

 

The maps showed a four-fold increase in cancers in those areas where the fighting took place. And the people from those fields and suburbs where the ordnance were fired were clustered around Dr Ali's cancer clinic in Basra. Old men, young women with terrible tumours, whole families with no history of cancer suffering from unexplained leukaemias.

 

They stood there, smiling at me, wanting to tell their stories. Their accounts, tragically, were the same. They had been close to the battle or to aerial bombing. Or their children had been playing with pieces of shrapnel after air raids or their children - born two years after the war - had suddenly began to suffer internal bleeding. Of course, it could have been one of Saddam's bombed chemical plants - or the oil fires - that were to blame. But a comparison of the location of cancer victims to air raids, right across Iraq from Basra and Kerbala to Baghdad, are too exact to leave much doubt. And tragic did not begin to describe the children's "wards of death" in Baghdad and Basra.

 

Ali Hillal was eight when I met him - he was to live less than two months more - lived next to a television broadcasting transmitter and several factories at Diala, repeatedly bombed by Allied aircraft in February 1991. He was the fifth child of a family that had no history of cancers - he now had a tumour in his brain. His mother, Fatima, recalled the bombings. "There was a strange smell, a burning, choking smell, something like insecticide," she told me.

 

Little Youssef Abdul Raouf Mohammed came from Kerbala, close to Iraqi military bases bombed in the war. He had gastro-intestinal bleeding. There were blood spots in his cheeks, a sure sign of internal bleeding. Ahmed Fleah had already died in the children's ward, bleeding from his mouth, ears, nose and rectum. He took two weeks to bleed to death.

 

About the same time, the first British "Gulf War syndrome" victims were telling of their suffering. It was often identical to the stories - told in Arabic - that I listened to in Iraqi hospitals. Something terrible happened in southern Iraq at the end of the Gulf War, I reported. But the British Government - now so anxious to allay fears for the health of British soldiers who have been in contact with depleted uranium shells in the Gulf and in the Balkans - put their collective nose in the air.

 

Doug Henderson, then a defence minister - and later to be such a public supporter of Nato's bombing of Kosovo - wrote in an extraordinary letter that "the Government is aware of suggestions in the press, particularly by Robert Fisk of The Independent, that there has been an increase in ill-health - including alleged [sic] deformities, cancers and birth defects - in southern Iraq, which some have attributed to the use of depleted uranium-based ammunition by UK and US forces during the 1990-91 Gulf conflict.

 

"However, the Government has not seen any peer-reviewed epidemiological research date on this population to support these claims and it would therefore be premature to comment on this matter."

 

And there Mr Henderson lost interest. Had he been able to see Hebba Mortaba, the tiny girl in Basra whom I met with a tumour the size of a football pushing up from her stomach, perhaps his reply would have been more serious. Many of the other children in this purgatorial hospital were bald and suffering from non-Hodgkins lymphoma. All came from heavily-bombed areas of Iraq. A few knew they were dying; some told me they would recover. None of them did. When in 1998 I visited the killing fields outside Basra, the burned-out Iraqi tanks still lay where they had been attacked by Major General Tom Rhame's US First Infantry Division, bombed amid the farms and streams.

 

Many of the local farmers had relatives dying of unexplained cancers. One of them, Hassan Salman, walked up to me through the long grass, a man with a distinguished face, brown from the sun. "My daughter-in-law died of cancer just 50 days ago," he said. "She was ill in the stomach. Her name was Amal Hassan Saleh. She was very young - she was just 21 years old. A woman walked out of a tomato field and offered me an over-large pale green tomato, a poisoned fruit according to the Basra doctors, from a poisonous war, grown on a dangerous stem, bathed in fetid water.

 

Yes, of course, it made good propaganda for Saddam. Yes, of course, he gassed the Kurds who had gone over to Iran's side in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. Yes, of course, the Iraqis later laid on a propaganda showcase of statistics for their dying - and mock funerals for the infant dead. But the children I met were dying - and have died. Their leukaemia was real and growing. One Baghdad doctor had just watched a child patient die when I went to visit him. He sat in his chair in his clinic with his head in his hands, the tears flowing down his face. This was not propaganda.

 

In Basra, in the poorest part of the city - still, ironically, regularly attacked by the USAF and RAF - I asked a random group of women about the health of their families. "My husband has cancer," one said. Sundus Abdel-Kader, 33, said her aunt had just died suddenly of leukaemia. Two other women interrupted to say that they had younger sisters suffering from cancer. And so it went on, in a society where merely to admit to cancer is regarded as a social stigma. Why had so many Iraqis - especially children - suddenly fallen victims, I asked myself, to an explosion of leukaemia in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War?

 

Of course, the victims were Iraqis. They were Muslims. They lived - and died - in a far-away country. They were not Caucasians or Nato soldiers. But I do wonder if I'm going to have to tour the children's wards of Bosnia and Serbia in the years to come, and see again the scenes I witnessed in Iraq. Or perhaps the military wards of European countries. That's why I asked Nato just after the Kosovo bombing in 1999 for the locations of depleted uranium munition explosions. The details, I was told, were "not releasable".

 

 

MEDIA ADVISORY: Depleted Coverage of NATO's Depleted Uranium Weapons

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting

Media analysis, critiques and news reports

January 10, 2001

 

Concern has been mounting rapidly throughout Europe over the effects of depleted uranium (DU) munitions used by NATO in Bosnia and Yugoslavia during the 1994-95 and 1999 wars. At least 12 soldiers-- six Italian, five Belgian and one Portuguese-- who served in the Balkans have died of leukemia or other forms of cancer; several Italian, Spanish, French and Dutch soldiers are being treated for cancer; and several other European countries are currently testing their soldiers for signs of illness.

 

Other soldiers and aid workers have experienced symptoms including "chronic fatigue, hair loss and various types of cancer" (New York Times, 1/7/01), ailments which have collectively come to be known as "Balkans War Syndrome," much like Gulf War Syndrome.

 

Italy, Belgium, France, Portugal and Germany have all demanded that NATO conduct a thorough investigation into the health and environmental impacts of DU, and have expressed distrust of Pentagon and NATO reassurances (Agence France Presse, 1/8/01).

 

Reports in the European press suggest that the situation is causing serious divisions within the alliance, with the conservative London Times asserting that the soldiers' "Deaths Threaten the Unity of Nato" (1/6/01). Germany has called on NATO to ban the toxic and  radioactive metal (The Independent, 1/9/01), while the United Nations' war crimes tribunal has offered to make available all relevant records on the Kosovo war, raising the question of the legality of NATO's use of DU (Agence

France Presse, 1/8/01).

 

Since the new year, stories about the DU controversy have been running almost daily in every major British newspaper, with the Guardian (1/8/01) and Independent (1/6/01) each running editorials calling for a NATO investigation into DU's health effects. Altogether, the London Independent has run 14 original articles; the London Times has run 12; the Daily Telegraph has run 10; and the Guardian and its Sunday paper, the Observer, have run eight.

 

Meanwhile, in the U.S.-- the country most responsible by far for DU contamination-- newspapers have relegated most of their coverage to news briefs and short wire stories. The only U.S. newspaper in the Nexis media database to have run an editorial on the current controversy is the Seattle Times (1/6/01). Big picture questions about the extensive use of DU since the Gulf War, its lasting impact on civilian populations and the record of official deception around DU have been largely ignored in both print and

broadcast reports.

 

Apart from small wire stories, the New York Times has run only three original pieces on the current DU controversy. The Washington Post and Chicago Tribune have each run two original stories on the topic, while the Los Angeles Times, USA Today and Christian Science Monitor have run one

apiece.

 

Besides a sprinkling of news briefs and short wire service stories in papers across the country (one of the most widely used was the Associated Press' January 5 piece noting "many medical experts" who are "skeptical" of DU's dangers), these few articles represent the extent of U.S. print coverage o the current controversy.

 

Television coverage has also been limited. CNN has aired two reports on DU (1/7/01, 1/10/01), while the three networks' evening news broadcasts each did one story (NBC, 1/7/01; ABC, 1/8/01; CBS, 1/8/01).

 

Only three of the mainstream U.S. media reports about the current controversy have referred in any detail to the parallels between Balkans War Syndrome and the illnesses alleged to have resulted from use of DU during the Gulf War-- the Los Angeles Times article (1/6/01, which also ran the next day in Newsday), one Chicago Tribune article (1/9/01) and the Christian Science Monitor's excellent January 9 piece.  Though richer in background than other U.S. reports, neither the L.A. Times nor the Tribune articles addressed the growing evidence that the U.S. military has long known about and attempted to conceal the dangers of DU. (For more  information on this point, see the resources listed below.)

 

Nor was the larger question about DU raised: Is it legal? In a December 18 draft recommendation that went largely unremarked, the Environment Committee of the Council of Europe found that during the Kosovo war, NATO countries violated provisions of the Geneva Conventions intended to limit environmental damage.

 

Among other things, the committee cited "the use of depleted uranium in warheads" as a violation that had "dramatically worsened" Yugoslavia's environment "with long-lasting effects on the health and  quality of life for future generations." The committee further found that this damage "can be presumed to have been deliberate."

 

According to a search of the Nexis database, no major U.S. newspaper, magazine, television show or wire service has reported on the COE's suggestion that NATO countries deliberately violated  international law.

 

Despite questions raised by veterans, health researchers and international organizations like the UN, NATO's use of DU in Kosovo has received almost no sustained media attention, either during or after the war. One wartime report on ABC's Nightline (4/1/99) criticized Serbian state media's coverage

of the conflict, highlighting what it described as "this astonishing claim" from a Belgrade news report: "They [NATO forces] even use radioactive weapons...which are forbidden by the Geneva Convention."

 

Astonishing, perhaps, but true; at the time, the Pentagon had already admitted using DU in Kosovo. As for the possibility that NATO violated the Geneva Conventions, ABC has never returned to it.

 

For more information about depleted uranium, see:

 

The Military Toxics Project's page on DU:

http://www.miltoxproj.org/DU/DU_Titlepage/DU_Titlepage.htm

 

The National Gulf War Resources Center's DU Link:

http://www.ngwrc.org/Dulink/du_link.htm

 

 

Thinking About DU

by Michael Albert, Daily Z Commentary

January 16, 2001

 

The past week has seen a steadily escalating rush of commentary about Depleted Uranium used in the Gulf War and the Balkans bombing. Particularly in England but in much of Europe and the U.S. as well, left journalists are condemning DU’s use. E-mail notices crossing my desk pretty accurately track left attention – and for the moment, DU is very hot.

 

Four key dimensions of DU discussion stand out.

 

·   The Facts – what DU is and its purpose.

·   The Related Context – military values and choices.

·   The Morality – judging the situation of DU.

·   The Strategy – what we say and do in such cases, and why.

 

Facts

Depleted uranium is plentiful and I would imagine relatively cheaply available as a by-product of nuclear reactors. It has the same chemical properties as the uranium that comes out of mines, but having had the more radioactive isotopes removed, it is about 40% less radioactive. Being radioactive at all means DU gives off what are called alpha, beta, and/or gamma radiation. The latter is highly penetrating but reportedly quite low for DU. The former, more substantial, are nonetheless at levels stopped even by skin, certainly by boots, etc. On the other hand, if DU is ingested in tiny particles or penetrates the body in shrapnel, the alpha and beta radiation will assault the cells more directly and strongly since intensity rises with proximity. DU is also a “heavy metal” and radioactivity aside,

heavy metals are chemically toxic. Lead poisoning is an example, and DU is no exception to this general rule.

 

The known reason that DU is used in armor and armor-piercing shells is that it is very dense and has high stopping and penetrating capacity, especially against less heavy metals. As a result, U.S. tanks have DU armor under the outer layers, and U.S. shells have DU cores.

 

Claims about the health impact of exploded/vaporized DU vary. No one denies that as a heavy metal it is toxic, though how toxic is disputed. Debate rages about whether DU’s radioactive impact is  substantial, slight, or nil.

 

However, to my knowledge gleaned only from examining readily available reports of critics and supporters, there are no serious large-scale epidemiological studies available. There is no compelling evidence, that is, that is specific to DU’s effects in the field, only intimations about what they might be. Before everyone writes in that I am bonkers, note that the fact that people have gotten sick, or gotten leukemia, in countries that have their infrastructure obliterated, that have had all manner of chemical plants blown to pieces and scattered to the winds, and that are shrouded in metals, gasses, and other battlefield waste including but not even remotely limited to DU, doesn’t implicate a specific cause as against all others – other than war itself, that is – without further investigation. That a proximate item has the name “uranium” doesn’t make that item the lone culprit nor even the most culpable one. It could be the cause o