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 or a main cause, of course, but it also may not be. It’s a technical and not a political determination. War, however, we know about. Bombing all over the map, we know about. Violating norms of civility and justice with death-dealing sanctions, we know about. These are culpable causes for suffering and death, to be sure.

 

What is the scale of damage due to DU, even if DU is the culprit in many or even all of the health cases? Well, it certainly would be bad, yet we also ought to note that even if the most extreme current speculations are correct, the damages from DU would rise to at most a small fraction of the damages caused by the massive attacks against the civilian infrastructure of Serbia and Iraq, the effects of cluster bombs, the immense damage to the population and environment caused by attacking chemical plants,

destroying bridges, blocking and polluting rivers, blowing up refineries, etc. The point is, as far as fact is concerned, we don’t know out of the tens of reported deaths and the hundreds of reported illnesses how many are due to DU radiation or to the chemical toxicity of DU, or due to other heavy metals

or pollutants, or due to innumerable other likely causes including the destruction of civilian  infrastructure, which has extraordinary health consequences (quite apart from the sanctions in Iraq, which have exacerbated all these problems enormously).

 

The Context

The context of DU’s use is war perpetrated by the U.S. and its NATO underlings. Would the U.S. military employ an element in its shells deadly to those we are attacking? This is a silly question…it does, it has, repeatedly. Bombs are deadly in their explosion and in what they spew, with or without DU. Agent Orange used in Vietnam to “defoliate” was deadly, not only in biologically warring against the agriculture and means of survival, but also by direct impact on the people who ingested it. There is no moral barrier in the U.S military to using toxic or radioactive or any other effective killing means against those we attack. Quite the contrary, the U.S. military searches out such options vigorously, impeded in their use only by the price of dissent or by geopolitical concerns, problems of precedent, etc.

 

What about the U.S. military’s attitude toward its own soldiers? Here the situation is marginally more complex, though no more moral. Soldiers are fodder. Generals don’t take up residence on the field of combat, it’s too dangerous. The troops are the expendable ones. If you read the Pentagon Papers reports on Vietnam policy making there is virtually zero concern for the well-being of replaceable troops, per se. There is, however, considerable pragmatic concern about troops’ morale, about their ability to

fight, and about the dissent that can arise in society against war and against the troops’ lack of safety, as well as about law suits on the troops’ behalf, for that matter.

 

Though not moral, all this pragmatic concern powerfully militates against the U.S. knowingly using or continuing to use methods or equipment that endanger its own troops unduly. The aim of U.S. war is to destroy without U.S. casualties -- and they actually do a rather good job both of destroying and of minimizing U.S.  casualties. Could the pragmatic and military reasons propelling use of DU – its ready availability, its penetrating and blocking power, and perhaps other reasons unknown to us – override concerns to avoid a public relations nightmare, lawsuits, and troop demoralization? Yes, they could, if the reasons were strong enough. Is the U.S. military immoral enough to use DU if DU is as its detractors claim? Of course. But is the U.S. military stupid or blind enough to use DU, not to the moral consequences that they don’t care about, but to the political consequences of using DU, if it is as portrayed by its detractors? Maybe. It could be. But I haven’t seen enough to make me believe

it.

 

The Morality

When a warring nation uses a technique that endangers civilian populations, it is a war crime and an added assault against humanity, even beyond unjust war itself, and quite worth pointing out, as with bombing bridges and much else in Vietnam, and as in the use of Agent Orange, as a more explicitly

chemical example. But why should the case of DU wherein the impact is  seemingly relatively low alongside one of the most barbaric instances of chemical and biological warfare in history (the U.S. destruction of the infrastructure of and embargo against Iraq, denying chemicals and medicine that in turn leads to immense verifiable disaster) rise to such prominence in the media, and even on the left?

 

Or consider the international DU interest compared to the interest in Clinton's overt destruction of half

the pharmaceutical supplies of a poor African country that has in turn very likely led to tens of thousands of deaths. Perhaps the relative outcry about DU has something to do with the thought that DU affects “our troops” and is possibly spreading even to places like Italy where “we” live. Imagine the outcry if the Clinton pharmaceutical bombing were to happen in a rich country, like Italy. Moderately affecting our troops or civilians and not only those of “enemies” is not justification for hugely enhanced leftist focus. We do not primarily oppose imperial war because imperial troops

sometimes die of friendly fire, even though that is a bad thing, too.

 

If mainstream heightened interest is due to (limited) concern for our troops only, or for our civilians, say -- and otherwise why wouldn’t mainstream interest be much higher for the dead children of Iraq? -- that can’t be the cause of the left’s heightened interest. Our morals look first to impact on the victims of heinous crimes. And if some people’s interest is aroused by the grotesque immorality of the use of toxic materials at all, that can’t be the reason for heightened attention from seasoned leftists for whom such use can’t possibly be a surprise and who know in any event that the relative impact of DU, however great, is modest to minuscule compared to the impact of the bombing per se, or the sanctions per se. So if the left’s interest isn’t because of DU’s relative moral importance and is certainly not

because  unlike old-style bombs it can hurt our citizens too, then it must be strategic. It must be that we think that highlighting DU is a good way to build generalized opposition.

 

The strategy of highlighting DU

But is it strategically beneficial to highlight DU? Well, what makes any campaign strategically valuable? It has to resonate with some sectors of the public since otherwise it is not gaining ground. DU dissent certainly does that. But it also has to promote new and accurate awareness and commitment

that contribute to lasting morally and socially valuable activism. Does DU dissent do that? I am not so sure. It could, perhaps, if the lessons communicated are overwhelmingly about the motives of war and the U.S. military, and if the comparisons made and data presented continually upgrade people’s understanding of the much greater and more certain violence of the Gulf War and the Iraq sanctions and the NATO bombings, and of U.S. foreign policy more generally. And if the whole enterprise isn’t undercut by having made wrong claims. And if DU dissent doesn’t degenerate into irrational anti-science prejudices as compared to rightful skepticism of establishment “expert” testimony, or into concerns about impact on U.S. or European soldiers or citizenry disconnected from concerns about unjust war and its primary victims, in this case in the Balkans and Iraq.

 

I guess, my point is that I would urge considerable caution in writing about and pursuing this issue. What’s wrong with the tools of war is first and foremost that they are tools of war – and, in particular, as used by the U.S. repeatedly around the world, of horrifically unjust war. Yes, weapons that are verifiably particularly odious can warrant specific additional criticism, to be sure, but it is always a secondary matter compared to the overall morality and policies of an unjust and truly rogue state -- that

is, the U.S.

 

 

 

Iraq: The Great Cover-Up

John Pilger

The New Statesman

1/22/01

 

Most victims of depleted uranium are not soldiers, but civilians, many of them children. John Pilger reports on what one doctor calls "another Hiroshima"

 

On the eve of an election campaign, the Blair government is attempting, with mounting desperation, to suppress a scandal potentially greater than the arms-to-Iraq cover-up. This is the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps many more, caused by decisions taken in Whitehall and Washington. Moreover, the evidence of deceit and lying points to at least two Cabinet ministers and three junior ministers. At its centre is the unerring, wilful destruction of a whole society, Iraq, the aim of which is to keep the regime in Baghdad weak enough to be influenced by the west and yet strong enough to control its own people.

 

This is longstanding Anglo-American policy. Contrary to the propaganda version about protecting  Iraq's ethnic peoples, the objective is to prevent a Kurdish secession in the north and the establishment of a Shi'ite religious state in the rest of the country, while maintaining the west's dominance of the region and its access to cheap oil.

 

The victims of this policy are 20 million Iraqis, uniquely isolated from the rest of humanity by an economic embargo whose viciousness has been compared with a medieval siege. The word "genocide" has been used by experts on international law and other cautious voices, such as Denis Halliday, the former assistant secretary general of the United Nations, who resigned as the UN's senior humanitarian official in Iraq, and Hans von Sponeck, his successor, who also resigned in protest. Each had 34 years at the UN and were acclaimed in their field; their resignations, along with the head of the World Food Programme in Baghdad, were unprecedented.

 

After more than a decade of sanctions, no one on the Security Council wants them, except the United States and Britain. The French foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine, has called them "cruel, because they

exclusively punish the Iraqi people and the weakest among them, and ineffective, because they don't touch the regime". Had Saddam Hussein said on television "we think the price is worth it", referring to Unicef's figure of half a million child deaths, he would have been called a monster by the British government. Madeleine Albright said that.

 

Whitehall remained silent.

 

The Blair government has played the traditional role of Washington's proxy with particular enthusiasm. The latest Security Council resolution, 1284, was drafted by British officials in New York. They are said to be proud of it. Peter Hain, the Foreign Office minister,  constantly refers to it as "Iraq's way out". In fact, it is a specious set of demands, requiring the return of weapons inspectors, but not offering any guarantee that sanctions will be suspended if the regime complies. Last year, Jon Davies, then head of the Iraq desk at the Foreign Office, admitted the "lack of clarity in exactly what the

provisions will be". The suspicion all along, says Dr Eric Herring, the Bristol University specialist, is that "US and British policy is one of continually moving or hiding the goalposts so that compliance [by Iraq] becomes impossible and so that the sanctions cannot be lifted".

 

In recent months, in the columns of the New Statesman and the Guardian, Peter Hain has defended a sanctions regime that, says Unicef, is a principal cause of the deaths of at least 180 children every day. Hain's articles and letters are scripted by Foreign Office officials using the familiar, weasel lexicon that denied British support for the Khmer Rouge, the use of Hawk aircraft in East Timor and the illegal shipment of weapons parts to Britain's favourite 1980s tyrant, Saddam Hussein.

 

Sir Richard Scott's inquiry acknowledged their "culture of lying".  You get a sense of the scale of lying from Hain's latest letter to the NS (15 January), in which he claimed that "about $16bn of humanitarian relief was available to the Iraqi people last year". Quoting UN documents, Hans von Sponeck replies in this issue (page 37) that the figure was actually for four years and that, after reparations are paid to  Kuwait and the oil companies, Iraq is left with just $100 a year with which to keep one human being alive. That Hain does not appear even to question the competence of those who write his    misinformation is remarkable. That he allows the bureaucracy of a rapacious order he once opposed to invoke his anti-apartheid record is a bleak irony. That he is said privately to have serious doubts about sanctions, which he rejected for Zimbabwe, saying they would "hurt the ordinary people, not the elite", is a measure of his ambition, and perhaps explains why he refuses to engage his critics, preferring rhetoric and abuse. Each time he calls a principled, informed critic, such as Halliday and von  Sponeck,

"a dupe of Saddam Hussein", there is an echo of the apartheid regime calling a young Hain "a dupe of communism".

 

The sanctions issue is one of three related scandals involving epic suffering and loss of life. The truth about the effects of depleted uranium in shells fired in the 1991 Gulf war and Nato's 1999 attack on

Yugoslavia, is that the Americans and British waged a form of nuclear warfare on civilian populations, disregarding the health and safety of their own troops. This was largely to test the Pentagon's post-cold war strategy of "all-out war".

 

On 9 January, John Spellar, the Defence  Minister, told the House of Commons that the conclusion of many years of research showed "there is no  evidence linking DU to cancers or to the more general ill health being experienced by some Gulf veterans". This echoes Peter Hain, who said there had been "no

credible research data". In fact, the data is credible and voluminous, dating back to the development of the atomic bomb in 1943, when Brigadier General Leslie Groves, the head of the Manhattan Project, warned that particles of uranium used in ammunition could cause "permanent lung damage".

 

In 1991, the UK Atomic Energy Authority warned that, if particles from merely 8 per cent of the DU used in the Gulf were inhaled, there could be "300,000 potential deaths".

 

Spellar claimed there had been no rise in the number of kidney ailments or cancers among veterans of the Gulf war. The Ministry of Defence has been told by the National Gulf Veterans and Families  association of a dramatic increase in both diseases among veterans. Last year, Speller said: "We are unaware of anything that shows depleted uranium has caused any ill health or death of people who served in Kosovo or Bosnia."

 

Again, this was false. Nato's own guidelines include: "Inhalation of insoluble depleted uranium dust particles has been associated with long-term health effects including cancers and birth defects." It was

only after six Italian soldiers, who had served in Kosovo, died from leukaemia, that the scandal caused panic in Nato, with the Defence Secretary, Geoffrey Hoon, contradicting himself, saying DU posed a "limited risk", then "no risks", then, bizarrely, that it is "protecting British forces".

 

For the Iraqi people, however, the cover-up continues. What has been striking about the political and media reaction over the past fortnight is that most of the victims of depleted uranium have rated barely a mention.

 

Yet Tony Blair himself was made aware of their suffering when he was sent, in March 1999, UN statistics, published in the British Medical Journal, showing a sevenfold increase in cancer in southern Iraq between 1989 and 1994.

 

It is in southern Iraq that the theoretical figure of "500,000 potential deaths" can be applied, in a desert landscape where the dust gets in your eyes, nose and throat, swirling around people in the street and children in playgrounds. In Basra's hospitals, the cancer wards are overflowing. Before the Gulf war, they did not exist. "The dust carries death," Dr Jawad Al-Ali, a cancer specialist and member of Britain's Royal College of Physicians, told me. "Our own studies indicate that more than 40 per cent of the population in this area will get cancer in five years' time to begin with, then long afterwards. Most of my own family now have cancer, and we have no history of the disease. It has spread to the medical staff of this hospital. We are living through another Hiroshima. Of course, we don't know the precise source of the contamination, because we are not allowed [under sanctions] to get the equipment to

conduct a proper scientific survey, or even to test the excess level in our bodies. We suspect depleted uranium. There simply can be no other explanation."

 

The Sanctions Committee in New York has blocked or delayed a range of cancer diagnostic equipment and drugs, even  painkillers. Professor Karol Sikora, as chief of the cancer programme of the World Health Organisation, wrote in the British Medical Journal: "Requested radiotherapy equipment, chemotherapy drugs and analgesics are consistently blocked by United States and British advisers [to the Sanctions Committee]. There seems to be a rather ludicrous notion that such agents could be converted into chemical or other weapons."

 

Professor Sikora told me: "The saddest thing I saw in Iraq was children dying because there was no chemotherapy and no pain control. It seemed crazy they couldn't have morphine, because for  everybody with cancer pain, it is the best drug. When I was there, they had a little bottle of aspirin

pills to go round 200 patients in pain." Although there have since been improvements in some areas, more than 1,000 life-saving items remain "on hold" in New York, with Kofi Annan personally  appealing for their release "without delay".

 

I interviewed Professor Doug Rokke, the US Army health physicist who led the "clean-up" of depleted uranium in Kuwait. He now has 5,000 times the permissible level of radiation in his body, and is ill. "There can be no reasonable doubt about this," he said. "As a result of the heavy metal and radiological poison of DU, people in southern Iraq are experiencing respiratory problems, breathing problems, kidney problems, cancers.  Members of my own team have died or are dying from cancer . . . At various meetings and conferences, the Iraqis have asked for the normal medical treatment protocols.

 

The US Department of Defense and the British Ministry of Defence have refused them. I attended a conference in Washington where the Iraqis came looking for help. They approached myself, officials of the Defense Department and the British MoD. They were told it was their responsibility; they were rebuffed."

 

The third strand in the cover-up is the killing of Iraqi civilians by RAF and American aircraft in the "no-fly zones". As Hans von Sponeck points out in his letter, these violate international law. In a

five-month period surveyed by the UN Security Sector, almost half the casualties were civilians. I interviewed eyewitnesses to one of the attacks described in the UN report. A shepherd family of six - a grandfather, the father and four children - were killed by a British or American pilot, who made two passes at them in open desert. Pieces of the missile lay among the remains of their sheep. United Nations staff - not the Iraqi government - confirmed in person the facts of this atrocity. The Blair government has spent £800m bombing Iraq.

 

In his 15 January letter to the NS, Peter Hain described my reference to the possibility that he, along with other western politicians, might find themselves summoned before the new International Criminal Court as "gratuitous". It is far from gratuitous. A report for the UN Secretary General, written by Professor Marc Bossuyt, a distinguished authority on international law, says that the "sanctions regime against Iraq is unequivocally illegal under existing human rights law" and "could raise questions under the Genocide Convention". His subtext is that if the new court is to have authority, it cannot merely dispense the justice of the powerful. A growing body of legal opinion agrees that the court has a duty, as Eric Herring wrote, to investigate "not only the regime, but also the UN bombing and sanctions which have violated the human rights of Iraqi civilians on a vast scale by denying them many of the means necessary for survival. It should also investigate those who assisted [Saddam Hussein's] programmes of now prohibited weapons, including western governments and companies."

 

Last year, Peter Hain blocked a parliamentary request to publish the full list of culpable British companies Why? A prosecutor might ask why, then ask who has killed the most number of innocent people in Iraq Saddam Hussein, or British and American murderous policy-makers?

 

The answer may well put the murderous tyrant in second place.

 

 

U.S. expert says use of DU munitions a "war crime"

Reuters, 1/30/01

By Kate Kelland

 

LONDON, Jan 30 (Reuters) - The man who led the U.S. army's depleted uranium (DU) assessment team in the 1991 Gulf War said on Tuesday that the continued use of such weapons was a   "war crime" which should be stopped immediately.

 

Speaking at a news conference at Britain's Parliament, Dr Doug Rokke, a major in the U.S. army reserves, said he told his government as far back as 1991 of the health hazards of depleted uranium but his warnings had been consistently ignored.

 

Rokke, 51, worked in the Gulf from November 1990 to June 1991, leading the U.S. Defence Department's DU assessment team responsible for implementing a clean-up and advising on medical care for any U.S. personnel who had been exposed to DU.

 

"What we learned during the Gulf War and what we learned during the research scared us," Rokke said.

 

He said that his full recommendations, detailed in a November 1995 U.S. army pamphlet entitled "handling procedures for equipment contaminated with depleted uranium or other radioactive  commodities" had not been passed on to troops or civilians on the ground during NATO's 1999 war against Yugoslavia over Kosovo.

 

An international storm broke over the use of DU munitions in January after Italy reported that six of its soldiers who served in the Balkans had died of leukaemia.

 

But NATO chiefs have consistently denied that there is any proof that DU munitions carry any serious health risk and have rejected calls for a moratorium on their use.

 

Rokke said it was an "absolute lie" that troops and civilians who had been exposed to DU in the Gulf and in the Balkans had not suffered health problems. "We do have birth defects, we do have tumours," he said.

 

Rokke himself was diagnosed with reactive airway disease due to uranium poisoning.

 

He accused the NATO governments of covering up health warnings about DU, and said their insistence that the weapons would continue to be used raised serious "moral and ethical" as well as medical issues.

 

"When you deliberately and wilfully take radioactive waste... and throw it down in place in the world where children can pick it up and be exposed to it... that's a crime against humanity and it is a war crime," he said.

 

He also reacted angrily to comments by German Defence Minister Rudolf Scharping, who said on Saturday that fears about radiation from DU weapons were being whipped up by opponents of the Kosovo war.

 

"I'm going to make this loud and clear," Rokke said. "The individuals who started the warnings on depleted uranium hazards... were the U.S. army's experts -- myself and my team members who were tasked with cleaning up after the Gulf War."

 

British member of parliament Alice Mahon, speaking at the same news conference, called on the British government to ban the use of DU munitions and fund a full and independent study into the risks.

 

"An epidemiological study and urine analysis for depleted uranium will take some time," she said. "Meanwhile the government should impose a complete moratorium on the production and use of DU shells."

 

 

WHO launches appeal for DU research in Iraq and the Balkans

Agence France-Presse

2/1/01

 

GENEVA, Feb 1 (AFP) - The World Health Organisation on Thursday Launched an urgent international appeal for funds for research into the effects Of depleted uranium (DU) munitions in Iraq and the Balkans.

 

The Geneva-based WHO issued a statement saying it needs two million dollars (2.14 million euros) over the next six months to add specialists to its team for field investigations.

 

It also wants to improve monitoring of suspected cases in the countries concerned, the WHO said.

 

"While experts' current thinking is that the risk from exposure to DU is low, information is not sufficient for firm conclusions," the statement said.   Xavier Leus, the director of emergency activities at the WHO, told a press conference that more information was needed urgently.

 

"The current state of uncertainty ... and the consequent levels of widespread speculation that exposure to DU may be responsible for serious health consequences such as leukemia ... illustrate the need to fill the knowledge gap," Leus added.

 

A team of WHO experts visiting Kosovo said Thursday that no link had been found between a spate of illnesses in peacekeepers and the use of DU munitions during NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.

 

They also said "the presence of plutonium in the depleted uranium used in Kosovo has not been detected so far by laboratories analysing samples from DU sites."

 

The United States fired around 31,000 rounds of DU in Yugoslavia, about one third of that amount in Bosnia in 1994 and 1995 and an undisclosed quantity during the Gulf War.

 

Depleted uranium, which penetrates heavy armour more efficiently than conventional metals, has been blamed for causing cancers in peacekeepers who served in the Balkans.

 

 

 

UN-BACKED COVER UP

The chemical effects of DU

by JACQUES BRILLOT, Le Monde diplomatique

February 2001

 

Most commentators are obsessed with the radioactive effects of depleted uranium, ignoring its purely chemical properties. But missiles made from it break up, vaporise and/or ignite on impact, and are dispersed into the atmosphere, sometimes as an aerosol made up of the fine dust of the metal and its oxides. The particles then fall back to earth. If they become airborne again, they can be inhaled or ingested days, weeks, even months or years later. So you do not have to be inside or near a tank when it is hit to be at risk of absorbing these dangerous substances.

 

The 9th edition (1976) of the Merck Index (1), one of the world's bibles of chemistry, describes uranium and its salts as "extremely toxic", causing dermatitis, renal lesions, acute arterial

necrosis, possibly resulting in death (2). Another such bible, the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics (3), describes it as "highly toxic, both from chemical and radiological standpoint". It gives the maximum concentration of its insoluble derivatives (oxides, for example) recommended as acceptable in air (based on its chemical toxicity) as 0.25 mg per cubic metre (4).

 

The chapter on human exposure to airborne contaminants gives a figure of 0.20 mg (expressed as pure U) per cubic metre for natural uranium and its soluble and insoluble compounds. The comparable figures for lead arsenate are 0.15 mg or 0.20 mg, phosgene 0.40 mg and arsenic 0.50 mg. These figures were published in 1983 in the Encyclopaedia of Occupational Health and Safety (5), which puts the lethal dose for one half of experimental subjects (rats and rabbits) at between 0.55 mg and 1.12 mg per kg body weight. This is similar to the concentration (1 mg/kbw) of hydrogen cyanide (the Zyklon B used in Nazi extermination camps) needed to kill a human.

 

The same book describes at length the lesions characteristic of chronic poisoning by the metal and its oxides: pulmonary fibrosis and changes to the blood with a reduction in the number of red and white corpuscles (lymphocytes). The nervous system can also be affected. And there is the possibility of nephritis, chronic hepatitis, gastritis and other symptoms.       

 

(1) Published by Merck Research Laboratories, Whitehouse Station, New Jersey.

(2) The most recent edition (1996) merely states that uranium presents both a " toxic " and a radiological hazard and that direct contact with metallic U or its insoluble compounds may cause

dermatitis. The word " extremely " and the references to renal lesions, arterial necrosis and death have been removed.

(3) Published by CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida.

(4) Or, per kg, the theoretical contamination of around 2 sq km to a height slightly more than that of a man (2m).

(5) Published by the International Labour Office, Geneva.

Translated by Malcolm Greenwood

 

 

 

UN-BACKED COVER UP

Deafening silence on depleted uranium

Le Monde diplomatique

February 2001

by ROBERT JAMES PARSONS

 

In spite of the growing number of unexplained deaths and illnesses among servicemen returning from the Gulf, Bosnia and Kosovo, UN agencies have, to different degrees, cast a veil of silence over the

chemical and radiological hazards of depleted uranium. It was not until this January that the World Health Organisation proposed a study of DU's effects on the peoples of the Gulf region.

                                               

The World Health Organisation's report on depleted uranium (DU) has still not materialised; since being announced, it was postponed several times and only put back on the agenda because of pressure

from international aid agencies working in Kosovo. When news of “Balkan syndrome" first broke, the WHO published in January this year a four-page "fact sheet" that claimed to deal with the subject

 

(1). Designed to calm the storm and reassure the public, the information it contains is vague and often at odds with current scientific knowledge. If there is any radiation, the fact sheet claims, it is within acceptable levels: "From the science it appears unlikely that an increased leukaemia risk related to DU

exposure would be detectable among military personnel in the Balkans."

 

How could the WHO, the world's highest authority in health matters, have produced such a document? It recommends as "reasonable", for example, such unlikely "clean-up operations" as collecting the

thousands of billions of invisible radioactive particles scattered over hundreds of square kilometres and mixed with hundreds of thousands of tons of earth.

 

In fact, an agreement entered into with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1959 prevents the WHO from dealing with radiation and public health matters without the former's approval.

 

Approval that is hardly ever given.

 

In the 1950s in the United States the Eisenhower administration made much of the civilian spin-offs from military research in order to justify the enormous sums being spent on the nuclear arsenal.

In 1954 it started the Atoms for Peace programme, promising the public electricity that was not only "clean" but so abundant as to be "unmeterable".

 

At the time many members of the scientific community, with little or no involvement in military research, recalled the work that had earned Herman Joseph Muller a Nobel prize in 1946. He had

discovered the terrifying mutagenic effects of ionising radiation.  It was this very radiation that the power plants envisaged by Atoms for Peace were to introduce into the heart of the civilian  population. Yet Dr John W Gofman, who led the team that isolated the first milligram of plutonium in 1942, continued to hammer home his point that "by any reasonable standard of biomedical proof, there is no safe dose" (2). In spite of such warnings the US pressed for the formation in 1956 of the IAEA - a UN organization whose remit is quite simply to promote the nuclear industry.

 

In 1957 the WHO organised an international conference on the effects of radiation on genetic mutation; its basic premises, derived from Muller's experiments, are found in the papers presented to the conference and subsequently published (3). But in 1959 the debate was closed. The WHO accepted the agreement with the IAEA according to which "whenever either organisation proposes to initiate a programme or activity on a subject in which the other organisation has or may have a substantial  interest, the first party shall consult the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement" (4). That "mutual agreement" stipulation was to allow the IAEA to block almost every WHO initiative concerning the relationship between radiation and public health.

 

That is why, when the WHO proposed publishing a fact sheet on depleted uranium, nothing came of it. The generic study, still awaited, was to be confined to chemical contamination from DU as a heavy metal. Only when DU hit the international headlines did the WHO announce that the study would be extended to radiation. The additional work would be done by experts from such bodies as the United Kingdom's National Radiological Protection Board (much criticised by British veterans suffering from Gulf War syndrome) and, of course, the IAEA. The humanitarian aid organizations working in Kosovo, such as the High Commission for Refugees (HCR), the World Food Programme, the United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs and the International Organisation for Migration, have to refer to the WHO for all public health matters since they belong to the UN system. So they are still waiting.

 

The current standards for the "tolerable" radiation dose presenting no danger to the human organism were set on the basis of studies by the Pentagon's Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission on survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima; one of the major objectives of those studies, if not the main one, was to determine the bomb's effectiveness as a weapon of war. The studies (details

of which were not published until 1965) began in 1950, when many victims who had initially survived had already died from the consequences of the bombings. The group studied consisted mainly

of young sportsmen in relatively good shape. Those particularly vulnerable to the harmful effects of radiation - children, women and the elderly - did not appear at all.

 

These studies of survivors were soon brought to an end: there was no waiting for the cancers that would take decades to appear. They were also carried out by physicists with no training in biology.

At the time they knew nothing of the existence of DNA, let alone how it works, and they made no distinction between the effects of a single, sudden, intense explosion and those of radiation from an

internal, slow, constant source - like that given off by particles of depleted uranium which enter the body by inhalation, ingestion or through open wounds.

 

The nuclear lobby has always claimed that the effects of low-level radiation are too small to be studied. They therefore extrapolated from the observed effects of high dose irradiation (Hiroshima and

Nagasaki), on the basis that if 1,000 survivors became ill after exposure to a dose of 100 (an arbitrary figure), 500 would be ill when exposed to 50 and only one from a dose of 0.5. Thus, below that exposure no-one is affected (5).

 

'Safe' doses

But the British researcher Alice Walker showed the danger of low-level radiation to the human organism in a study of children whose mothers were x-rayed during pregnancy. In the 1970s she

reached the same findings for employees of the nuclear weapons plant in Hanford, US. In 1998, still going strong despite her 91 years, she published with George W Kneale an in-depth reappraisal

of the studies made of the 1945 survivors, showing irrefutably the errors present in the work on which the present standards are based (6). But it is these standards that allow the WHO fact sheet to speak of a "tolerable daily intake" for persons exposed to depleted uranium. Likewise, Dr Chris Busby, a British researcher who has written a number of works on the effects of low-level radiation (7) (disputed by the nuclear establishment), has explained how chronic internal low-level radiation systematically destroys the DNA of cells to produce the mutations that lead to cancer.

 

The international standards have been revised downwards several times, most recently in 1965, 1986 and 1990, by the International Commission for Radiation Protection - which draws up the standards

that are then applied by the IAEA. The 1990 revision cut the permitted dose by a factor of five. The US has still not accepted that revision. It is therefore on the basis of doses five times higher than accepted by the rest of the world that they claim their soldiers received "safe" doses during the Gulf war.

 

The highest authority in the matter in the US is the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), a civilian agency but in fact headed up by the military high command, which in that way controls the development of all nuclear technology. All the main sources of ionizing radiation are therefore controlled by persons and institutions with no interest in exploring their dangers. The four most eminent scientific authorities to have worked for the AEC were John Gofman, Karl Z Morgan, Thomas Mancuse and Alice Stewart. Each in turn was sacked for presenting findings showing that exposure to low-level radiation causes cancer (8). The WHO fact sheet therefore comes in the context of a history of general denial of which the affair of depleted uranium in Yugoslavia is only the latest episode.

 

In May 1999, during the Kosovo war, the UN arranged for representatives of all the agencies involved in the conflict to go and make an initial assessment of the situation. Each wrote a report that was then shared with the other agencies. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) took part, but its report was

suppressed. After it was leaked, the document, penned by Bakary Kante, advisor to UNEP director general Klaus Toepfer, was made public on 18 June 1999 in two Swiss French-language newspapers,

Courrier and Liberté. The report sounded the alarm on the pollution caused by the bombings, specifically mentioning depleted uranium (9).

 

Another report on pollution, funded by the European Commission and published that same June shortly after the end of the war, takes the trouble to identify its sources (experts in the field, literature, specialist monographs, etc.) but makes virtually no mention of depleted uranium (10). The only reference appears in a brief list of the types of pollution: "DU" followed by "in Yugoslavia - claimed". One might have thought that the working party had been unaware of the Kante report. But several paragraphs of its report reproduce it word for word, and the list of 80 or so shelled sites is identical to that compiled by Kante.

 

Not long after that, the UNEP set up a working party, the Balkans Task Force (BTF), to make a full report. Toepfer appointed Finland's former environment minister Pekka Haavisto to lead it.

He was adamant that depleted uranium was part of the overall pollution picture and could not be left out of the enquiry. If he was barred from studying it as radioactive pollution, he would study it as

chemical pollution (see box).

 

Where are the contaminated sites?

On completion, it was announced that the BTF report (11) would be released in Geneva on 8 October 1999. A journalist who went to the UNEP's Geneva office, where the BTF is based, expecting to obtain

a copy, was received by Toepfer's spokesman and right hand man Robert Bisset, who refused him any contact with Haavisto's team.  Eventually, he was told there had been a change of plan and that    Haavisto would be giving a press conference on 11 October in New York. Since the journalists who were closely following the issue of depleted uranium in Kosovo were all based in Geneva, they were

thus denied any possibility of interviewing the man who had written the report.

 

Reworked by Bisset, the final part of the report was cut from 72 pages to two (later, the missing parts were posted on the UNEP's internet site) (12). Its findings and recommendations spoke of cordoning off contaminated sites - while saying simultaneously that they could not be identified. The Canadian expert Rosalie Bertell had advised the BTF to take samples from the air filters of vehicles in Kosovo, from armoured tanks that had been struck and from sites likely to have been affected by DU weapons; but no such samples were taken while the teams were in the field.

 

Throughout this time a whole procession of people directly involved in the question came to Geneva. The HCR's special envoy to the Balkans, Dennis McNamara, spoke of refugees returning to a "secure

environment". But by "secure" he meant "militarily secure", stressing at a press conference at the Palais des Nations on 12 July last year Nato's assurances that depleted uranium posed no problems. US under-secretary of state for population, refugees and migration Julia Taft came to Geneva to boast to the UN Economic and Social Council of the success of this "humanitarian war"; she admitted during another press conference (Palais des Nations, 14 July 1999) that she did not know what depleted uranium was.

 

IAEA spokesman David Kyd claimed in an interview that his agency's mandate did not allow it to investigate DU, saying that it was, in any case, perfectly harmless. Dr Keith Baverstock of the WHO

regional office for Europe came out with the same weasel words about there being absolutely no  danger, though he added that depleted uranium could cause problems in a battle situation.

 

Finally, former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt, now the UN Secretary General's special envoy to the Balkans, abruptly stated  that depleted uranium was a "non-issue".

 

Last March the Military Toxics Project, an American anti-nuclear NGO, announced that Nato had, that January, sent the UNEP a map of targets affected by depleted uranium in Kosovo; and this was

confirmed by a source at the Netherlands foreign ministry (13).  Fearing a general outcry, Toepfer convened a crisis meeting in Geneva on 20 March to decide on a strategy. But he was too late.

Switzerland's last independent French language newspaper, Courrier, published the map that same morning.

 

The next day Haavisto held a press conference. Although he tried to be reassuring, he referred to the recommendations of the October report - that contaminated sites should be cordoned off – while adding that the map available was not accurate enough to identify them. A press release referred to the WHO study that was still being prepared and another commissioned by the BTF from the UK's  Royal Society (that has not been heard of since).

 

The map, purportedly showing the 28 sites affected by 30 mm anti-tank Penetrator missiles launched from A-10 aircraft, raised a number of questions. The targets were concentrated close to the Albanian border (areas occupied by Italian and German forces) where former Yugoslav leader Tito, fearing the irredentism of the then Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha, had built substantial concrete military  installations underground. According to Swiss military analyst Jacques Langendorf, who visited the area in Tito's days, 30mm Penetrators would have little impact on the concrete, but DU-reinforced Cruise missiles might be effective. And according to British analyst Dennis Flaherty, one of the aims of the war was to test such missiles equipped with a new technology (known as Broach) allowing as many as ten Penetrators to be fired at a time in order to penetrate underground bunkers more effectively.

 

Following insistent demands from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Nato gave Toepfer a new map in July last year. It showed 112 targets and had a list of the munitions supposedly released there. For about 20 sites, the type of munitions was given as "unknown", which seems unlikely given the computer tracking systems available  to Nato and the Pentagon. Apparently the map was kept from

Haavisto until September. When he discovered it, he wanted to send a team of investigators to Kosovo straight away. Toepfer apparently vetoed such a move before the 24 October elections, fearing a massive exodus like the one during the war if worrying findings were made.

 

Whatever the case may be, tired of waiting for the WHO, the High Commission for Refugees has drawn up its own instructions for its staff (14): no pregnant woman will be sent to Kosovo, anyone

approached about going there must have the option of being posted elsewhere, and any official sent to Kosovo must have his file marked "service in the field" to facilitate any claim for compensation in the event of illness resulting from contamination.

 

According to Frederick Barton, deputy high commissioner for refugees, the HCR's efforts to draw the civilian population's attention to the risks of contamination met with tremendous resistance both from Albanian politicians and from Nato and Unmik (UN Mission in Kosovo) administrators.

 

For Rosalie Bertell, the "non-issue" of depleted uranium is just the latest episode in a long story that is far from over. Watch this space.

 

(1) " Fact sheet No. 257, Depleted Uranium ", 12 January 2001, World Health Organisation (WHO), Geneva.

(2) Taken from his monograph " Radiation Induced Cancer from Low-Dose Exposure " and quoted in n open letter dated 11 May 1999 signed John W Gofman, MD, PhD.

(3) "Effects of Radiation on Human Heredity: Report of a Study Group convened by WHO together with Papers Presented by Various Members of the Group", WHO, Geneva, 1957.

(4) Agreement between the International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Health Organisation, approved by the 12th World Health Assembly on 28 May 1959 in resolution WHA12.40. World Health

Organisation, Basic Documents, 42nd edition, World Health Organisation, Geneva, 1999.

(5) Rosalie Bertell, " The Hazards of Low Level Radiation", http://ccnr.org/bertell_book.html.

(6) "A-bomb survivors: factors that may lead to a re-assessment of the radiation hazard", International Journal of Epidemiology, Volume XXIX, No. 4, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2000, pp 708-714.

(7) Including Wings of Death : Nuclear Pollution and Human Health, Aberystwyth, Green Audit 1995.

(8) Jay M Gould, director, and Benjamin A Goldman, assistant director, Overview: Deadly Deceit, Low-Level Radiation, High-Level Coverup, Radiation and Public Health Report, New York, December

1989.

(9) Bakary Kante, Senior Policy Advisor to the Executive Director of ENUP, "United Nations Inter-Agency Needs Assessment Mission to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: Environment and Human

Settlements Aspects", United Nations, May 1999.

(10) "Assessment of the Environmental Impact of Military Activities During the Yugoslavia Conflict: Preliminary Findings", June 1999,  prepared by the Regional Environmental Centre for Central and

Eastern Europe, Szentendre, Hungary, for the European Commission DG-XI - Environment, Nuclear Safety and Civil Protection (Contract No B7-8110/99/61783/MAR/XI.1).

(11) "The Kosovo Conflict: Consequences for the Environment & Human Settlement", United Nations Environment Programme and United Nations Centre for Human Settlements, Geneva, 1999.

(12) http://www.grid.unep.ch/btf/pressreleases/unep21032000.html and http://balkans.unep.ch/du/du.html

(13) See maps on Le Monde diplomatique's site.

(14) File of instructions of the HCR personnel department.

Translated by Malcolm Greenwood

 

 

DU: Cancer as a Weapon

Radioactive War

http://www.counterpunch.org/du.html

Counterpunch Magazine, 2/5/01

by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair

 

At the close of the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein was denounced as a ferocious villain for ordering his retreating troops to destroy Kuwaiti oil fields, clotting the air with poisonous clouds of black smoke and saturating the ground with swamps of crude. It was justly called an environmental war crime.

 

But months of bombing of Iraq by US and British planes and cruise missiles has left behind an even more deadly and insidious legacy: tons of shell casings, bullets and bomb fragments laced with depleted uranium. In all, the US hit Iraqi targets with more than 970 radioactive bombs and missiles.

 

More than 10 years later, the health consequences from this radioactive bombing campaign are beginning to come into focus. And they are dire, indeed. Iraqi physicians call it "the white death"-leukemia. Since 1990, the incident rate of leukemia in Iraq has grown by more than 600 percent. The situation is compounded by Iraq's forced isolations and the sadistic sanctions regime, recently described by UN secretary general Kofi Annan as "a humanitarian crisis", that makes detection and treatment of the cancers all the more difficult.

 

"We have proof of traces of DU in samples taken for analysis and that is really bad for those who assert that cancer cases have grown for other reasons," says Dr. Umid Mubarak, Iraq's health minister.

 

Mubarak contends that the US's fear of facing the health and environmental consequences of its DU bombing campaign is partly behind its failure to follow through on its commitments under a deal allowing Iraq to sell some of its vast oil reserves in return for food and medical supplies.

 

"The desert dust carries death," said Dr. Jawad Al-Ali, an oncologist and member England's Royal Society of Physicians. "Our studies indicate that more than forty percent of the population around Basra will get cancer. We are living through another Hiroshima."

 

Most of the leukemia and cancer victims aren't soldiers. They are civilians. And many of them are children. The US-dominated Iraqi Sanctions Committee in New York has denied Iraq's repeated requests for cancer treatment equipment and drugs, even painkillers such as morphine. As a result, the overflowing hospitals in towns such as Basra are left to treat the cancer-stricken with aspirin.

 

This is part of a larger horror inflicted on Iraq that sees as many as 180 children dying every day, according to mortality figures compiled by UNICEF, from a catalogue of diseases from the 19th century: cholera, dysentery, tuberculosis, e. coli, mumps, measles, influenza.

 

Iraqis and Kuwaitis aren't the only ones showing signs of uranium contamination and sickness. Gulf War veterans, plagued by a variety of illnesses, have been found to have traces of uranium in their blood, feces, urine and semen.

 

Depleted uranium is a rather benign sounding name for uranium-238, the trace elements left behind when the fissionable material is extracted from uranium-235 for use in nuclear reactors and weapons. For decades, this waste was a radioactive nuisance, piling up at plutonium processing plants across the country. By the late 1980s there was nearly a billion tons of the material.

 

Then weapons designers at the Pentagon came up with a use for the tailings: they could be molded into bullets and bombs. The material was free and there was plenty at hand. Also uranium is a heavy metal, denser than lead. This makes it perfect for use in armor-penetrating weapons, designed to destroy tanks, armored-personnel carriers and bunkers.

 

When the tank-busting bombs explode, the depleted uranium oxidizes into microscopic fragments that float through the air like carcinogenic dust, carried on the desert winds for decades. The lethal dust is inhaled, sticks to the fibers of the lungs, and eventually begins to wreck havoc on the body: tumors, hemorrhages, ravaged immune systems, leukemias.

 

In 1943, the doomsday men associated with the Manhattan Project speculated that uranium and other radioactive materials could be spread across wide swaths of land to contain opposing armies. Gen. Leslie Grove, head of the project, asserted that uranium weapons could be expected to cause "permanent lung damage." In the late, 1950s Al Gore's father, the senator from Tennessee, proposed dousing the demilitarized zone in Korea with uranium as a cheap failsafe against an attack from the North Koreans.

 

After the Gulf War, Pentagon war planners were so delighted with the performance of their radioactive weapons that ordered a new arsenal and under Bill Clinton's orders fired them at Serb positions in Bosnia, Kosovo and Serbia. More than a 100 of the DU bombs have been used in the Balkans over the last six years.

 

Already medical teams in the region have detected cancer clusters near the bomb sites. The leukemia rate in Sarajevo, pummeled by American bombs in 1996, has tripled in the last five years. But it's not just the Serbs who are ill and dying. NATO and UN peacekeepers in the region are also coming down with cancer. As of January 23, eight Italian soldiers who served in the region have died of leukemia.

 

The Pentagon has shuffled through a variety of rationales and excuses. First, the Defense Department shrugged off concerns about Depleted Uranium as wild conspiracy theories by peace activists, environmentalists and Iraqi propagandists. When the US's NATO allies demanded that the US disclose the chemical and metallic properties of its munitions, the Pentagon refused. It has also refused to order testing of US soldiers stationed in the Gulf and the Balkans.

 

If the US has been keeping silent, the Brits haven't been. A 1991 study by the UK Atomic Energy Authority predicted that if less than 10 percent of the particles released by depleted uranium weapons used in Iraq and Kuwait were inhaled it could result in as many as "300,000 probable deaths."

 

The British estimate assumed that the only radioactive ingredient in the bombs dropped on Iraq was depleted uranium. It wasn't. A new study of the materials inside these weapons describes them as a "nuclear cocktail," containing a mix of radioactive elements, including plutonium and the highly radioactive isotope uranium-236. These elements are 100,000 times more dangerous than depleted uranium.

 

Typically, the Pentagon has tried to dump the blame on the Department of Energy's sloppy handling of its weapons production plants. This is how Pentagon spokesman Craig Quigley described the situation in chop-logic worthy of the pen of Joseph Heller.: "The source of the contamination as best we can understand it now was the plants themselves that produced the Depleted uranium during the 20 some year time frame when the DU was produced."

 

Indeed, the problems at DoE nuclear sites and the contamination of its workers and contractors have been well-known since the 1980s. A 1991 Energy Department memo reports: "during the process of making fuel for nuclear reactors and elements for nuclear weapons, the Paducah gaseous diffusion plant... created depleted uranium potentially containing neptunium and plutonium"

 

But such excuses in the absence of any action to address the situation are growing very thin indeed. Doug Rokke, the health physicist for the US Army who oversaw the partial clean up of depleted uranium bomb fragments in Kuwait, is now sick. His body registers 5,000 times the level of radiation considered "safe". He knows where to place the blame. "There can be no reasonable doubt about this," Rokke recently told British journalist John Pilger. "As a result of heavy metal and radiological poison of DU, people in southern Iraq are experiencing respiratory problems, kidney problems, cancers. Members of my own team have died or are dying from cancer."

 

Depleted uranium has a half-life of more than 4 billion years, approximately the age of the Earth. Thousand of acres of land in the Balkans, Kuwait and southern Iraq have been contaminated forever. If George Bush Sr., Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and Bill Clinton are still casting about for a legacy, there's grim one that will stay around for an eternity.

 

 

Depleted Uranium in Iraq

By, Damacio A. Lopez, Executive Director of IDUST

Guild Theater

March 16, 2001 Albuquerque, New Mexico

 

The International Depleted Uranium Study Team (IDUST) is a Non- governmental organization of over 150 researchers, activists, soldiers and scientists from over 30 countries demanding that the use of depleted uranium (DU) in military weapons be stopped immediately. The US military has admitted to using an overall total of 315 tones of DU in the weapons used during the Gulf War in Iraq and Kuwait.

 

What is Depleted Uranium?

DU is the waste product left after natural uranium has gone through the gaseous diffusion process in the attempt to remove the fissionable isotope U‑235. The U.S. military calls this waste product that makes up 99% of the natural uranium "depleted uranium" or DU. DU is a highly toxic heavy metal with a radioactive half-life of four and one-half billion years and has 60% the radioactivity of natural uranium which is pure uranium. 

 

Health Hazards of Depleted Uranium

Military strategists say that, the appeal of depleted uranium in weapons has to do with its heavy weight and pyrophoric qualities, which cause it to burn like a cutting torch through steel when a DU penetrtor strikes a hard target. It is this pyrophoric quality that makes this material so devastating. The burning of DU creates respirable size radioactive dust that can be inhaled or ingested. Once in the body this radioactive and toxic material will have short and long term health effects, such as kidney problems, birth defects, neurological problems, cancers and death.

 

On October 30, 1943 the U.S. War Department proposed the "Use of Radioactive Materials as a Military Weapon," this 1974 declassified document to Brigadier General L. R. Groves had two  objectives against the enemy. 1) As a terrain contaminating material, the radioactive product would be spread on the ground and would affect personnel. 2) As a gas warfare instrument, the material would be ground into particles of microscopic size to form dust and smoke and distributed by a ground‑fired projectile, land vehicle, or aerial bombs. In this form it would be inhaled by personnel". The objective being to irradiate the "enemy" forces, the general population, flora and fauna. DU is been used in ammunition, casing for bombs, shielding on tanks, counter weights/nose cone and ground penatrators on missiles, fragments in cluster bombs, fragments in anti‑personnel mines and in other weapons.

The objective of the General Grove letter of 1943 is being realized today.

 

Depleted Uranium In Iraq

A 1991 report by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (AEC) stated that the tank ammunition alone used in Iraq during the Gulf war would contain over 50,000 pounds of Depleted Uranium and this was enough radioactive material to cause 500,000 potential deaths. Over 1,000

tomahawk cruse missiles have been used against Iraq since 1991. Recalculation of how much du has been used in Iraq needs to be reconsidered since du is used in so many other weapons other than tank

ammunition. Extensive Iraqi studies of depleted uranium effects on their soldiers and civilians have revealed an alarming increase of radiation related diseases since 1991, these studies are available from IDUST for peer review.

 

Europe

While in Europe during my presentations last month many people would ask me "How it is possible that polls in American show that 70% of Americans agree with the most recent bombing of Iraq?" My answer to them was; Americans believe that life is just a matter of personnel survival in a meaningless and unfriendly world, so it makes perfect sense to them to focus all their energy at living as  comfortably as possible and seeing to it that their children get the same opportunity, regardless of what

happens to others as a result. 

 

William Blum author of, "Killing Hope", says in respond to the same question asked by Europeans "It's the same reason the great majority of them support almost any foreign adventure of their government they've been taught very carefully since childhood that their government means well in their dealings with other countries, that our intentions are honorable, etc. It's the same with any other population – Americans aren't necessarily more brain washable and wrapped up in their personal lives than other people, but in ANY society, the powers-that-be can inculcate the majority with almost any beliefs they want. It is easier for them to do it in the US because the daily press and TV are less independent than in other countries. Just look at the British press -- every day almost they carry stories which question US actions abroad, but which don't make the US media."

 

Radiation Readings South of Basra, Iraq

On January 17th 2001, air exposure measurements were taken in southern Iraq, some 150 km south of Basra on the DMZ road to Saudi Arabia. Readings of a 30mm intact projectile found in the field recorded exposure rates of 2100-2450 counts/minute while background exposure rates of 7-21  counts/minute were measured in 6 control areas away from the destroyed targets where the projectile was found. See Appendix A for the complete report. The study team to Basra consisted of myself; and

Ramsay Clark, former US Attorney General and founder of the International Action Center (IAC).

 

This new evidence suggests that supposed DU projectiles contained at least traces of enriched uranium

waste which contain the isotope U-236 which is not found in depleted uranium, nuclear waste also contains plutonium which is 200,000 times more radioactive than uranium and the radio toxicity is one a million times higher. Laboratory tests of the projectile found in Iraq must be made before further conclusions can be drawn. A recent United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) study in Kosovo found traces of enriched uranium waste in the fragments of 30mm projectiles.

 

In the Life Magazine issue of Nov. 1995 on page 53, "Did exposure to depleted uranium cause illness" included, "Gulf War: shells jacketed with depleted uranium, a waste product from nuclear reactors," I thought this was a mistake when I first read it, and a few months earlier in Peace News July 26 1995, this article appeared, "Britain & Israel's Bombs" by Mike Holderness. Again an early reference to nuclear waste from reactors as being depleted uranium. " It is produced as a by-product of uranium enriched or by reprocessing spent fuel from a reactor".

 

Is it possible that the waste streams from both the gaseous diffusion process and nuclear waste from reactors have been mixed to use in weapons is being called depleted uranium?

 

What is Next?

DU is on the way out and tungsten in. Reparation and clean-up of contaminated countries. The following is a listing of countries now believed to possess DU weapons or have been contaminated by them: Argentina, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Bahrain, Bolivia, Bosnia, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Colombia, Croatia, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Iran, Iraq, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Luxembourg, Morocco, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Oman, Portugal, Panama, Pakistan, Poland, Puerto Rico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, South Korea, Sudan, Taiwan, Turkey, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States and Yugoslavia.

 

This issue threatens the stability of NATO. Weapons containing DU are considered illegal under international laws governing weapons of war. Weapons must meet these four criteria under existing international humanitarian and human rights law in armed conflict;

 

        1) weapons must be able to be limited in effect to the field of battle(the territorial limitation),                          

        2) weapons must be limited in effect to the time period of the armed conflict (the temporal limitation),                        

        3) weapons must not be unduly inhumane (the humanity limitation),

        4) weapons must not unduly damage the environment (the environmental limitation).

 

Weapons that contain DU are inherently illegal under this criteria. A resolution on weapons of mass destruction which includes du is now before the United Nations Human Rights Sub-commission in Geneva Switzerland.

 

What Can People Do

Ask your State Representative and the New Mexico Environment Department to help implement a clean-up plan and put a stop the testing and development of depleted uranium in New Mexico. Ask your public television station to show more independent coverage of the depleted uranium issue. Ask then to show  documentaries such as "Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq" by John Pilger and the French documentary, "The Invisible War: Depleted Uranium and the Politics of Radiation" by Martin Meissonni.

 

The issue of whether ones country has weapons containing depleted uranium (DU) can be approached from the directions of cause and effect. "Cause" weather your countries military possess munitions that contain DU and "Effect" if they do possess them are they testing them on weapon ranges they control? DU can be detected on these ranges by soil sampling and with radiation instruments. Also, are there increased incidence of cancers and other radiation and heavy metals health effects in the local

populations?

 

1 Ask the military if they possess munitions that contain DU? Ask weapons manufacturers if they produce weapons containing DU? Send a copy of your requests to your local representatives and the media.

2 Try approaching old friends from the armed forces.

3 Use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

 

Action

1. Take soil and water samples and other material (e.g. portable parts of tanks used as targets, projectiles and fragments) from practice ranges, and battlefields, take soil samples from areas hit by missiles and other weapons such as cluster bombs.                 

2. Look for increases in incidence of radiation and heavy metal related diseases in local populations. Seek out epidemiologists for help.

3. Seek out laboratory backups, geologists and other scientists who will test and analyze samples and locate radiation instruments that detect alpha radiation. A hand held German model MR9511 ABX-ALERT MULLER LEHRTECHIK, will cost around 480 Deutsche Marks ($265,00 US )..

 

*Appendix A

 

On January 17th 2001, 20 air exposure measurements were taken in southern Iraq, some 150 km south of Basra on the DMZ road to Saudi Arabia. Findings are listed below:

1. In Study Area 1, 6 readings of entry and exit holes on destroyed armored tanks were taken. Exposure rates of 60-120 counts/minute were recorded.

2. In Study Area 2, 4 readings of entry and exit holes on destroyed armored tanks were taken. Exposure rates of 500-1945 counts/minute were recorded.

3. 4 readings of a single 30mm intact projectile were taken. Exposure rates of 2100-2450 counts/minute were recorded.

4. Background exposure rates of 7-21 counts/minute were measured in 6 control areas away from the destroyed targets.

 

These results indicate the presence of both low and high level radiological pollution: Low level: radioactive waste of depleted uranium DU (U-238), which is a by-product/waste of the gaseous diffusion process that provides the U-235 for nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons.

 

High level: enriched uranium waste from nuclear reactors that contain U-236, and plutonium which is not found in DU.

 

US Air Force A-10 aircraft fired 940,000 30mm rounds of DU during combat in Iraq in 1991. When a DU penetrator strikes a target, up to 70% of the penetrator oxidizes into fumes and cigarette ash-like dust. The US military has admitted to using an overall total of 315 tones of DU for the weapons used during the Gulf War.

 

The study team to Iraq consisted of Damacio Lopez, Executive Director of the International Depleted Uranium Study Team (IDUST); and Ramsay Clark, former US Attorney General and founder of the International Action Center (IAC).

 

The radiation instrument used was a German-made hand-held MR 9511 ABX-Alert, manufactured by Muller Lehrtechnik. Regesters alpha, beta and gamma.

 

 

Mr. Lopez first became involved in depleted uranium research in 1985 when he organized Socorro residents in the investigation of potential health risks associated with nearby explosive testing at New Mexico Tech of depleted uranium weaponry.  Ultimately, the combination of his ongoing and relentless volunteer efforts and work-related responsibilities resulted in an invitation to serve as a consultant to the United Nations Sub-Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland in 1997.  He has also participated on a DU panel at the request of the NGO Committee on Disarmament at the United Nations in New York and a DU panel at the Hague Appeal for Peace in the Netherlands.  He is the executive director of the International Depleted Uranium Study Team.

 

The International Depleted Uranium Study Team (I-DUST) is a Non-governmental organization of researchers, activists, soldiers and scientists throughout the world dedicated to immediately stopping the use of depleted uranium (DU) in military weapons immediately.  Through coalition and alliances with other organizations IDUST works to inform, and coordinate community advocacy efforts around the globe to stop the proliferation and use of weapons containing DU.  IDUST promote health studies and medical care for soldiers and civilians exposed to DU and the clean-up and remediation of contaminated sites and the total elimination of DU in military weapons immediately.

 

 

Depleted uranium: a reply by the World Health Organisation

April 2001

Le Monde Diplomatique, Letters Section

 

The article headlined "Deafening Silence on Depleted Uranium" by Robert James Parsons is misleading and often inaccurate. WHO has certainly not "cast a veil of silence over the chemical and

radiological hazards of depleted uranium." On the contrary, WHO is concerned to know whether diseases in potentially exposed populations have increased. In search of answers, WHO has    undertaken a number of activities-publications, meetings and missions to affected countries-the results of which are reported to the press and public regularly and transparently.

 

The WHO Fact Sheet on Depleted Uranium (www.who.int/inf-fs/en/fact257.html) is consistent with all major reviews recently conducted on possible health effects of exposure to depleted uranium (DU). From the beginning, the scientific review process undertaken to produce the forthcoming WHO monograph on DU addressed both the chemical and radiological toxicities of DU.

 

In April WHO held a joint meeting with Iraqi experts to discuss how to proceed with a field investigation. A WHO fact-finding mission on DU and health in Kosovo took place in January; its report is available at www.who.it/docs/durptmar01.pdf

 

The radiation protection norms used by WHO are solidly rooted in science, i.e. about fifty years of epidemiological and biological studies of the effects of ionizing radiation published by the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (2000), the United States National Academy of Sciences Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation VI Committee (1999) and by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (2000).

 

The 1959 Agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is a standard United Nations inter-agency agreement and does not affect the impartial and independent exercise by WHO of its statutory responsibilities, nor does it place WHO in a situation of subordination to IAEA. More information on the WHO-IAEA Agreement is available at: http://www.who.int/inf-pr-2001/en/state2001-05.html

 

Sincerely yours,

Gregory Hartl

Spokesperson, World Health Organization.

 

 

WHO, Iraq Agree To Collaborate On Study

Agence France-Presse

4/13/01

 

Iraq and the World Health Organization have agreed to study the connection between depleted uranium and diseases found among Iraq's population following the 1991 GulfWar, the WHO announced  yesterday.

 

Baghdad says cancer rates have quadrupled in areas of southern Iraq that were bombed by the coalition of countries opposed to Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Representatives from Iraq and the WHO drew up a framework for future collaboration during talks in Geneva this week, according to WHO spokesperson Melinda Henry.

 

She added that the project will also include research on environmental health risks to explore other factors which may be responsible for increases in certain diseases. Iraq's Foreign Minister Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf told the UN Human Rights Commission yesterday that the use of depleted uranium by the United States and the United Kingdom during the 1991 campaign polluted water, land and air, and will persist for many generations. Proposals for projects and estimated costs from Iraq and the WHO are expected by the end of June

 

 

WHO Study of Depleted Uranium Urged

by EMMA ROSS

AP Medical Writer

5/21/01

 

GENEVA (AP) -- Several countries pressed the World Health Organization on Monday to urgently determine whether depleted uranium used in NATO ammunition in the Persian Gulf and Balkans conflicts could have made soldiers and civilians sick.

 

At the annual World Health Assembly, the first gathering of health ministers since the use of the munitions sparked a health scare across Europe earlier this year, Iraq said it has new evidence that a recent increase in cancers and birth defects among its people is linked to the weapons. Preliminary studies have failed to show a link, but countries are now turning to the WHO to conduct definitive research. Part of the problem is that many of the studies examined uranium mine or power plant workers, not soldiers and civilians in a war.

 

Urging the WHO to step up its involvement and settle the issue, France, Switzerland and Norway promised donations to help finance more relevant studies. ''We have taken due note of the recent studies which have concluded that, based on evidence currently available, no link can be identified, but we want to make sure that full clarity be obtained and investigated,'' the Norwegian delegate said, promising $100,000 toward the research.

 

But the American delegation urged that assessments of the levels of radiation released by the munitions be completed before deciding whether health studies are warranted. U.S. aircraft used munitions containing depleted uranium, a slightly radioactive heavy metal, during the 78-day air campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999, as well as in Bosnia in 1994 and 1995. The munitions, favored because they have the rare ability to pierce tanks, were also used during the 1991 Gulf War.

 

Concerns arose in several European countries earlier this year when Italy started studying the illnesses of 30 veterans of Balkans peacekeeping missions. Seven of the veterans died of cancer, including five from leukemia. Scores of other countries subsequently announced they would also begin screening their troops.

 

The 19-member NATO alliance has repeatedly denied the ammunition could have triggered cancer in soldiers. A NATO committee which acts as a clearinghouse about possible health risks has said no evidence has yet been found of a link between depleted uranium munitions and any increase in illness.

In addition, most independent medical experts say it is highly unlikely the low dose of depleted   uranium dust created by the bombings could have made people sick.

 

However, Iraqi Health Minister Dr. Omeed Mubarak told the gathering Iraq had new evidence that an increase in cancer and birth defects was linked to the weapons. ''In Iraq, the incidence of cancers has increased. We have also noted genetic deformations and diseases which did not exist in Iraq previously,'' Mubarak told his counterparts at the assembly. ''Our scientists have detected the presence of uranium in the bodies of those who were exposed.''

 

At a news conference after the meeting, Mubarak said that in December, Iraqi scientists found traces of

depleted uranium in the urine, blood and semen of Iraqis. ''We detected so many cases, I don't know exactly how many, but it was many of them,'' Mubarak said. ''That's why we are now asking WHO to cooperate with us, to examine these samples with us. We are not afraid of having any scientific discussion provided it is free from dirty political tricks,'' Mubarak said. An Iraqi researcher, Dr. Mona Kammas, asserted recent Iraqi experiments exposing rats to depleted uranium have shown damage to the liver, kidney, immune system and DNA, as well as malformation of the sperm. However, the findings have not been assessed by any independent experts.

 

 

 

Time to Ban Depleted Uranium Weapons Used in Gulf, Kosovo *

http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0204-02.htm

Baltimore Sun, 2/4/01

by Rahul Mahajan

 

[*Note: This may represent the only anti-DU op-ed in a major U.S. newspaper]

 

Some of the armor-piercing, tank-killing depleted-uranium ammunition used by the U.S. military was contaminated with highly radioactive substances, possibly including plutonium, according to a recent Swiss study. That simple scientific fact has serious political consequences for the United States.

 

More than 300 tons of DU were deposited in Iraq during the Gulf War, and perhaps another 25-30 tons more recently in Kosovo. Peace activists and U.S. military scientists for some time have expressed concerns about the health effects even of "uncontaminated" DU, including claims of links to severe birth defects, leukemia and the mysterious Gulf War Syndrome in U.S. veterans. Those concerns have always been dismissed by U.S. government officials, who say that DU is relatively harmless because of its low radioactivity.

 

These revelations of highly radioactive contaminants should be the last straw -- it's time for a worldwide ban on DU munitions.

 

The facts are straightforward: Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology discovered that DU munitions used in Kosovo were contaminated with U-236, an isotope of uranium not found in nature. Numerous other scientists, including former U.S. military biologist and retired colonel Asaf Durakovic, have found traces of U-236 in the urine of Gulf War veterans.

 

This means that DU cannot be naturally occurring uranium with the fissionable U-235 removed from it, as the U.S. government had claimed until recently. U-236 is created only in nuclear reactors and bombs; there is no other known source. The DU being used must have come from reprocessed reactor fuel. This means that "depleted" uranium almost certainly contains plutonium and other extremely carcinogenic substances.

 

A recently released book -- "Depleted Uranium: The Invisible War," by Martin Messonnier, Frederick Loore and Roger Trilling -- cites a 1999 Energy Department report stating that the Paducah plant "created depleted uranium potentially containing neptunium and plutonium." Paducah, Ky., is one of three places, all in the United States, where most of the world's DU is generated.

 

The U.S. government had managed to keep the issue mostly under wraps until the recent controversy caused by the deaths from leukemia of eight Italian veterans of Balkan operations (dozens of other Europeans have also died) and the Pentagon's sensational revelations that it used DU extensively in Bosnia in 1995.

 

Before that, the concern of Americans for the millions of Iraqis, Serbs and Kosovar Albanians potentially at risk was too slight to provoke serious action. The government's "concern" for its veterans, to which any serviceman in Vietnam exposed to Agent Orange can attest, was equally slight.

 

Government officials also used scientific arguments to obfuscate and confuse the issue.

 

Against the circumstantial evidence associating DU with a dramatic increase in birth defects and leukemia in southern Iraq, they pointed to the absence of any epidemiological study of DU-affected areas. They didn't, however, explain why they haven't conducted such a study.

 

Against the numerous claims of DU's health hazards from other scientists and the unexplained illnesses of tens of thousands of Gulf War veterans, they pointed to a handful of scientific studies that showed some veterans with DU in their bodies had not experienced any increase in health problems.

 

Against the acknowledgement in the U.S. Army's own field manuals of the hazards of DU on the battlefield, they maintained a stony silence.

 

All this must change. The serious study that veterans' groups and peace activists have asked for must begin. The government should make good on its covenant with its soldiers to look out for their well-being, as well as on its ethical obligation to assess the effects on innocent victims, such as the civilians of Iraq and Serbia.

 

We also need an international tribunal on DU. When Serbian President Kostunica contended that NATO's use of DU was a war crime, the United States scoffed. Can it do the same now that Dr. Doug Rokke, former head of the U.S. Army's DU assessment team, has agreed?

 

Standard U.S. tactics during recent wars, such as deliberate destruction of electrical grids and water-treatment facilities, clearly violate international law, but the "lone superpower" does not often allow itself to be investigated. On the DU issue, in the face of mounting international and domestic outrage, America may not have a choice,.

 

So far, the U.S. government and NATO have been hostile and negligent, refusing to destroy stocks of DU weapons. NATO spokesman Mark Laity explained, "The onus is on those who call ill health to prove it, rather than on us, who don't." Fractured English aside, this abdication of responsibility is reprehensible.

 

In addition to ordering studies immediately and compensating victims, we should learn that scientific arguments supporting the status quo must be examined critically. Although they are generally grounded in well-established fact and theory, they cannot be judged by the public without an effective guarantee of honesty and full disclosure.

 

As long as governments and corporations can get away with lying to us and hiding information on scientific questions, we will lack the basis for informed choice, which is vital to any notion of democracy.

 

Rahul Mahajan is a doctoral candidate in physics at the University of Texas at Austin. He can be reached at rahulm@mail.utexas.edu