Depleted uranium's deadly poison

Members of the 442nd Military Police Company of the New York National Guard remember the place in Iraq where they were stationed as a hellhole. "The place was filthy; most of the windows were broken; dirt, grease and bird droppings were everywhere," Sergeant Agustin Matos, a member of the Guard Unit, later recalled. "I wouldn't house a city prisoner in that place."

And there were frequent sandstorms. The dust would blow right into area where Matos and his fellow company members were based. Sergeant Hector Vega, a retired postal worker from the Bronx, who had served in the National Guard for 27 years, recalled that the smoke 'was so thick, you could see it.'

Both Matos and Vega, survived the Iraq War and returned to the US But all has not been well since then. They and other members of their company now suffer from a variety of illnesses: nausea, dizziness, shortness of breath, fatigue, joint pain and excessive urination, for starters.

The soldiers repeatedly asked the army to test them, but the army refused. So the soldiers went public and contacted the New York Daily News with their story. Early this year, the newspaper asked Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a former army doctor and medical expert, to conduct laboratory tests on the soldiers. The New York Daily News reported Durakovic's conclusion: "four soldiers 'almost certainly' inhaled radioactive dust from exploded American shells manufactured with depleted uranium."

The newspaper's investigation caught the attention of Senator Hilary Clinton (D-New York), who chastised the US Defence Depart-ment for not screening soldiers returning from duty in Iraq, "We can't have people coming back with undiagnosed illnesses," Senator Clinton said. "We have to have before and after testing progra-mmes for the soldiers." Under fire, the Pentagon reversed its decision and began to test some of the soldiers from the 42nd who had returned to the US.

But the testing may come too late not just for the soldiers of the 42nd but for other military personnel as well, both from the U.S. and other countries, who have served in wars where depleted uranium has been used indiscriminately.

Depleted Uranium (DU) refers to the uranium that's left after enriched uranium is separated from natural uranium so fuel can be produced for nuclear reactors. DU is an extremely dense metal that's used in armour penetrating shells and to strengthen tank armour. Military contractors like to use DU because it's so cheap. Indeed, governments will often make it available for free.

Those who defend the use of DU claim that most of the element's radioactive qualities have been removed before use. A growing number of critics charge, however, that mounting evidence suggests DU can pose serious health risks. CADU (The Campaign Against Depleted Uranium) reports that fifteen countries have used DU as part of their military arsenal. In addition to the US they include the United Kingdom, France, Greece, Israel, Turkey, Russia, Egypt, Bahrain, Thailand, Iraq, Pakistan, Taiwan, Kuwait and Israel. The US has had DU ammunition since the 1950s, but it's believed that Uncle Sam didn't use it until the Gulf War. DU has since been used in Bosnia in 1975, in the Balkan War of 1999 and, in Iraq last year.

This past July (2004), RAI, Italy's national television station, reported that 27-year old Luca Sepe, an Italian veteran of the Balkan War, was the "27th Italian victim" of the DU used in bombings over the Balkans. It's estimated another 267 Balkan veterans from Italy are currently sick with cancer. It hasn't been proven yet that the Italian soldiers died for exposure to DU, but, as is the case with the governments of the US and other countries using DU, the Italian government has stonewalled any investigation of the illnesses and death.

The International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW) noted in a report about what it label's as today's "Balkan Syn-drome," that the " Italian Minister of Defence, refuses to give compensation to their families (the Italian soldiers), let alone to admit that depleted uranium has played a role in these cases. Hardly any information is given to soldiers currently on missions abroad about the risks they are facing, and whoever complains is treated as a traitor and marginalised…."

In the 1991 Gulf War, DU was mainly used against Iraqi forces in the desert. In the Iraq War, the Pentagon used its radioactive arsenal in Iraq's suburban areas. According to Pentagon and United Nations statistics, the US used between 1,100 and 2,200 tons of shells containing DU during the Iraq War in March and April, 2003.

Today in Iraq, parts of spent DU shells and DU-contaminated debris have been found strewn on the streets of urban areas. Contaminated sites have been marked for cleanup, but at this late date, many of the contaminated sites have yet to be cleaned up. This has created a potential health hazard for many Iraqis.

The ICBUW reports that " to minimise the risk of exposure, foreign troops have been instructed to stay away from potentially contaminated areas as much as possible, or, at least, to wear respiratory protection and gloves when it is necessary to enter such sites.'

In May 2003, Scott Peterson, an Iraq-based staff writer for the Christian Science Monitor, took Geiger counter readings at several sites in Baghdad. Peterson found that the readings in some places registered more than a 1000 times the normal radiation levels. Three months later, the Seattle Post Intelligencer newspaper reported elevated radiation levels at six sites located between Basra and Baghdad.

Soon after the Iraq War, the World Health Organisation and other leading scientific organisations began to warn that children who come into contact with DU-contaminated shells faced health risks. Their warnings were based on expert analysis. "Children playing with soil may be identified as the critical population group, with inhalation and/or ingestion of contaminated soil as the critical pathway," the scholarly peer-reviewed Journal of Environmental Radioactivity reported in February 2003.

Since the Gulf War, the US military has denied that DU poses any health risks and has even tried to suppress the growing evidence that DU is a toxic killer that should be banned. As Ed Ericson, wrote in the May-June 2003 issue of E: The Environmental Magazine, the Pentagon, "has cashiered or attempted to discredit its own experts, ignored their advice, impeached scientific research into DU's health effects and assembled a disinformation campaign to confuse the issue."

The stonewalling began after the 1991 Gulf War, in which the US and British military forces fired about 350 tons of DSU at Iraqi tanks and other targets. After the war, Iraqi doctors began reporting shrapnel increases in cancer and birth defects in southern Iraq. The suspicion has been that DU may have caused the problems, but the Pentagon has claimed that the charge is unsubstantiated. During Saddam Hussein's regime, Iraqi medical researchers wanted to present their findings at international conferences but were prevented by the economic embargo of Iraq.

The US military insists that studies from the Gulf War have shown no long term problems from DU, It claims that its studies show that only soldiers who had shrapnel wounds from DU or who were inside tanks shot by DU shells and accidentally breathed radioactive dust were at risk. This would exclude any of the soldiers from the 42nd who have gotten sick after their Iraq tour.

But independent organisations say studies show DU can pose a health risk. In April, 2003, the Royal Society, Britain's leading scientific organisation, said that some soldiers could suffer from "kidney damage and an increased risk of lung cancer," depending on level of exposure.

The problem is no real studies of DU's long-term effects have been done. Scientists, in effect, have just begun to measure how much uranium is actually released when uranium-tipped ammunition hits its targets. Without these studies, no way can it be determined how much uranium dust soldiers are exposed to.

Until these studies are done and the findings released, it's outrageous that the US and Britain have not moved to de-contaminate the DU affected areas in Iraq and to implement a moratorium on the military use of DU. So far, we've seen a few modest steps in the right direction. In April 2003, Congre-ssman Jim McDermott (D-Washing-ton) introduced the Depleted Uranium (DU) Munitions Study Act of 2003 to the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill calls for studies of DU's health effects, requires the Environmental Protection Agency to identify sites in the US where DU munitions have been used in test firing and recommends study of the water/vegeta-tion/soil at these sites for possible DU contamination. The bill also requires the cleanup of contaminated sites.

In May of this year, another bill cited as the Depleted Uranium Screening and Testing Act of 2004 was introduced in the House. It would require the Pentagon to identify those members of the US armed forces who have been exposed during military service to DU and to test their health.

Meanwhile, the US General Accounting Office has undertaken a study of the health of DU exposure in veterans of the 1991 Gulf War, as well as the policies of the Department of Defence and the Department of Veteran Affairs in identifying and medically treating veterans exposed to DU.

Ironically, Germany, one of the strongest critics of the Iraq War, is sending a team of environmental experts to Iraq under the auspices of the UN. The team will evaluate the policies of Saddam Hussein, the UN embargo and the impact of the two invasions on Iraq's natural resources. The US and British governments have given their blessing to the mission. "That is significant because they will also face some critical questions, such as the impact of using depleted uranium munitions." Juergen Trittin, Germany's environmental minister, told the press.

These developments, however, fall far short of what needs to be done to deal with the DU issue. Meanwhile, soldiers and civilians will continue to die from the element's radioactive poison in the wars of the 21st century. This raises a pertinent question: Does this policy constitute a war crime?

Ron Chepesiuk, a South Carolina based journalist, is a Visiting Professor of Journalism at Chittagong University and a Research Associate with National Defence College.