Concerns about DU
Malignant Bullets: The A-10 Warthog fighter plane fires rounds made of
toxic depleted uranium.
The Pentagon used radioactive bullets in the Gulf War. Now the
controversial
weapon is being used in Yugoslavia.
By Jim Rendon
IN 1991, CASSANDRA GARNER was an MP serving in the Gulf War. Late in the
conflict, she took a trip with her unit to see the highway of death in
Basra,
where U.S. planes bombed thousands of Iraqi troops retreating from
Kuwait.
The aftermath, miles of charred bodies and twisted tank parts, became a
destination for souvenir-hunting American soldiers. Garner was curious.
That
curiosity may cut her life short.
Following her visit to the highway of death, Garner, now 29 and living
in
Berkeley, suffers from asthma, aching joints, muscle fatigue and
abdominal
and gynecological problems. She is unable to work and is not supposed to
lift
more than five pounds.
Garner and thousands of other U.S. troops were exposed to a fine
radioactive
dust--a residue left by munitions made from depleted uranium. Depleted
uranium weapons were used for the first time in the Gulf War, and
medical
researchers now suspect they are responsible for many health problems
plaguing Gulf War vets. Yet depleted uranium rounds are being dropped
from
U.S. planes again, this time in heavily populated Yugoslavia.
"The use of DU [depleted uranium] weapons is a war crime. It is a
radioactive
heavy metal. We are not cleaning it up. It has an effect on
noncombatants.
Using it is wrong," says Doug Rokke, a professor of environmental
science at
Jackson State University in Alabama and an Army health physicist who was
exposed to depleted uranium in the Gulf.
But while depleted uranium weapons were used primarily in sparsely
inhabited
desert areas during the Gulf War, they are falling now on parts of
Yugoslavia
to which 700,000 refugees one day hope to return.
"This is not the desert of southern Iraq, this is agricultural land that
is
mountainous and gets a lot of rainfall; ground water could be
contaminated,"
says Dan Fahey, a Gulf War veteran from Santa Cruz now working with
Swords to
Plowshares, a San Francisco veterans group.
Radioactive Residue
DEPLETED URANIUM is a byproduct of the refinement process that creates
highly
radioactive uranium 235, which is used in nuclear reactors. Though less
radioactive than its power-generating counterpart, depleted uranium
remains
radioactive for 4.5 billion years.
It is also a heavy-metal toxin like lead. Because depleted uranium is
nearly
twice as dense as lead, munitions made with it can pierce the armor of
tanks
and other war equipment. Though the army has experimented with depleted
uranium for decades, it was in the Gulf that the Department of Defense
found
out how deadly it could be.
"Depleted uranium weapons are extremely effective. They protected our
troops
and took out Iraqi tanks. It's a good weapon," says Lt. Col. Dian
Lawhon, the
Department of Defense's spokesperson on the Gulf War.
When a shell with a depleted uranium core hits a target, like a tank, it
not
only punches its way through the armor, but also ignites. Anywhere from
20 to
70 percent of the uranium core turns to dust as it burns through the
tank's
plating.
Rokke led a team of 15 soldiers who recovered some Iraqi tanks and
American
vehicles that were hit with depleted uranium shells during friendly-fire
incidents in the Gulf. The bodies, he says, were so black and badly
burned by
the uranium that the soldiers gave them a euphemistic name: crispy
critters.
Rokke and his unit were often in tanks just minutes after they'd been
hit.
"Inside the vehicles, you couldn't see three feet in front of you," he
says
of the thick radioactive dust. "We were in there for months."
Rokke's unit prepared the damaged equipment to be shipped back to the
United
States, scraping charred body parts from the inside of the tanks,
throwing
out badly destroyed equipment. They identified which tanks had been hit
with
the radioactive bullets and which hadn't. Though the unit was made up of
radiation specialists, they had no training or equipment that prepared
them
to deal with all the contamination they faced. "No one knew what to do.
We
made it up as we went along," he says.
Every man but one in his unit has experienced severe health problems and
Rokke himself has rashes, diarrhea, and respiratory and kidney problems.
In
1997, he received the results of tests performed by the Department of
Energy
showing he was exposed to 5,000 times the permissible radiation limit.
Environmental Fallout
EIGHT YEARS AFTER the Gulf War, Rokke and others in his unit were
finally
admitted into a Pentagon program studying the health effects of depleted
uranium exposure.
But the Army denies that there are any health problems that can be
specifically attributed to such exposure. In 1993, the military began a
health monitoring project for the 33 vets who were wounded by depleted
uranium shells, many of whom have depleted uranium shrapnel in their
bodies.
Lawhon says that while many of these vets have health problems, none of
them
can be attributed to their depleted uranium exposure.
"The preponderance of scientific evidence suggests that the way DU was
used
by the military in the Gulf War, that there is no tie between that and
health
concerns," Lawhon says.
But the Army and other government agencies considered the effects of
depleted
uranium before the Gulf War, Fahey says, particularly lung and bone
cancer.
Since the war, however, the Army has done nothing besides deny the
effects.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations published in 1966 characterize
depleted uranium as hazardous to the lungs if it is inhaled and
hazardous to
kidneys and bones if ingested. In a paper outlining the threat of
depleted
uranium to Kuwait's population in 1991, the British Atomic Energy
Authority
warned about the spread of radioactive and toxic contamination following
the
war. "DU can also be a danger if taken into the body by ingestion or
through
a cut. Furthermore, if DU gets into the food chain or water, then this
will
create a potential hazard," the authors wrote.
Depleted uranium emits alpha radiation, generally considered to be the
least
harmful type of radiation since it is unable even to penetrate clothing.
But
once in the body, this type of radiation can be very harmful, says Steve
Dean, a Superfund radiation expert with the EPA. The soft tissue in the
lung
is particularly vulnerable when particles are inhaled, he says.
Dr. Hari Sharma at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, tested
urine samples from U.S. vets and the local population in Basra, Iraq,
near
the site where the most depleted uranium weapons were used. Eight years
after
the fighting ceased, he was able to find detectable levels of depleted
uranium in the urine of both soldiers and residents.
While the Department of Defense estimates that only 300 servicemen
during the
Gulf War were exposed to depleted uranium, Fahey says the Pentagon's own
maps
show that hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops were moved through areas
that
were littered with uranium shells.
Sharma puts the number closer to 2 million possible exposures among
civilians
and soldiers, and he estimates that this group could develop between
20,000
and 100,000 additional cancers at the exposure levels he detected. And
the
toxin, he says, may have spread even further. In 1993, two years after
the
Gulf War ended, he says, a Kuwaiti scientist found detectable levels of
depleted uranium in the air more than 20 miles away from the
battlefield.
The potential for disaster in Yugoslavia is tremendous, Rokke says. "No
one
is going to know if children are playing in this stuff. There is no
protection. If we can't provide adequate medical attention here for our
own
troops, who is going to do it over there?"
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