by Alexander Smotrov
aleksmot@yandex.ru



The УCampaign Against Depleted UraniumФ Ц this is the name of the organization located in Manchester, UK, which is working since 1999 for global ban on the manufacture, testing and use of the depleted uranium weapons. But it is also the term with which we can describe the public debate in Europe early this year concerning the use of these weapons and their alleged harmful influence on human organism.


Depleted uranium as it is

Depleted uranium (DU) is a substance that is left over when most of the highly radioactive isotopes of uranium are removed for use as nuclear fuel or nuclear weapons.

Depleted uranium has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, and the presence of DU ceramic aerosols can pose a long term threat to human health and the environment.

In the 1950Тs the US Department of Defense became interested in using DU in weapons because of its extremely dense, pyrophoric qualities and because it was cheap and available in huge quantities. Now it is given practically free of charge to the military and arms manufacturers and is used both as some Abrams tank armour and in armour-piercing munitions Ц depleted uranium penetrators. Because of its ability to punch through armour, DU is regarded as a highly effective anti-tank weapon. Depleted uranium is also used in civilian products, for example in some hospital equipment or as ballast in airplanes.

Over 15 countries in the world are known to have DU weapons in their military arsenals Ц the USA, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Pakistan, Thailand and Taiwan Ц with depleted uranium rapidly spreading to other countries.

Depleted uranium was first used by the American troops on a large scale in military combat of the1991 Gulf War and during NATO operations in Bosnia in 1995 and in the Balkans in 1999.

According to the survey about DU done by the Canadian TV-corporation CBC, in the Gulf War the US fired about one million DU rounds, leaving 1,400 wrecked radioactive Iraqi tanks on the battlefield. The US forces also fired 31,000 rounds of DU at Yugoslav armoured vehicles and tanks during the 78-day Kosovo War in 1999 and 10,800 DU rounds during combat in Bosnia in the framework of the air campaign in 1994-95.

While most scientists say the level of radioactivity in depleted uranium is lower than naturally occurring uranium in the environment, and large exposures would be needed to cause a significant increase in the risk, DU can nonetheless be dangerous once it has been used on the battlefield.

In this case DU can be seen both a chemical and toxic waste hazard, and a radiation hazard. If a chemical form of DU that soluble in water is present, then the DU can be either absorbed by breathing or ingestion causing heavy metal chemical toxic effects in the kidneys. If any area is contaminated by uranium oxide, then the hazard comes from inhaling the uranium oxide dust. The dust could be deposited in the lungs and could, over a long period, be a cause of lung cancer. Most scientists say that large exposures would be needed to cause a significant increase in the risk.

Actually, there has been neither scientifically proven evidence nor militariesТ acknowledgement that there is a direct links between DU weapons and so-called УGulf War syndromeФ and УBalkan syndromeФ.

The US Department of Defense and the UK Ministry of Defence accept that the resulting dust can be dangerous and admit that the troops entering vehicles hit by DU weapons need to take precautions. On the other hand, they say that the dust soon ceases to be a significant problem and it is unlikely to move far from the site of the explosion.

The American and British military authorities say that any risk from DU comes from its toxicity as a heavy metal, and that its radioactivity is negligible. Several years ago a report by the US Army Environmental Policy Institute said: УIf DU enters the body, it has the potential to generate significant medical consequences. The risks associated with the DU in the body are both chemical and radiological. Personnel inside or near vehicles struck by DU penetrators could receive significant internal exposures.Ф

However, war veterans point out that absence of evidence is not the same thing as evidence of absence, and they believe their own experience means there is serious cause for concern. Doug Rokke, a former US army colonel who was sent to the Gulf in 1991 to advise on cleaning up radioactive debris. He said to BBC World Service that almost every member of the team he took with him is now seriously ill, and three have died of lung cancer.

The doctors found surprisingly high levels of DU in the urine of the few Gulf veterans if so much time had passed since they were exposed. Former US army serviceman Dr Asaf Durakovic, said he had found a significant presence of DU in two thirds of the 17 veterans he had tested. УSome of those particles were inhaled, and if they were too big to be absorbed they stayed in the lungs, and there they can present a risk of cancer,Ф he said.


SoldiersТ deaths speed up the anti-DU campaign

The scandal broke out after the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) experts figured out after their research conducted in November 2000 that in some places in former Yugoslavia the radiation level was 3,000 times as much as maximum permissible concentration. Moreover, all the deaths of NATO servicemen began to be linked with the DU weapons use in Iraq and in Yugoslavia.

Eight Italians, five Belgians, two Dutchmen, two Spaniards, a Portuguese and a Czech national have died after serving in the Balkans. All of them were diagnosed with different forms of cancer, such as lung, skin, brain and blood cancer. Five French soldiers also contracted leukemia, but the French defence ministry said that they had tested negative for depleted uranium in their urine.

Italy Ц following the deaths from leukemia of its Balkan veterans Ц asked NATO to start an investigation and even set up a moratorium on the use of DU weapons, at least until they can be proved safe. Germany accused the US of misinforming about DU weapons saying that there should had been clear instructions and precautions about how to handle with such munitions to avoid harmful consequences. German defence minister also assumed that there had been not only DU but also small amounts of radioactive uranium in the weapons. Meanwhile, Britain and the USA were likely to resist strongly any attempt for these weapons to be withdrawn from service as demanded by the Italian, German and then Belgian and Dutch governments.

NATO denied the fact that DU caused health problems, but in the face of mounting public fears, especially among member countries, decided to set up a special committee to investigate the concerns raised in several European countries, which, in their turn, launched their own investigations. The vital topic was put on the agenda during the regular meeting of NATO ambassadors.

The European Parliament called for a ban on the use of depleted uranium and its members voted for the special resolution about it after an emergency debate in Strasbourg. During the debate EuropeТs foreign and security policy chief, Javier Solana, who was NATO Secretary-General during the Balkan conflicts, said he had seen no evidence of a link between the use of DU and cancer. Mr Solana also pointed out that the high profile controversy over the use of DU risked obscuring what was achieved in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Pressing by the public, NATO announced in mid-January 2001 a range of measures to try to calm concerns over DU munitions. The AllianceТs Secretary General, George Robertson, insisted that fears are misplaced and said that there would be no suspension of the use of the weapons. The US Secretary of Defense at that moment William Cohen said at a Pentagon briefing: УWe have found no scientific link between depleted uranium and leukemia as some have alleged.Ф

The UNТs nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), called for a more extensive survey of sites in the Balkans hit by NATO shells containing depleted uranium, in addition to the UNEP inspection in November 2000. BBC World Service quoted the IAEA spokesman saying that checks on at least 30 sites were required for a satisfactory survey to determine whether debris from the shells could cause cancer.

UNEP said it was disturbed to find shells lying on the ground and children playing nearby. The agency said more needs to be done to inform the local population of potential risks. One of the paradoxical things that there were no reports about harmful influence of DU shells on civilians in the areas where they had been used. There were explanations that the DU weapons are most dangerous just after their explosions and thatТs why it is soldiers who are the main victims, not the civilians. The World Health Organization reported that its studies in Kosovo had shown no rise in the rates of leukemia among the Albanian population in the province, but those targeted areas should be cordoned off due to remaining uncertainties.

As for Iraq, there were numerous appeals from it about DU is responsible for a dramatic increase in cancer and birth defects in the country since the Gulf War. But such statements had not received much attention until European soldiers who served with NATO in the Balkans started making similar complaints.

Iraq also asked for an international inquiry into the use of depleted uranium weapons and the World Health Organization announced in mid-January 2001 that it was planning to make such a study. One British newspaper in this connection said bitterly that Europe was now paying the price for ignoring a decade of evidence that depleted uranium is dangerous.


Media coverage of the DU topic

The media coverage of this problem looked like a burst. It hadnТt been breaking news for quite a long period though the problem had been exist since early 90s, but suddenly it began to be covered on everyday basis in all the countries around the world. Press-conferences were organized, hundreds of experts were interviewed, life-stories of war veterans were put on the front-pages, but after some time public interest for this topic decreased as fast as it rose. I found using the searching machine the number of news items about DU-topic published by the Russian second biggest news agency RIA УNovostiФ Ц the trend is almost the same in all world media:



Though Russian officials said that initial screening had found no illness among its soldiers who served in the Balkans, the interest to this problem in Russia was quite big. And some clever journalists could notice that the Russian Ministry of Defense tried to use the situation and even warmed it up in order to switch journalistsТ attention from the Chechen war and sunken submarine УKurskФ to this problem. But after some time all the media lost their interest to the depleted uranium matters.

Now you can hardly find any article or even news item about depleted uranium in the УconventionalФ media. But the problem still exists and there are some news, but who cares!.. Meanwhile, the specialized web sites, like CADU, keep in touch with all the news about the topic. For example, you can find out that Уa team from the World Health Organization arrived in Baghdad on August 28th, 2001 to lay the groundwork for research on a possible link between cancer and depleted uranium used by US-led forces in the 1991 Gulf War.Ф We can also learn that Уefforts by the US/UK to keep depleted uranium off the agenda of the UN Sub-Commission on Protection and Promotion of Human Rights failed this August as the Sub-Commission clearly decided that depleted uranium weaponry qualify as weapons of mass destruction <Е> In the final debate on the draft the US and UK tried to urge that DU is a СconventionalТ weapon and therefore СlegalТ. So the debate really shows that these two countries are backed into a corner, and the rest of the world accepts that DU is and always was illegal.Ф

Nonetheless, the absence of media-coverage does not mean that the problem has disappeared. Now the US wage new war in Afghanistan. Who knows, maybe in several years we will hear about УAfghan syndromeФЕ



Sources and references

1. The home-page of the organization УCampaign Against Depleted UraniumФ http://www.members.gn.apc.org/~cadu
2. The materials about depleted uranium from BBC World Service http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world
3. The home-page of the Office of the Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of Defense (Personnel and Readiness) for Gulf War Illnesses, Medical Readiness and Military Deployments http://www.deploymentlink.osd.mil/current_issues/du_in_gulf.shtml
4. The materials about depleted uranium from CBC Corporation http://www.cbc.ca
5. The materials about depleted uranium from Russian News Agency RIA УNovostiФ http://www.rian.ru