The misnamed 'depleted' uranium is left after enriched uranium is separated from natural uranium in order to produce fuel for nuclear reactors. During this process, the fissionable isotope Uranium 235 is separated from uranium. The remaining uranium, which is 99.8% uranium 238 is misleadingly called 'depleted uranium'. While the term 'depleted' implies it isn't particularly dangerous, in fact, this waste product of the nuclear industry is 'conveniently' disposed of by producing deadly weapons.
Depleted uranium is chemically toxic. It is an extremely dense, hard metal, and can cause chemical poisoning to the body in the same way as can lead or any other heavy metal. However, depleted uranium is also radiologically hazardous, as it spontaneously burns on impact, creating tiny aerosolised glass particles which are small enough to be inhaled. These uranium oxide particles emit all types of radiation, alpha, beta and gamma, and can be carried in the air over long distances. Depleted uranium has a half life of 4.5 billion years, and the presence of depleted uranium ceramic aerosols can pose a long term threat to human health and the environment.
In the 1950's the United States Department of Defence became interested in using depleted uranium metal in weapons because of its extremely dense, pyrophoric qualities and because it was cheap and available in huge quantities. It is now given practically free of charge to the military and arms manufacturers and is used both as tank armour, and in armour-piercing shells known as depleted uranium penetrators. Over 15 countries are known to have depleted uranium weapons in their military arsenals - UK, US, France, Russia, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Pakistan, Thailand, Iraq and Taiwan - with depleted uranium rapidly spreading to other countries. Depleted uranium was first used on a large scale in military combat during the 1991 Gulf War, and has since been used in Bosnia in 1995, and again in the Balkans war of 1999. A sub-commission of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights appointed a 'rapporteur' to investigate the use of depleted uranium weapons among other types of weapons, after passing a resolution which categorised depleted uranium weapons alongside such as nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, napalm, and cluster bombs as a 'weapon of indiscriminate effect'.
Depleted uranium is also used in civilian products. For example, it is used as ballast in aeroplanes (having disastrous consequences in 1992 when an El-Al jet crashed into flats near Amsterdam - depleted uranium was also involved in the recent Stansted Korean Air crash -see CADU News issue 3 for full report). It is also used in some hospital equipment. The alarming Euratom (European Atomic Energy Community) objective which will allow the 'recycling' of low-level radioactive waste in to consumer goods has also raised concerns that depleted uranium may be used in this way.
As debate continues over Nato's use in Kosovo of depleted uranium munitions, one US Gulf veteran has recalled his experiences eight years ago.
Dr Doug Rokke is assistant professor of environmental science at Jacksonville State University, Alabama. He is also a major in the US Army Reserve, and in 1991 he served in the Gulf. His work involved helping casualties and cleaning equipment contaminated with depleted uranium (DU), used in the war in tank-busting weapons because of its high density. "The shell would hit an armoured vehicle", Dr Rokke told BBC Radio 4's Costing the Earth programme. "The uranium would catch fire and split into burning fragments".
About 70% of the round vaporised into dust, as fine as talcum powder. "When we climbed into vehicles after they'd been hit, no matter what time of day or night it was, you couldn't see three feet in front of you. You breathed in that dust."
Although the British Ministry of Defence and the Pentagon insist that DU weapons pose no special risk, Dr Rokke and some other veterans believe the munitions have made them ill, and that they also threaten civilians.
Two of Dr Rokke's clean-up team of about 15 people are now dead, he said. 'You're trashed with uranium' "It's very hard to look back at all those years of recommending medical care, and yet two of your best friends are dead because you assigned them to do a job." He was tested for uranium poisoning while working as head of a Pentagon project on DU in late 1994. "In September 1996 I was at the Pentagon,briefing on DU contamination and management. "An individual walked up to me and said: 'Dr Rokke, you're trashed with uranium'. I said: 'Thank you. I'd like some medical care'. Nothing happened. "Finally, in July 1997, I received a letter from the Department of Energy stating my own internal uranium contamination was 5,000 times that permissible.
"My lungs are trashed, I've got rashes, neurological problems. And I'm not the only one - this is what's happened to everybody else. "If they didn't provide any medical care for the project director, guess what they did for the average soldier. "And guess what they're going to do for all the civilians exposed in Kosovo and Serbia." Dr Rokke thinks he knows why neither the USA nor the UK, the two Nato members which used DU munitions in the Gulf, is providing medical care routinely to all veterans who may have been exposed. "They don't want to acknowledge the health effects, because they don't want to be accountable for the illnesses of the troops, or of the civilians in Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia."
DU munitions 'too effective' But he says many Nato governments tell their troops involved in cleaning vehicles and equipment contaminated with DU to wear full respiratory and skin protection. "They acknowledge the risk. But they don't want to be held accountable," he said. In Dr Rokke's view, DU munitions are too effective for their owners to surrender them. He cites a 1992 letter from the assistant secretary for the US Army. It says: "DU is fully supported by the Army as an item that gives the American soldier the winning edge on the modern battlefield". "No matter what we found and what we wrote", he said, "we could not disrupt the decision to use DU munitions in combat." US aircraft have been firing DU rounds over Kosovo.
From Costing the Earth which was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 2100 BST on 7 June. Subject: Depleted Uranium in Iraq and Gulf War Veterans : Professor Doug Rokke is also featured in Sanctions on Iraq Background Strategies published by CASI (more on CASI below).
In the areas where depleted uranium was used in Southern Iraq, a number of serious health problems have emerged among both soldiers and civilians. For instance, there has been a 66% increase in leukaemias and cancers in Southern Iraq. There has also been a marked increase in the numbers of children born with birth malformations, with horrific reports of 3 children in one family being born with severe congenital malformations. Maggie O'Kane, Felicity Arbuthnot, and journalists working with Desert Concerns, have all reported on the health crisis in Southern Iraq. The former reported a Dr Zenad Mohammed, from a hospital in Basra, herself pregnant, who was so terrified of giving birth to a severely malformed child, that she was doing her own monitoring of the problem. Her notes begin "In August we had three babies born with no head. Four had abnormally large heads. In September we had six with no heads, none with large heads and two with short limbs. In October, one with no head, four with big heads and four with deformed limbs or other types of deformities."
There are also large numbers of soldiers who served in the Gulf with Allied forces and in the Iraqi army, who are now suffering from mysterious illnesses - often referred to as Gulf War syndrome. Many of these illnesses reflect those seen among Iraqi children and civilians. For example, of the 697,000 US troops who served in the Gulf, over 90,000 have reported medical problems. Symptoms include respiratory, liver, and kidney dysfunction, memory loss, headaches, fever, low blood pressure. There are also defects reported among their new-born children. In a veterans community in Mississippi, 67% of the children were born with malformations. UK and US Gulf War veterans have tested positive for depleted uranium poisoning, although the governments of both countries have at every turn denied proper independent testing for all veterans.
For more information on depleted uranium and Gulf War Veterans see the National Gulf War Resource Centre's information at http://www.ngwrc.org/Dulink/du_link.htm or the Military Toxics Project: http://www.miltoxproj.org
Depleted uranium weapons were used most recently in the 1999 Balkans conflict, when US forces as part of NATO, fired an unknown quantity of depleted uranium rounds from the A-10 'Warthog' planes. The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), which was sent to the Balkans to monitor environmental pollution, were aware of depleted uranium but failed to specifically test for contamination (according to a Greenpeace scientist seconded to UNEP) in their first mission. Pekka Haavisto, chair of the Balkans Task Force of the UNEP said that during their second mission in August the team would look at sites where depleted uranium was used, and test for radioactivity and the presence of toxic heavy metals in the soil. The UN's confidential preliminary report described depleted uranium ammunition as "very dangerous and harmful".
According to a recent report by journalist Felicity Arbuthnot, Ministry of Defence personnel in Kosov@ have been warned to stay clear of areas which have been affected by depleted uranium weapons unless wearing full radiological protective clothing. Yet refugees returning to the area have been kept in the dark about possible consequences of contamination. The National Radiological Protection Board has also issued a warning to people travelling to Kosov@ about the dangers of deplted uranium, urging press and relief workers to avoid disturbing contaminated areas. However, this contradicts the usual claim that depleted uranium is no more radioactive than natural uranium in drinking water. A report on the environmental impact of the war, was prepared for the European Commission by the Regional Centre for Central and Eastern Europe, in Budapest. It stated that radioactive air pollution has been detected in some areas of Yugoslavia, and says of depleted uranium that it is "perhaps the most dangerous of the carcinogenic and toxic substances" that were released during the bombing. This was scarcely reported in our press, appearing in the Financial Times (22/7/99) and nowhere else as far as we are aware.
In the areas where depleted uranium was used in southern Iraq, a number of serious health problems have emerged among both soldiers and civilians. For instance, there has been a 66% increase in leukaemias and cancers in southern Iraq. There has also been a marked increase in the numbers of children born with birth malformations, with horrific reports of 3 children in one family being born with severe congenital malformations (see Depleted Uranium in Iraq)
There are also large numbers of soldiers who served in the Gulf with Allied forces and in the Iraqi army, who are now suffering from mysterious illnesses - often referred to as Gulf War syndrome. Many of these illnesses reflect those seen among Iraqi children and civilians. For example, of the 697,000 US troops who served in the Gulf, over 90,000 have reported medical problems. There are also defects reported among their new-born children. In a veterans community in Mississippi, 67% of the children were born with malformations.
The area of southern Scotland used to test depleted uranium weapons (see Testing in Britain) has the highest rate of childhood leukaemia in Scotland. The residents of the flats in Amsterdam into which the El Al jet crashed in 1992 have also reported mysterious illnesses (the jet had depleted uranium counterweights - see CADU News issue 3).
However, although we can point to these facts and statistics in relation to the use of depleted uranium, it is impossible to prove a causal link. Just as it is impossible for scientists to prove a causal link between the leukaemia clusters around Sellafield nuclear power station, and radioactivity released from the plant. It is not scientifically possible to categorically state that depleted uranium has caused any particular illness in any person - certainly, in relation to the Gulf War, there were many other 'compounding' factors - other toxics present which could be linked to illnesses.
What we can do though, is examine the toxic and radioactive properties of depleted uranium, and the potential adverse effects resulting from these - and place this alongside reported illnesses where depleted uranium has been used. Like other heavy metals, depleted uranium is chemically toxic: it causes chemical poisoning of the body, particularly to kidneys and tubules. However, it is its radiological properties which cause the most concern. On impact, depleted uranium burns and oxidises to form tiny ceramic aerosol particles. These particles are between 1 and 5 microns in size, which means they are easily breathed in. As they are ceramicised depleted uranium, they are insoluble - they do not dissolve in bodily fluids, and so are not easily flushed through the body and may remain lodged in the lungs or other organs for years. It is also important to note that these particles can be carried in air, by wind, or can be disturbed by movement of vehicles or people. Tests have shown they can be carried for at least 26 miles.
The Ministry of Defence, government scientists, among others, claim that as depleted uranium is only of low level radioactivity, it is not particularly dangerous. In fact, it is this type of thinking which is dangerous, as they use a radioactive model based on the effects of gamma and beta radiation, external to the body. Depleted uranium, however, is an alpha particle emitter. Of all the types of radiation alpha particles when released internally (i.e. breathed in) are the most dangerous to living cells. They are the biggest and most heavy of the three types of radiation. Because they can be stopped by a piece of paper they are sometimes considered less dangerous than beta (which need a centimetre of aluminium to stop it.) or gamma (which need several feet of lead to stop it), but that is only when they are outside of the body. As the Low Level Radiation Campaign and other scientists have proved, an alpha source next to living tissue can severely damage the DNA in the nucleus of the cell, cause mutations and later cancers. On its way from the lungs to the bladder the depleted uranium spends time in the blood and could get lodged in a capillary or tissue anywhere in the body and cause cancer there. This is why depleted uranium is so dangerous if it is in the body: particularly if it stays there for many years.
Government scientists claim that the radioactivity dose received from inhaling depleted uranium would not exceed the minimum radiation dose permitted. However, this is because they take the effects of alpha particles in one small section of body tissue, and average the harm out over the entire body. Yet as shown above, the damage to this small part can lead to cancers and mutations affecting the whole body. The expected health effects of chronic lung burdens of depleted uranium include fibrosis of the irradiated lung tissue, lung cancer, eventual entry of depleted uranium into blood over subsequent years, with effects on liver and kidney, together with incorporation of depleted uranium into bone. When in bone, the uranium can irradiate the sensitive stem cells which form the white blood cells, especially the monocytes. Clinical manifestations of this toxicity include kidney and liver damage, anaemia, depressed cellular immune system and general heavy metal poisoning. Uranium can pass the placenta causing congenital malformation and can be carried to the infant in mothers milk. It can damage the ovum and sperm causing genetic damage.
Therefore, when we look at the properties of depleted uranium, the effects it could have on the body, and compare this with the medical problems among depleted uranium workers, Gulf veterans, Iraqi civilians and so on, we cannot rule out depleted uranium as one of the causes.
There are a number of other groups around the world fighting on the depleted uranium issue - this is not an exhaustive list of contacts:
Other campaigning groups working on related issues: