Effects of modern conventional weapons using Depleted Uranium

Address on Anzac Day, 25 April 2003, St Andrews on the Terrace, Wellington

The alarm may at last have been raised. In the 2 April edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Brian Vastag wrote that, although the US government claims it is safe, the consensus among US medical researchers is that not enough is understood about DU’s acute and long-term effects.

Depleted Uranium Munitions Study Act On 27 March, US Democrat Congressman Jim McDermott introduced legislation entitled the Depleted Uranium Munitions Study Act. Co-sponsored by six other Democrat members of Congress, this requires studies on the health and environmental impact of DU munitions, as well as cleanup and mitigation of depleted uranium contamination at sites within the United States where DU has been used or produced.

McDermott, a medical doctor, has been concerned about this issue since veterans of the Gulf War started experiencing unexplained illnesses. His concern deepened after visiting Iraq, where Iraqi pediatricians told him that the incidence of severely deformed infants and childhood cancers had skyrocketed. He said: ‘Depleted uranium is toxic and carcinogenic and it may well be associated with elevated rates of birth defects in babies born to those exposed to it. We had troops coming home sick after the Gulf War, and depleted uranium may be one of the factors responsible for that. The need for these studies is imperative and immediate. We cannot knowingly put the men and women of our armed forces in harm’s way.’

Video conference on ‘Depleted Uranium: the Facts’ On 8 April, the US Embassy here in Wellington felt sufficiently pressured by critical media reports to arrange a video conference on ‘Depleted Uranium: the Facts’, which I attended. We were linked up with a retired British Army Colonel called Terry Taylor, who is President of the US office of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. There was no representative from the State Department! He was a total apologist for US policy and DU. The Embassy issued copies of the 14 March Pentagon briefing referred to earlier, which stated that independent studies conducted by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) Office, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Kingdom Royal Society have found no cause and effect between DU use and illnesses.’

The WHO’s April 2001 study states: ‘General screening or monitoring for possible depleted uranium-related health effects in populations living in conflict areas where depleted uranium has been used is not necessary’. None of these dismissive reports, however, have involved original field work or tested victims exposed to DU. Their information is based upon simulated models and they refer only to studies made on workers exposed to low concentrations of uranium dust in uranium ore. They have taken as a ‘given’ the dose-limits set by International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) and have applied them to internal as well as external radiation, ignoring the more recent research in radiation biology and human epidemiology. It is now known that even one particle of alpha radiation can cause damage at a cellular level. Also, the WHO is compromised by a 1959 agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency, whereby it is required to consult with the IAEA over any study into health effects of radioactivity, and ‘adjust’ any findings’ by mutual consent’. This may help to explain why the WHO study concludes by emphasising the need for further studies on kidney damage from DU, shifting attention away from its radioactivity to its toxicity.

I managed to ask several questions, which put Col Taylor on the back foot for a while. He kept on repeating that it is a ‘discriminate’ weapon – but admitted that more studies were needed on long-term effects. He also claimed DU was only being used against armoured vehicles, which was not true. Afterwards, I emailed a list of further questions to him: to date I have had no reply.

Published information about health hazards of DU Last week, the Royal Society – apparently furious that the Pentagon had claimed it had its backing – felt obliged to issue a media release highlighting recommendations from its study last year into the health hazards of DU. These included the need for DU fragments to be removed, and areas of contamination around impact sites to be identified and ‘made safe’. The Pentagon has no plans for such a clean-up. However, the UK government has just announced that it will publish details of where and how much DU was used by British forces, will help clear up DU munitions, and hoped that the US would do the same. Also, the Royal Society called for long-term sampling of water and milk in areas where DU munitions have been used. This may have been prompted by a recent UNEP report ‘Depleted Uranium in Bosnia and Herzegovina’ that DU has been found in drinking water seven years after it was fired, and that other water sources should be used.

At the same time, the New Scientist magazine weighed in with an editorial which argued that US and UK government statements ‘imply a level of knowledge that we simply do not have.’ A feature article highlighted Alexandra Miller, a radiobiologist at the US Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, who is due to complete an investigation into DU for the Pentagon next year. Already she has some insight into the damage it can do. Last year she showed that depleted uranium from pellets implanted in rats dispersed all over the animals’ bodies, turning up in bones, muscles, kidneys and liver. Rats breeding six months later had fewer offspring than normal.

Her latest study reveals something even more unusual. When human bone cells are exposed to DU, some suffer immediate genetic damage. Even more than a month after the DU was removed, new cells were forming with broken chromosomes or other genetic damage. So the DU had a delayed effect.

More alarming still, she found that tiny amounts of DU, too small to be toxic and only mildly radioactive, cause more genetic damage in cells than either the toxicity or radiation alone could explain. Her latest results corroborate a tentative report by the Royal Society, which suggests that the toxicity and radioactivity of DU reinforce one another in an unknown way, to the extent that more than eight times as many cells suffer genetic damage than predicted. Thus, the health risk of DU could be grossly underestimated. This could have huge implications for the nuclear industry.

One person who is convinced DU-induced genetic damage causes real health problems is Albrecht Schott, a biochemist who recently retired from the Free University of Berlin. The day before the US, UK and Australian armed forces invaded Iraq, he published a study carried out with scientists at the University of Bremen. The first of its kind, it looked at genetic damage in the white blood cells of 16 former soldiers who believed they had been exposed to DU in the 1991 Gulf war or in the Balkans. They found that damage to chromosomes in the white blood cells was on average five-and-a-half times higher in the veterans than the rest of the population.

Kenny Duncan, one of the soldiers tested, was 21 when he served with the Royal Corps of Transport, helping to shift Iraqi tanks destroyed by DU shells in the 1991 Gulf War. He believes his exposure to DU has left his family with a painful legacy. All his children were conceived after he was exposed. His eight-year-old son suffers constant headaches and has deformed ears and toes. His two other children also have deformed toes and both suffer bowel and bladder problems. One is also partially deaf.

Dr Schott reckons the reason is likely to be DU: ‘The high levels of genetic damage we observed do not occur naturally. I believe alpha radiation from DU to be the cause of these chromosome aberrations. Uranium molecules in the blood can travel to every part of the body, including the areas where sperm and eggs are. This, and the presence of chromosome aberrations, increases the probability of cancer and other genetic conditions significantly. They lead to a higher probability of genetic damage in the person’s babies and then damage can be passed on to the children’s children.’ A spokesman for the UK Ministry of Defence dismissed the study: ‘We consider the tests undertaken in Germany neither well thought out nor scientifically sound.’

Anxiety among veterans of first Gulf War Dr Chris Busby, who represents British Gulf War veterans on the MoD’s Depleted Uranium Oversight Board, fears another outbreak of ‘Gulf War Syndrome’. On 3 April he wrote: ‘Recent calls to ‘unite behind our boys’ sound hollow in the ears of many veterans of the first Gulf War. They were not protected by the Ministry of Defence; their symptoms, and even deaths, were dismissed as of ‘psychological origin’. Their calls to have themselves tested for the residue of the DU weapons they had been exposed to were denied and are still being blocked. Many have paid from their pensions to have their blood and urine tested abroad, no longer trusting government laboratories. We must all press for the abandonment of DU weapons, which are a form of indirect chemical and nuclear warfare and certainly represent a weapon of mass destruction.’ A motion submitted by Dr Busby to the DU Oversight Board to introduce a range of warnings before, and treatment after, the war was voted down on 11 March.

Some recognition of the dangers of DU Other straws in the wind include the fact that, during the 1991 Gulf war, US army guidelines recommended surgeons just to ‘do their best’ to remove DU fragments from personnel injured in friendly fire incidents. Today, surgeons are required to be “aggressive” in removing any fragments, even if this means disturbing surrounding tissue.

On 6 April, UNEP recommended that a scientific assessment of sites targeted with DU munitions be conducted in Iraq as soon as possible. UNEP field studies of sites in the Balkans following use by the US military in 1999 were the first international field assessments of how DU behaves in the environment. UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer said: ‘An early study in Iraq could either lay fears to rest or confirm that there are indeed potential risks, which could then be addressed. This is especially important to protect human health in a post-conflict situation.’ By the end of April, UNEP will publish a ‘desk study’ on the Iraq environment that will provide the necessary background information for conducting field research. This research will examine risks to groundwater, surface water, drinking water resources, waste management and other environment-related infrastructure, factories and other potential sources of toxic chemicals. [Among Iraq’s strategic resources it should not be forgotten that, in addition to having the second largest oil reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia, it has the most extensive river system in the Middle East, including the Tigris and Euphrates.]

New Zealand Defence Force personnel going to Iraq Last Tuesday 22 April, Foreign Minister Phil Goff announced that New Zealand will provide up to 15 Defence Force personnel to assist the UN with clearing unexploded mines and other munitions in Iraq. It is vital that these personnel are fully briefed about the hazards of DU, and are equipped with the latest respirators and other protective clothing to minimise the risk to them of inhaling or ingesting DU dust. I also urge the Government to offer full support to the UNEP proposal for a proper field study in Iraq, and if possible to provide participants. Also, there is an urgent need to sponsor a UN General Assembly resolution reflecting these needs.

Concluding thoughts on Anzacs and the impact of modern weapons To summarise, today we have been remembering the Anzac landings at Gallipoli, and all those who have given their lives in the service of this country since then. My fear is that, had Depleted Uranium been used at Gallipoli, there might be widespread genetic deformities among the surviving troops’ descendants, and the land could still be contaminated. I think it is highly significant that Israel, which first used DU in its invasion of Lebanon in 1982, withdrew it from service in the late 1980s apparently because of fears of ‘fouling their own backyard’. Note that the US and UK have only used DU in operations far from their own territory.

The struggle of the New Zealand nuclear test veterans for justice and compensation continues. DU shows all the signs of being a similar problem, where there is a clear US and British military and political vested interest in avoiding or suppressing evidence of health effects. If such effects are proved, there will be public outrage and international pressure to outlaw and withdraw DU munitions, followed by the prospect of paying huge compensation.

However, I suspect that DU is not the only culprit. Let us be in no doubt that the US military industrial complex is off the leash and on the march, bankrolling both Republicans and Democrats. With US military spending now as much as the next eight countries combined, the pressure to test new weapons is relentless and growing. Iraq has been the latest testbed, and we may never know what other new weapons were put through their paces there.

The circumstantial evidence is growing that, despite claims of precision guidance, some of the latest weapons have become too destructive and polluting, not just for the defeated military and innocent victims, but for the so-called ‘victorious’ military forces and other personnel brought in afterwards to help clear up the mess. Perhaps ironically this could generate a new and powerful way to curb aggressive, illegal war and enforced regime change: namely, that the US administration and its British accomplice find that, through the revelations of the horrific long-term health effects, they cannot find enough citizens of the calibre required to fight their wars for them.

* Commander Green now coordinates the Peace Foundation’s Disarmament & Security Centre in Christchurch with his wife, Dr Kate Dewes.