FACTS FROM A UNITED NATIONS REPORT OF DEPLETED URANIUM
Experiments using DU in armor piercing weapons began in the late 1950s in the United States and the USSR,
DU weapons were reportedly used for the first time in combat in 1974 by the Israeli army under United States supervision during the Yom Kippur war. The experiments resulted in mass production of DU munitions in the United States.
The United States Department of Energy is reported to have a stockpile of some 500,000 metric tons accumulated ever since the earliest atomic projects of the 1940s.
DU is also used for protection of military vehicles like tanks and in ammunition designed to penetrate armor plate. In fact, almost the entire American arsenal of current armor-piercing bullets is made of DU.
DU ammunition was first used on a wide scale during the Gulf war in 1991.
The Pentagon has officially confirmed that at least 320 metric tons of DU were left behind on the battlefields of Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. At least 350 metric tons of DU fragments still lie in the battlefields and more in the form of aerosols from the explosions. These will continue to pollute the ecosystem of the Gulf for generations.
A British Atomic Energy Authority (AEA) report declares that some 500,000 will die before the end of the century from the radioactive debris left in the desert.
DU shells were also used by the United States forces in the Balkans. This was confirmed in a United States Department of Defense news briefing on 3 May 2001.
There is every likelihood that DU shells have also been used in Afghanistan.
According to United States Government documents, short-term effects of high doses of DU can result in death, while long-term effects of low doses have been implicated in cancer.
Although DU is less radioactive than 235U or plutonium, there is no threshold level of radiation below which an exposed person is safe from radiation damage. Besides, DU also remains an extremely harmful substance with the chemically toxic properties of many heavy metals.
The real problem with DU weapons arises when it is fired and when upon combustion the DU particles are formed and aerosolized. Risks associated with transporting, storing and handling intact DU munitions and armor during “peacetime”, simply do not address the real issue of health risks to man and environment after DU munitions have been fired, thus dispersing radioactive DU particles which can be inhaled or ingested.
DU has been blamed for affecting health in numerous cases. A few are mentioned here:
1. Nearly 199,000 veterans, more than one in four who served in the Gulf from August 1990 to July 1991, were reported to have filed disability claims, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. The illnesses complained of include chronic muscle and joint pain, anxiety, fatigue and memory loss, collectively termed Gulf War Syndrome.
2. DU is cited as the most likely source of the increased number of birth deformities and cancer in Iraq following the Gulf war in 1991. Cancer appears to have increased between seven and ten times and deformities between four and six times;
3. Dr. Siegwart Horst-Gunther, President of the International Yellow Cross, took pictures between 1993 and 1995 of birth deformities in Iraq. All these deformities are said to be associated with the use of DU;
4. Dr. Hari Sharma, a Canadian chemist, has measured uranium 100 times the average concentration in the urine of British Gulf war veterans more than nine years after the war. This was caused by the inhalation of DU particles.
5. A sergeant (Sgt. Clark) and 12 of his men found themselves coughing and choking in smoke from burning Iraqi tanks hit by 30-mm DU-tipped cannon rounds. He has had chronic problems since the war and his daughter was born in September 1992 with purple welts called hemangioma covering not only her face and body, but some internal organs as well. The child has serious breathing problems and was born without a thyroid. The sergeant stated that a geneticist told him that he could have ingested some radiation and that it could affect sperm cells. Almost three years after his exposure to DU, his urine tested positive for uranium.#
6. An army nurse (Ms. Picou) and seven other women in her medical team were exposed to DU from burning destroyed Iraqi armour. Dr. Thomas Callender of Lafayette, Louisana, has examined the nurse and said on a television documentary that her outcome bears a striking similarity to other individuals who had exposures to ingested radioactive elements. She has been given a medical discharge.
The United States army and the Veterans Administration balk at giving urinalysis tests and “in vivo” tests (whole-body counting of gamma rays) to measure the amount of DU in the lungs and other bodily organs of Gulf war veterans;
There have been claims that the United States Department of Defence (DoD) does not want to admit that DU is harmful because it does not want to be held liable. There have even been more serious accusations that the DoD knew of the ill effects of DU before its massive deployment in the Gulf but that nevertheless, for military expediency, it deliberately closed an eye and sent its ground troops into DU-corrupted battlefields without properly briefing them of the possible ill effects and of any possible precaution that could be taken.
-5- According to a survey 82 per cent of Gulf war veterans handled DU or entered captured Iraqi vehicles gutted by DU munitions. Many took DU fragments home as souvenirs.
The Rand Corporation, a military contractor, was commissioned by DoD to carry out a study on Gulf War Syndrome… Since nothing conclusive was found linking ill health to natural uranium, the Rand Corporation concluded that DU should have no ill effects on health as well.
Although the Rand Corporation report is said to have reviewed an extensive body of literature it was not considered comprehensive by the National Gulf War Resource Centre. The Centre’s research director presented a report in June 1999 outlining matters that the Rand Corporation report had ignored, citing some 62 sources not reviewed by Rand.
The notion that he who pays the piper chooses the tune may not necessarily be an impossible obstacle when it comes to intellectual studies carried out by professionals, including report writers. But the perception of independence appears to be doubly flawed where the authors of a report on the possible ill effects of a particular weapon happen to be military contractors.
An investigation by scientists of the Royal Society for the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence (MoD) found no evidence of a link between DU and cancer, whilst conceding that further research was needed. The findings of the Royal Society have been severely criticized by certain war veterans on the ground that the scientific research was incomplete and inadequate, some even accusing the Royal Society of cover-up and other grave misdeeds. Others felt that the MoD had been withholding historically relevant official documents and that officials were selectively steering the outcome of the investigation.
One criticism against the Royal Society was that it was trying to argue against the findings of people who had been on the ground in the Gulf in 1991 taking measurements and who had found DU contamination in veterans and had documented the illnesses they had suffered for the previous 10 years.
Doug Rokke, a former United States army officer and physicist, was the officer in charge of DU cleanup after the Gulf war. He developed health problems within two weeks of his return from the Middle East. A urinalysis conducted in March 1994 revealed uranium 2,000 per cent beyond normal levels. He was perturbed when he learnt that certain reports, which he had told the Royal Society existed, could not be obtained by the latter from either MoD, the United States Department of Defence or the VA although the documents are cited in numerous DoD reports. This prompted Mr. Rokke to tell the Royal Society that its report was based on incomplete information since essential information had been willfully withheld.
There have been many requests for a MORATORIUM on the use of DU munitions from a number of quarters because of the conclusions of scientific studies.
1. On 17 January 2001 the European Parliament voted to urge NATO to suspend use of DU munitions pending the results of an independent study on the potential health risks of such weapons. This followed reports blaming DU armor-piercing bullets for a string of unexplained cancer deaths and other health problems among soldiers who served in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s.
2. A week before, a similar call for a moratorium from Italy and Germany was reported to have been rebuffed by NATO.
3. On 1 December 2001 Italy reiterated to NATO the call for the institution of a moratorium on the use of DU weapons until more studies were done. This followed the deaths of eight of its soldiers serving under NATO who had died of leukemia within a period of 18 months. Italy’s request for a moratorium was supported by France and Portugal. France then decided to launch an inquiry into the effects of DU on its soldiers in Kosovo whereas Portugal decided to withdraw its soldiers.
4. In 1999 Canada stopped using its own DU weapons and has taken steps to address the concerns of its sick veterans. It has, however, rejected calls for a ban on DU weapons.
Considering the disturbing reports on the ill effects of DU weapons in the Gulf and the Balkans, it is saddening to note that so far appeals for a moratorium coming from different quarters have not yet prevailed. Killing first and asking questions later has, however, never been a sensible solution.
CONCLUSION
1. Most of the weapons covered by this working paper, although capable of use anywhere, are designed for or meant to be used in enemy territory. It is therefore easier to ignore the “dirtiness” of such weapons. Worse still, the use of such weapons is not calculated to match with a measure of proportionality, hence legality, the degree of the hostile attacks. There are growing fears that in the name of repression of “terrorism” and preservation of “security” retaliatory measures well beyond what is permissible in international law are being planned.
2. “Security” in its wider and often perverted sense will lead to the doing of unacceptable things. The recent use of certain weapons falling within the purview of this working paper and reports of new weapons development and their eventual deployment appear as grotesque as they are unthinkable. Yet we have seriously to start imagining the harrowing effects of the use of “small nukes” against nations which some may consider too hostile or too “rogue”. Beyond the physical and material harm that will be caused, the psychological “firewall” would have been broken and the spiral of proving to the world who can be more rogue than rogue itself would have been triggered.
3. Confronted with this new notion of “security” which flouts all humanitarian norms, human rights may not appear to some to be a matter of prime concern or of weighty importance. It is therefore all the more vital that the urgent message be restored that peace cannot be achieved by the threat or the use of such horrific weapons and that real security resides in legality and adherence to international humanitarian law and norms as well as respect for human rights which are of universal application. Otherwise, one may find oneself hoisted by one’s own petard. But even then, poetic justice has never been the leitmotiv of humanitarian and human rights law. Legality is.
4. Delimiting all the contours of the mandate within the allotted time frame has not been possible. Apart from the fact that the mandate is wide, new findings and new developments are unfolding every day. Other weapons of grave concern falling within the mandate have come to the attention of the author. These would include the so-called “space weapons”, like the directed energy weapons and the mid-infrared advanced chemical laser, but evaluation of these will have to wait for some future time.
Many Americans would likely be surprised that the United States Government would subject its own military to such hazards. This is not the first time. Soldiers were used to test the effects of the Atomic bomb in 1945. The government also tested LSD on its own citizens and military. We also know that U.S. military personnel were the victims of Agent Orange at the time of the Vietnam war.