|
by Helen Caldicott
Posted: 01/01/01
Depleted uranium weapons used in
Iraq, Kuwait, Bosnia and Kosovo caused a furor in Europe this week, when
Italy realized that seven of her soldiers deployed in the Balkans had died
of leukemia, and a total of thirty were ill. France, Portugal, Holland,
Belgium and Spain reported that some of their soldiers were also
developing malignancies.
America used over one million
pounds of uranium weapons in the Gulf war – 7000 tanks rounds and 940,000
bullets fired from planes. 10,800 shells were fired in Bosnia and 31,000
in Kosovo. While the Pentagon steadfastly maintains that that there is no
evidence that DU weapons are harmful. in 1943, scientists in the Manhattan
Project were postulating that uranium could be used on the battlefield as
an air and terrain contaminant, that inhalation would cause “bronchial
irritation” and that acute radiation effects could induce ulcers and
perforations of the gut followed by death.
In July 1990 shortly before the
Gulf War, a US Army contractor warned “Aerosol DU exposures to soldiers on
the battlefield could be significant with potential radiological and
toxicological effects.” So-called depleted uranium DU is the element
uranium 238 remaining after the fissionable element uranium 235 is
extractedfrom the uranium ore as fuel for weapons and nuclear reactors.
700,000 tons of this useless but hazardous radioactive material
accumulated throughout in the States until the American military
discovered that it was useful. 1.7 times more dense that lead, it sliced
through the armor of tanks like a hot knife through butter. It was free so
DU bullets and shells were cheap to make. But uranium 238 has other
properties. It is pyrophoric, bursting into flames when it hits a tank at
great speed. The fire oxidizes the uranium converting it to tiny
aerosolized particles that can be inhaled into the small air passages of
the lung where it often remains for many years.
Because it is radioactive it can
damage cells in the lung, bone, kidney, and lymph glands causing cancer of
the bone, lung, kidney, and the white blood cells – leukemia. It is also a
heavy metal and causes a kidney disease called nephritis. Gulf war
veterans are excreting uranium 238 in their urine and semen. Children in
Iraq are reported to have a higher than normal incidence of malignancies
and congenital malformations. Similar reports are emerging from Bosnian
and Kosovo hospitals, while studies of children of American veterans seem
to show a higher than normal incidence of congenital disease. The
Department of Energy in America admitted yesterday that contaminated
uranium reprocessed from military reactors had been mixed in with the pure
DU. This contains traces of plutonium and uranium 236, and probably
neptunium and americium elements which are thousands of times more
carcinogenic than DU. These DU munitions almost certainly contain
Australian uranium because our ore is enriched at Paducah Kentucky, where
the DU is sourced.
Because uranium 238 has a half life
of 4.5 billion years, and plutonium, which is by orders of magnitude more
carcinogenic than uranium has a shorter half life of only 240,400 years.
Iraq, Kuwait, Bosnia and Kosovo are now contaminated with carcinogenic
radioactive elements for ever. Because the latent period of
carcinogenesis, the incubation time for cancer, is 5 to 10 years for
leukemia and 15 to 60 years for solid cancer, the reported malignancies in
the NATO troops and peacekeepers and in the American soldiers and the
civilians in these countries are just the tip of the iceberg.
Return to Table of Contents
|