Depleted Uranium: Pernicious Killer Keeps on Killing
By Craig Etchison, Ph.D.
t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor
Monday 19 February 2007
The Questions
I live a few miles from an ATK (Alliant Tech) plant that produces
depleted uranium (DU) tank shells for the military. Tank shells destroy
and kill, and they, along with all military hardware, are a constant
reminder of our failure as a civilization. But DU weapons and tank
shells are only two of many items that raise questions that even our
violence prone society needs to address. Since shortly after Gulf War I,
soldiers and civilians have been questioning the safety of these weapons
which are made of radioactive material. The more questions raised, the
more the military-industrial complex has hauled out studies showing the
safety of DU munitions. One CEO called DU the "skim milk" of uranium
in
an article penned for my local paper. An Air Force officer is even
stalking the internet, trying to intimidate anyone who suggests DU is
anything but benign.
Yet the numbers suggested that something insidious happens when DU
munitions are used. How to explain the exploding rates of cancer, birth
defects, and radiation poisoning among Iraqis in the Basra region? How
to explain a Department of Veterans Affairs study of 21,000 veterans of
the Gulf War that found rates of birth defects were twice as great for
male vets and three times as great for female vets who served in the
Gulf War compared to vets who did not? How to explain a Washington Post
report in January of 2006 that 518,00 of the 580,000 Gulf War veterans
were on disability, over half on permanent disability. How to explain
over 13,000 dead Gulf War veterans when only 250 were killed and 7,000
injured in the war itself?
Finally, through the work of internationally recognized research
scientist, Dr. Rosalie Bertell, we may have an answer to these
questions. The answer has to do with using an analytical methodology
appropriate to low level radiation, as opposed to inappropriate
methodologies used to date that show DU is harmless, and, equally
important, understanding that DU has both a radiological component as
well as a heavy metal component, and the two in combination are far more
toxic than either is singly.
What is DU and Why Is It a Problem?
Depleted Uranium (DU) is the waste left after the isotope uranium-235
(used for bombs and nuclear reactors) has been removed. DU (mostly
U-238) makes up the largest amount of radioactive waste other than
uranium mining waste worldwide and has a half-life of 4.5 billion years.
In the United States, DU can only be handled by persons trained in
radiation safety procedures. DU must also be isolated from the environment.
Much of the scientific evaluation of uranium oxide has come from
analysis of uranium mining and milling, but this ignores a major
fact-that battlefield uranium oxide is very different from uranium oxide
produced at normal temperatures. When a DU shell hits a hardened target,
it bursts into flame and creates an invisible metal fume, often called
an aerosol. (Tests carried out eight to ten years after Gulf War I found
that the DU aerosol from the battlefield had been carried to Basra and
Baghdad, though no fighting occurred in those areas.)
Aerosolizing DU involves temperatures between 3,000 and 6,000 degrees
centigrade, which turn the oxide into a nano-sized ceramic particle that
is insoluble in body fluids. If these nano particles are inhaled, they
provide contact radiation and a source of heavy metal poisoning. These
high temperatures will also aerosolize other heavy metals in the area
such as steel, nickel, aluminum, and iron, which can be inhaled.
Nano-sized uranium oxide [along with other metals] is roughly the size
of a virus [scientifically: nanometer-sized], invisible, able to
penetrate the lung-blood barrier and can be carried throughout the body.
Nano particles can reach sensitive targets, including the lymph nodes,
spleen, heart, and access to the central nervous system.
Uranium-238 is an alpha particle emitter. The range of these alpha
particles is only about six cells; therefore, it is highly localized.
Because DU has less radioactivity than natural uranium, many consider DU
to be low-level radiation and not harmful to people. But research does
not bear this view out.
Assessing the Effects of DU
A major problem with most DU assessment is that many effects of alpha
radiation on cell structure, including DNA proteins that release
biochemical signals and important cell metabolic enzymes, are ignored by
nuclear physicists who use dose estimates based on uranium dust in
mines, a completely inappropriate approach for a battlefield aerosol.
Many medical professionals believe the protein problem is responsible
for various neurodegenerative diseases evidenced by Gulf War veterans.
As Dr. Bertell writes, "Heavy metal exposure (including uranium) can
cause loss of cellular immunity, autoimmune diseases, joint disease such
as rheumatoid arthritis, and diseases of the kidneys, circulatory
system, and nervous system.... Decline in functional mitochondria is most
damaging to the heart, kidney, brain, liver, and skeletal muscle, in
that order." Loss of cellular immunity opens an organism up to viral,
bacterial, and mycoplasmal invasions connected to a variety of diseases.
Equally important, scientists have found that tiny amounts of DU too
small to be toxic and only mildly radioactive seem to reinforce each
other in terms of causing cancers and risk to offspring. The Armed
Forces Radiobiological Research Institute has even admitted that DU can
cause cancer.
Humans are normally exposed to about 1.9 micrograms of uranium a day in
food and water, with between one and two percent absorbed. The rest is
passed in feces. Humans screen natural uranium quite effectively. But
our screening system won't eliminate nano particles that are ceramic and
enter through the lungs. These particles won't dissolve and won't lose
their radioactivity.
International Condemnation
The special investigator of the UN Sub-Committee on the Promotion and
Protection of Human Rights has declared DU munitions illegal under
existing humanitarian law. DU weapons also produce a toxic metal fume
that violates the Geneva Protocol on the Use of Gas in War, which the US
signed in 1975.
Why Ignore the Evidence?
We have enough evidence to suggest with considerable certainty that DU
munitions break the four basic laws and customs that govern modern
weapons use: that the weapon is confined to the battlefield, that it
does not kill after a battle is over, that it doesn't cause inhumane
suffering, and that it doesn't have a negative effect on the natural
environment. We certainly have enough evidence to stop using these
weapons until further research by independent scientists has been done.
And yet we continue to produce, sell, and use DU munitions. How can this
be justified?
Perhaps looking at the paradigm of Agent Orange gives insight. Our
government ignored veterans affected by Agent Orange for thirty years
before admitting Agent Orange was, in fact, the cause of many physical
problems endured by Vietnam veterans. By then, the most seriously
affected veterans were dead. The government incurred a far smaller
financial liability than if the government had owned up to the problems
earlier.
If the government ever admitted what it has done in Iraq-between 1,000
and 2,000 tons of DU ordnance expended according to most estimates-the
financial consequences, not to mention the moral outrage engendered, is
almost beyond imagination. Cleaning up the DU blanketing Iraq would
entail enormous costs. And in a few years, soldiers who have served in
the current debacle-many with two or three tours-are going to start
coming down with the same diseases that have struck Gulf War I veterans.
Some who got good doses of DU have already seen their lives ruined by
multiple physical problems.
We must also consider the real possibility of Iraq as an uninhabitable
wasteland, with the residue of the DU aerosol blowing in the wind and
flowing in the waters to adjacent lands, a residue with a half-life of
4.5 billion years. Is this outlook too bleak?
Dr. Jawad Al-Ali, director of the Oncology Center at the largest
hospital in Basra said the following in 2003. "Two strange phenomena
have come about in Basra which I have never seen before. The first is
double and triple cancers in one patient.... We have 58 families here with
more than one person affected by cancer.... My wife has nine members of
her family with cancer." He went on to point out that these were
families with no history of cancer. After Gulf War I, the United
Kingdom's Atomic Energy Authority estimated that DU contamination could
kill half a million Iraqis.
Conclusions
I suspect the military-industrial complex will stonewall admitting the
effects of DU for as long as possible to avoid accepting responsibility,
not to mention liability, for their reckless actions. When John
Hanchette, a founding editor of USA Today tried to publish stories about
DU, he received a phone call from the Pentagon asking him to desist. He
was later replaced at USA Today. The World Health Organization's chief
expert on radiation and health had his report on DU suppressed. Dr. Asaf
Durakovic, then a colonel in the U.S. Army, was asked to lie about the
risks of DU to humans. So the stonewalling will continue, even as
cancers rage among our soldiers and Iraqi civilians, even as our
soldiers die, or commit suicide to escape the horrific pain, even as
birth defects proliferate across Iraq and among our veterans.
But what of that? DU is a moneymaker for corporations like ATK. And
turning DU into munitions helps the government solve a big problem-what
to do with mountains of DU it must store and, by law, keep out of the
environment. What better solution than giving it free to the munitions
makers, who then sell the munitions back to Uncle Sam at a handsome
profit? Everyone wins.
Unless we continue to fight for the truth, and to cry out for justice,
our soldiers and Iraqi civilians will suffer and die in increasing
numbers. Estimates of how many may die in Iraq are truly staggering - up
to 11% of Iraq's 27 million population. This is a massive crime against
humanity that remains in the shadows.
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For More Information:
Much of this article is based on the work of Dr. Rosalie Bertell. See
her article, "Depleted Uranium: All the Questions About DU and Gulf War
Syndrome Are Not Yet Answered," in the International Journal of Health
Services, Volume 36, Number 3, pages 503-520, 2006. E-mail requests for
a summary of Dr. Bertell's article can be sent to
cetchison@allegany.edu.
Craig Etchison, Ph.D, is from the Center for Nonviolent Alternatives,
Fort Ashby, W.Va.
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