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DU rounds
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What
do Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan have in common? Depleted Uranium (DU) is
abundant in the bodies of those who live there and on their soil. These regions
have been laced by DU, thanks to their brethren who live on the either side of
the pacific.
With
DU having a half-life of more than 4 billion years, the grim fact, which they
will have to disclose to their children through out the years, is that their
land has been contaminated for eternity; undeniably so.
It’s
no secret (trust me, it’s not, just try a ‘DU’ search on any search
engine) that the U.S. and some of its allies have marked their place forever in
history, by intentionally using a plethora of weapons laced with depleted
uranium in virtually every terrorism – sorry, war - against ‘terrorism’.
Using munitions laced with DU is
a crime that makes Saddam Hussein’s 1991 burning of Kuwaiti oil fields an
amateurish act of terrorism.
DU
101
Before
we go any further let’s first put forward an obvious question. What is DU? Like
many buzzwords, DU is commonly used. But what does it really mean?
According
to a fact sheet published by the World Health Organization (WHO), natural
uranium, which exists in varying but small amounts in rocks, soils, water, air
plants, animals and in all human beings, consists of a mixture of three radioactive isotopes which are
identified by the mass numbers U-238 (99.27% by mass), U-235 (0.72%) and U-234
(0.0054%). 1
“The uranium remaining
after removal of the enriched fraction contains about 99.8% U-238, 0.2% U-235
and 0.001% U-234 by mass; this is referred to as depleted uranium or DU. The
main difference between DU and natural uranium is that the former contains at
least three times less U-235 than the latter.
“DU, consequently, is
weakly radioactive and a radiation dose from it would be about 60% of that from
purified natural uranium with the same mass.” 2
DU, the fact sheet explains,
is used because of its high density (about twice that of lead) in civilian uses
as counterweights in aircraft, radiation shields in medical radiation therapy
machines and containers for the transport of radioactive materials. Militarily,
DU is used for defensive armor plate because of its high density but also
because it can ignite on impact if the temperature exceeds 600°C. 3
Health problems due to
chemical toxicity of DU include the damage of the kidney’s proximal tubules
(the main filtering component of the kidney). Other health problems include the
damage of lung tissue, which could lead to lung cancer with increased radiation
doses. However, because DU is only weakly radioactive, very large amounts of
dust (in the order of grams) would have to be inhaled for the additional risk of
lung cancer to be detectable in an exposed group. Risks for other
radiation-induced cancers, including leukemia, are considered to be very much
lower than for lung cancer.4
Despite,
the well-known hazards of DU to health and the environment, weapon-manufacturing
gurus have still used the substance because it is easy to find and is efficient.
How
it spreads
By
wind and rain, DU is spread into the environment putting people who live and
work in affected areas at the risk of inhaling DU laden dusts or even having
excessive amounts of DU in their food and drinking water. 5
Because
of their tendency to put everything in their mouths, children playing near DU
impact sites are more likely to receive greater exposure to DU from ingesting
contaminated soil. 6
According
to Dr. Jawad Al-Ali, an oncologist and member of the Royal Society of Physicians
in the U.K, "The desert dust carries death. Our studies indicate that more
than forty percent of the population around Basra will get cancer. We are living
through another Hiroshima." 7
This
was his comment regarding the damage left behind by the U.S-led coalition in the
1991 bombing of Iraq.
A
1991 study by the UK Atomic Energy Authority predicted that if less than 10
percent of the particles released by depleted uranium weapons used in Iraq and
Kuwait were inhaled it could result in as many as "300,000 probable
deaths." 8
It’s just the “Gulf Syndrome”
Gulf
war veterans have experienced respiratory, liver and kidney
dysfunction, in addition to birth defects among their
newborn children. |
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"As
a result of heavy metal and radiological poison of DU, people in southern Iraq
are experiencing respiratory problems, kidney problems, cancers. Members of my
own team have died or are dying from cancer," said Doug Rokke, the health
physicist for the U.S. army who oversaw the partial clean up of depleted uranium
bomb fragments in Kuwait. He himself has fallen ill. 9
Rokke
is not the only ‘victim’. During the 1991 Gulf war, many soldiers
participating in the attacks against Iraq were not even aware of the DU that was
being used in their weapons. Many were coming back sick, plagued with a number
of diseases and excessive DU traces in their bodies.
The
term coined for this was the ‘Gulf Syndrome’ - a benign name for a
malignant, grisly truth. Some
analysts saw this as a crisis in civil-military relations saying the Pentagon
may have withheld and distorted information about the soldier’s exposure to DU
munitions.10
Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark drafted an appeal
to the U.S. government to ban the use of DU weapons saying that “of the
697,000 U.S. 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 birth defects among their newborn children."11
DU contamination;
Pandora’s box
However,
the DU dust did not only affect those taking part in the war, but the entire
Gulf region is living through an environmental crisis due to the spread of DU
dust.
Even
the country that was being liberated at the time, Kuwait, saw the result of DU
last year after thousands of fish were found dead on its shores in the year
2002.12
There were many theories
proposed by scientists investigating the crisis, soaring temperatures being one,
but one of the explanations proposed was the 300 tons of DU that were being used
by the NATO forces in 1991 to bomb Iraq in Operation Desert Storm.
These theories were not
unfounded. In February 2001, Kuwaiti officials announced the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will send inspectors to survey Kuwaiti territories
for depleted uranium (DU) possibly used by U.S. troops during the 1991 Gulf War
after local outcries that Kuwaitis were facing a health hazard similar to that
reported in the Balkans.
“An investigating team from
a U.S. solidarity delegation to Iraq on January 18th found ‘extremely high
levels of radioactivity’ in soil samples in the Iraqi desert south of
Basra.”13
Over the next few sections,
we’ll take a journey through the U.S.’s (and it’s allies) usage of DU
during the last few wars. There have been no qualms about using DU laced
munitions in any war on the part of the United States.
Iraq:
1991
Perhaps the world, outside the
academic field, began to know about DU and its harms right after the Kuwaiti liberation war in 1991. In addition to
using hallucinogenic weapons14, the U.S. also used more than 300 tons of DU munitions (some
reports say 900).
After
the meeting of the fifty-eighth session of the United Nations Commission on
Human Rights in March 2002 in Geneva, a report published by the WHO said that an
Iraqi delegation stated “there are increasing rates of cancer from depleted
uranium, and pollution of drinking water which causes diseases particularly
among children.”15
Peace activist Ginny NiCarthy
spoke about her visit to Iraqi hospitals and said that a Baghdad pathologist
showed them photos of birth defects that emerged after the war.
A
Baghdad pathologist showed our team photographs of birth defects: infants
without eyes, without limbs, or whose brains had no covering, or whose
intestines were outside their bodies, or whose noses were above their eyes
instead of below. He, as well as many other scientists, believes the birth
defects are caused by the fathers' inhaling of DU on the battlefield.
The
incidence of such births is still about two in each thousand. But the increase
since 1991 has been so dramatic, and the deformities so grotesque, that for many
women, pregnancy is rife with fear. A new mother's first question used to be,
"Is it a boy or a girl?" Now she wants to know, "Is it normal or
abnormal?" 16
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Birth
deformities increased significantly in Iraq after Desert Storm
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In
1995, the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean sent a
mission
to Iraq to assess the national cancer registry and
to advise on cancer incidence rates. A second mission went to Iraq
in August 1998 to advise on possibilities for investigating the reported
increase in leukemia cases in the southern governorates. At the end of January
2001, another mission
visited
the country to assess the situation of non-communicable diseases, including
cancer, and to advise on strengthening national prevention and control
initiatives. 17
In a report published by the Iraqi Health Ministry in July
2001, the ministry said that the laser guided bombs and uranium tipped weapons
used by the coalition in 1991 against Iraq caused increased incidence of
leukemia, congenital deformities and hereditary diseases.
18
According to Iraqi sources,
cancer rates have quadrupled in areas of southern Iraq, which was bombed the
most in the second gulf war.
Bosnia:
1995
According to the WHO, a U.N.
expert team reported in November 2002 that they found traces of DU in three
locations among 14 sites investigated in Bosnia following NATO air strikes in
1995. 19
Reports say that leukemia rates in Sarajevo have tripled in
the last five years. Also affected are NATO and U.N. peacekeepers in the region
who are coming down with cancer. 20
KOSOVO:
1999
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Measuring
DU contamination in Kosovo
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By
1999, talk about the Gulf War Syndrome subsided, and instead a new
‘Syndrome’ appeared: “The Balkan Syndrome”.
In
response to a request from the United Nations Mission in Kosovo, a WHO team
visited Kosovo from 22 to 31 January 2001 to advise on claims regarding the
possible risks to the health of the population associated with exposure to depleted
uranium and other environmental contaminants. 21
In January 2001, Switzerland
ordered labs to check DU weapons samples from Kosovo for plutonium amidst
concern. Also the United Nations Environemt Programme (UNEP) sent a mission to
Kosovo to check DU contaminated sites.
“NATO has been criticized
for using armor-piercing shells in the Balkans, which some ailing soldiers and
anti-nuclear campaigners say have caused cancer.
“The alliance and the
United States, whose aircraft fired some 40,000 DU shells during the 1999 air
raids against Yugoslavia in Bosnia in 1994-95 and earlier in the Arab Gulf, deny
there is any link between the use of DU-ammunition and cancer.” 22
The
second part of this article, shall discuss the war in Afghanistan, the most
recent Gulf War as well other states’ usage of DU for military purposes.
Lamya
Tawfik is a Cairo-based freelancer. She is currently
preparing her master’s degree in Mass Communication with a specialization in
Children’s Media Education at the American University in Cairo. She has
previously worked as a news editor at IslamOnline.net and as a journalist and
public relations specialist in Dubai, UAE. You can reach her at lamyatawfik@islam-online.net
