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| Jan. 14, 2001 |
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DEPLETED URANIUM IS A DANGER TO EVERYONE
By Eric S. Margolis
A furor erupted across Europe last week after revelations that fifteen young NATO veterans of Balkan operations had died of cancer. Hundreds of other NATO troops who served in the Balkans are reportedly ill with cancers of the brain, lungs, kidneys blood, and lymphatic system. Depleted uranium shells are suspected to be the cause of this epidemic.
While denying that depleted uranium (DU) munitions used in tank and aircraft cannon posed any risk to human health, NATO opened a high-level investigation of the thousands of cases of cancer and mysterious illnesses, dubbed `Balkan Syndrome,' among NATO troops who served in Kosova and Bosnia. Italy was in a particular uproar after the press revealed seven otherwise healthy soldiers in their 20's had died of leukemia after serving in Kosovo.
During NATO's 1991 police action against Serbia, US and British warplanes fired 31,000 rounds of 30mm DU munitions against targets in Kosovo, Serbia, and Montenegro, a total of 12 tons. Other NATO forces either did not possess DU munitions, or chose, like France, not to use them. Russia and Israel also have DU munitions.
So-called depleted uranium is a waste byproduct of nuclear reactors that retains low-level radioactivity. The US pioneered use of DU for tank and cannon shells because of the metal's exceptional density and strength. Cannon shells tipped with dart-like penetrator rods made from DU have enormous kinetic energy: they smash through the thickest vehicle armor and produces a lethal fireball inside the target. During the 1991 Gulf War, 46-ton Iraqi T-72 tanks hit by US 120mm DU rounds were literally torn apart, then incinerated.
DU rounds appear fairly safe when stored. But when they strike a target, the uranium explodes into a fine powder, which is then inhaled by soldiers and civilians, or enters the ground and food chain. The aerosol form of DU is believed by some scientists to be the cause of many of the cancers and mysterious illness associated with the Gulf and Balkan Wars. While much has been made of the weapon's radioactivity - which is minor - the real danger comes from dispersion of DU dust, which is a highly toxic heavy metal. Just-reveled secret US Army and British defense ministry documents order troops entering a vehicles hit by DU, or handling expended DU rounds, to wear protective gear.
DU weapons, like fuel-air explosives, have crossed the line from conventional weapons to chemical arms. Back in 1992, after assessing the effect of DU weapons in the Gulf War, this column called for DU weapons to be banned. However, as long as Iraqis were dying from DU-induced cancer, few in the west paid attention or cared. Iraqi reports of an epidemic of various cancers were dismissed by the US and Britain as propaganda.
During the Gulf War, the US and Britain fired 5,000 rounds of 120mm DU tank shells and 940,000 DU shells from aircraft and helicopter 30mm cannons. Some 600,000-800,000 lbs of exploded DU shells were littered across Iraq and Kuwait.
The radioactive dust from these DU munitions mixed with hydrocarbons from Kuwaiti oil wells torched by Saddam Hussein, and with exploding Iraqi ammo dumps that were foolishly blown up by allied troops. The result: a wind-born, toxic miasma that blanketed northern Kuwait and southern Iraq. This Biblical-strength plague, plus anti-nerve agent inoculations given to many NATO troops, were in this writer's view, the principal cause of the still enigmatic `Gulf War Syndrome.'
Civilians suffered far more than soldiers. In 1989, before the Gulf War, the death rate of Iraqi children was 2.3 per thousand, the lowest in the Arab World. Two years after the war, in 1993, it had risen to 16.6 per thousand. Many of the deaths were caused by malnutrition and lack of medicines due to the US-British blockade of Iraq. But a substantial, unprecedented number of Iraqi deaths were due to cancers. Lymphomas among children soared by 40%. Leukemia, a principal illness now afflicting NATO Balkan veterans, rose 34%.
The west also ignored reports from western and local doctors of an epidemic of miscarriages, birth defects, and grotesquely deformed babies in southern Iraq, clustered around Basra. DU shells had been massively employed in this region against retreating Iraqi armor.
The US and Britain have clearly covered up the poisonous effects of DU weapons, both on their own troops, and on Iraqi, Albanian and Serb civilians. DU weapons should be classified as chemical-nuclear weapons. It's absurd to claim that a milled, densely compacted mass of toxic, heavy metal made from radioactive nuclear waste that explodes in flames and lethal dust is a conventional weapon.
Alarmingly, DU is only one of the first of a new generation of high-tech weapons, like fuel air explosives used by Russia against the Chechen fre edom fighters, high-intensity microwaves, and anti-personnel lasers. All should be banned us uncivilized weapons by international convention. Germany, and four other members of the 19-member NATO alliance, called for elimination of DU weapons. But a majority of NATO members rejected the call.
DU is a superb killer of tanks and armored vehicles. But this weapon is simply too dangerous for friend and foe alike. Long-rod, discarding-sabot penetrators made from tungsten are 75% as effective as DU, but pose no environmental risk. DU rounds should be scrapped at once, and all DU debris in the Balkans and Iraq cleaned up by NATO.
Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2001
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