EDITORIAL U.S. needs to cooperate on DU probe
Throughout Europe, soldiers who have
returned from duty in the Balkans are complaining of a new malady that has been
tagged Balkans Syndrome.
The soldiers are dying of leukemia and other disorders that they
are blaming on their exposure to depleted uranium weapons used during the 1999
bombing of Yugoslavia. Depleted uranium -- DU -- is the radioactive byproduct
of the uranium enrichment process used to produce nuclear fuel for power
plants.
Angry at the United States for introducing the weapons into that
arena without any warning of danger, the soldiers and some of their governments
are pressing for a ban on the use of such weaponry until further investigations
are done on the possible connection between use of DU on the battlefield and
the occurrence of cancer in soldiers exposed to it. So far the United States
has refused to comply with these requests.
Keying in on the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the Gulf War
on Jan. 16, U.S. veterans of that conflict, many now suffering from cancer,
chronic fatigue and severe stress, charge they have been abandoned and
left to die by the government. Terming the government attitude as
monstrous, U.S. veterans say depleted uranium weapons are partly to
blame for an array of health problems that have been characterized as Gulf War
syndrome.
The first country to use depleted uranium weapons was the United
States, which employed them in 1991 during the Gulf War. (For an extended
report on depleted uranium and its use during the Gulf War, see NCR,
Aug. 25, 1995. See also NCR, July 16, 1999, on its use during the
bombing of Kosovo.)
Depleted uranium is cheap, readily available and so dense it can
pierce steel. It is used as a solid encased in a munitions shell and it also is
sandwiched between pieces of armor plate in tanks. On the battlefield, DU is
released as a very fine particulate after exploding. It is widely believed that
the fine particulate easily becomes airborne and is ingested or eventually
makes its way onto the ground and into the water supply.
In 1993, the U.S. General Accounting Office released a report
titled Operation Desert Storm: Army Not Adequately Prepared to Deal With
Depleted Uranium Contamination.
The report contained accounts of soldiers who handled depleted
uranium weapons or were involved in cleanup or maintenance of vehicles carrying
or contaminated with DU who were not informed of the toxic properties of DU.
Nor were they given any instruction on how to safely handle the substance.
Tons of depleted uranium ammunition were fired in Iraq by U.S.
troops during Operation Desert Storm. While no figures were available for the
amount used in Yugoslavia, the principal delivery system there was the U.S.
militarys A-10 Warthog attack aircraft, which fires 300 rounds per
minute. One out of every four rounds contains 275 grams (nearly two-thirds of a
pound) of DU.
The scientific and medical community is hardly in agreement
regarding the toxicity of DU in its different forms and its connection to what
Iraqi doctors have claimed is an extreme jump in the number of cancers among
Iraqi children in the area of the heaviest fighting in that country. At the
same time, a consensus appears to be growing around the globe that DU, when it
explodes into a fine particulate, can be extremely hazardous.
Simple reason dictates that the United States, which has balked at
any suggestion of further investigation, cooperate in a full and exhaustive
study of DU and its effects on humans and the environment.
Refusal to cooperate will be viewed as intolerable arrogance by
close allies, who already are outraged at the realization that soldiers may
have been exposed, uninformed, to an agent as dangerous and sinister as any
human enemy.
National Catholic Reporter, January 19,
2001
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