Depleted Uranium,

the Controversy Rages

DU Kills
by Dana Briggs -- July 21, 2003

Despite news reports about Saddam Hussein and African uranium, there is a form of uranium that has been in existence for decades and which poses potential health and environmental problems - depleted uranium, commonly known as DU.

EXPLANATION AND HISTORY

There are three naturally occurring uranium isotopes, U-238, U-235, and U-234. U-238 comprises about 99.27% of uranium in nature, with 0.72% U-235 and 0.0054% U-234. Nuclear fuel and weapons require the uranium to be "enriched" which produces a disproportionately large amount of by-product, i.e. DU that qualifies as low-level radioactive waste and is also a heavy metal that requires proper storage and disposal by the Department of Energy.

The U.S. military began exploring, developing, and testing ways to employ DU in the early 1970's in what were termed "kinetic energy penetrators" and tank armor. DU embodies several characteristics that make it particularly appealing to the military. Physically, DU is extremely dense and pyrophoric, spontaneously igniting and burning upon impact. Its pyrophoricity gives it an edge unlike other metals with similar densities, such as tungsten. When a DU shell hits a hard target, the projectile sharpens as it melts and pierces heavy armor. Upon impact, it ignites, forms tiny particles suspended in air and disperses them over an area.

Its unique physical properties enable DU shells to penetrate conventional tank armor, and when used as plating in tank armor DU provides an almost impenetrable shield against conventional weapons. Unfortunately, DU rounds can penetrate DU plated tanks, as documented in the friendly fire incidents of the 1991 Gulf War.

Persian Gulf War-1991-U.S. and British forces first used DU munitions on the battlefield in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Despite the military's enthusiasm, DU munitions took out only about 13.5% of Iraqi tanks destroyed during Desert Shield / Desert Storm.

For offensive purposes, Abrams tanks fire 105mm or 120mm Armor Piercing Fin Stabilized Discarding Sabot rounds with DU penetrators. The Army alone fired 9,552 sabot rounds; a total of about 50 tons of DU. The exact expenditure of DU tank rounds by the Marines is unknown.

The Air Force was responsible for most of the DU expended. The A-10 "Warthog" jet uses 30mm armor piercing incendiary rounds. Approximately 783,514 rounds, each containing about .66 pounds of DU, were unleashed making them the largest overall DU contributor. The Pentagon estimates the DU rounds accounted for about 259 tons of the total of 320 tons (which includes the UK force tonnage) expended. Rounds fired from aircraft have a miss rate of about 90%; therefore, a relatively small proportion of the DU rounds hit hard targets, and the majority of these rounds remain scattered across the landscape in larger fragments or whole.

The Marine Corps AV-8B Harrier aircraft shoots a 25mm round that contains about .33 pounds of DU. During the conflict, the Marines fired 67,436 rounds, for an additional eleven tons.

The Navy deployed its shipboard Phalanx cannon which fires a 20mm DU round. With the exception of the rounds expended during cannon testing, the Pentagon stated the Navy launched DU ammunition only once in combat: a friendly fire incident involving the USS Jarret and the USS Missouri. Only four or five DU shells were fired.

The British Army deployed Challenger tanks armed with 120mm sabot rounds. According to the UK Ministry of Defense (MoD), UK forces fired fewer than 100 sabot rounds during combat. Taking into account the additional rounds fired during training in Saudi Arabia, the UK expended a scant ton of DU.

In all armed conflicts, friendly fire is a concern. By identifying the distinctive radioactive trace that DU shells leave on both the entrance and exit holes of its impacted targets, U.S. Battle Damage Assessment Teams confirmed that six M1A1 tanks and 15 Bradley Fighting Vehicles were destroyed by friendly fire. Thirteen crew members lost their lives due to friendly fire, and about 50 of the 113 survivors suffered injury. Unfortunately, potential DU exposures associated with the friendly fire incidents extend beyond these estimates; many personnel entered or came into contact with contaminated vehicles.

The Balkans-In 1994-95, A-10 aircraft fired about 10,000 30mm DU rounds, a total of about 3.3 tons, at 12 sites in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In 1999, A-10's fired approximately 31,000 DU rounds, releasing a total of 10.2 tons of DU across 85 targets in Kosovo, Serbia, and Montenegro.

Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003)-To date, information regarding the possible use of DU munitions in Afghanistan is not available.

The U.S. Air Force has released a preliminary report of aggregated facts about Operation Iraqi Freedom with data collected and contributed by all U.S. services, the UK, and Australia. The report time frame spans March 19 to April 18, 2003. The estimate is the U.S. and UK released between 100 and 200 tons of DU during combat. Still, the exact quantity and locations where DU was expended is unknown and further research will continue to improve the presently available data.

HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENT

Just a month before the Gulf War began in July 1990, the DoD stated that "assuming U.S regulatory standards and health practices are followed; it is likely that some form of remediable action will be required in a DU post-combat environment."

Despite research done from 1993 to 1995 by the GAO and U.S. Army which indicated ingested DU posed a radioactive and toxicity risk, the Final Report: Presidential Advisory Committee of Gulf War Veterans Illnesses released in 1996 stated, "it is unlikely that health effects reports by Gulf War Veterans today are the result of exposure from depleted uranium in the Gulf War."

In September 2001, the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) found for the first time DU in the groundwater of Serbia and Montenegro. The re-suspension of DU particles as a result of wind or human activity was also significant.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has concluded that "[only] military use of depleted uranium is likely to have any significant impact on environmental levels..." Additionally, the WHO noted that individuals should seek treatment if they believe they have been exposed to excessive amounts of DU and that young children could receive greater exposure due to typical hand-to-mouth activity that could result in high DU ingestion.

The British Royal Society indicates the primary exposure is from DU particles that can be inhaled. The main risk associated with DU dust is lung cancer.

Despite differing short-term conclusions, final recommendations from UNEP, WHO and the British Royal Society are strikingly in agreement; more research must be done to reach any verifiable conclusions, and clean up and precaution are needed in areas where DU is detected.

The UK MoD took the initiative to test their soldiers returning from Iraq in 2003 for DU; however, the test for examining the veterans' urine for high levels of uranium has been charged by several medical professionals as being scientifically invalid.

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has conducted the Depleted Uranium Follow-Up Program since 1993 to study the health effects of exposure to DU. This program has been repeatedly cited by the Pentagon as proof that there are no significant health effects from DU exposure, and in a recent March 2003 press briefing, claimed that doctors had found no medical effects in the studied veterans. However, the program has come under significant criticism - for example, neglecting to mention that at least one veteran in the study developed lymphoma and the very small size of the study population, which the VA itself pointed out, calling it "highly unlikely that definitive conclusions concerning cancer induction will be obtained from the study."

As early as 1995-96, Iraqi doctors suspected a rise in leukemia and birth defects among children born or treated at the Women and Children's Hospital in central Basra, Iraq's second largest city. Since there was no established system for registering cases of cancer or birth defects, doctors at the hospital created an epidemiological study that integrated the hospital admittance and treatment records with census data to derive incidence. In November 2001, following a strong U.S. lobby, the UN General Assembly rejected a long-standing Iraqi proposal for a UN study on the effects of DU in the Gulf War, which had already been approved by the committee on disarmament and international security.

While there is little information about the effect of DU contamination on children, it is widely known that childhood lead poisoning can affect almost every system in the body. According to the CDC, lead poisoning has the potential to cause learning disabilities, behavioral problems and in extreme cases, seizures, coma and death. If the effect of DU is in fact similar to the effect of lead, children are especially at risk of toxic contamination.

Conclusion

Debate over the use of depleted uranium munitions, sometimes fierce and politicized, has continued since the 1991 Gulf War. This article reviewed some of the key, and most recent, information applicable to the issue.

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