 |
Depleted Uranium Weapons and Acute Post-War Health Effects:An
IPPNW Assessment The US-led military
coalition that fought the 1991 Gulf War is reported to have used about 300 tons
of ammunition containing depleted uranium (DU) against Iraqi tanks and other armored
vehicles. During the 1999 war in the Balkans, NATO forces used about 11 tons of
DU in missiles that were fired into the former Yugoslavia [1].
DU weapons have military utility because the density and tensile strength of uranium
(which is relatively cheap and abundant) give it unusual armor-piercing capabilities.
Concerns about the potential health effects of DU weapons arise primarily from
immediate and long term uranium contamination in the areas where they are used.
On penetration, for example, about 20% of the DU burns spontaneously, creating
a fine aerosol smoke of uranium oxide that can be easily inhaled and lodge itself
in the lungs. Fragments of DU weapons are scattered around battlefields, and can
become embedded as shrapnel in human and animal flesh.
In the months and years following both of these armed conflicts, a large number
of soldiers, UN peacekeepers, and civilians have exhibited unexpected and unexplained
health problems, including excess leukemias and other cancers, neurological disorders,
birth defects, and a constellation of symptoms loosely gathered under the rubric
"Gulf War Illnesses." Depleted uranium, because of its radioactivity and chemical
toxicity, has been linked to these acute health effects in the press and in public
forums. Some opponents of DU weapons have categorically asserted that exposure
to depleted uranium is the direct cause of these excess cancers. US and NATO officials,
citing the published research on the health effects of uranium, have dismissed
DU as a potential cause of the acute health effects for which it has been blamed.
IPPNW deplores the use of depleted uranium weapons and supports the calls in the
European Union and elsewhere for a ban on their use. We urge caution, however,
in making categorical assertions or denials about health effects until systematic,
independent, peer-reviewed studies of depleted uranium exposure have been conducted.
The US government and NATO have an absolute obligation to provide independent,
unbiased researchers with the funding, data, and access required to conduct such
studies. The World Health Organization has requested $2 million as an immediate
payment toward a four-year $20 million clinical study of DU health effects in
Iraq and the Balkans. The US and NATO have an obligation to promptly and unconditionally
fund the WHO's work in this area. While
the peer-reviewed studies of health effects from natural uranium exposure are
weighted against the probability that DU exposure, in and of itself, is likely
to have caused an increase in leukemias or other cancers in the relatively short
time since it has been dispersed in the Balkans environment, the science is controversial
and the possibility cannot be ruled out. The Office of the Special Assistant for
Gulf War Illnesses, which reports to the US Department of Defense, has itself
stated that DU can pose a chemical toxicity and radiological hazard under specific
conditions [2]. Moreover, any impurities that may have found
their way into the DU munitions used in either the Gulf or the Balkans -- including
plutonium, actinides, and the highly radioactive manufactured isotope U-236 [3]
-- pose unquestionably serious health threats, and the extent to which at-risk
populations may have been exposed to these substances must be studied promptly
and thoroughly by unbiased investigators. Allied soldiers
and Iraqi soldiers and civilians were exposed to many other health hazards before,
during, and after the Gulf War. These included multiple vaccines, insecticides,
and chemical weapon protectives. Any chemical weapons released as a result of
the bombing of Iraqi munitions-dumps would be an additional hazard (as would chemical
weapon residues from the prior Iran-Iraq war). The petrochemical fires that raged
for weeks at the conclusion of the war added to the toxic burden. In the former
Yugoslavia, chemical factories were targeted and destroyed during NATO air strikes,
and large amounts of toxic chemicals, some of them known carcinogens, were released.
Risk factors can interact (e.g., smoking compounds the risk of radiation exposure
among uranium miners). The British
Medical Journal, in a recent editorial, concluded that "the argument for uranium
being the cause of leukaemia in peacekeeping forces is thin, notwithstanding the
short latencies implied, even by the standards of haematological malignancies,"
and that, with regard to non-cancer illnesses, "no single candidate hazard...serves
as its unifying explanation, depleted uranium included" [4].
To point to these other exposures as possible contributors to post-war health
problems is not to exonerate DU weapons in the absence of independent clinical
study of the populations that were actually exposed. Depleted
Uranium: The Facts in Brief Natural uranium is composed
of three isotopes: U-238 (99.3%), U-235 (0.7%), and U-234 (0.006%). These isotopes
decay at different rates, expressed in scientific parlance as half-lives. A shorter
half-life means more intense radiation and, in general, greater potential to damage
or destroy cells. The half-life of U-238 -- the time in which its radioactivity
is reduced by half -- is 4.5 billion years; that of U-235 is 710 million years;
and that of U-234 is 250 thousand years. For comparison, the half-life of plutonium
-- which can be lethal in even microscopic amounts -- is 24,000 years [5].
Depleted uranium is the byproduct of a process known as uranium enrichment --
the manufacture of uranium with a concentration of highly radioactive U-235 for
use in nuclear weapons and in nuclear power plants. DU, which has been depleted
of its U-235 and U-234, is about 60% as radioactive as natural uranium. Most of
that radiation -- about 95% -- is emitted as alpha particles that cannot penetrate
the skin. A minute amount of beta and gamma radiation could strike deeper cell
tissue were fine particles of DU inhaled or ingested, as they could easily be
by any soldier or civilian in the vicinity of a recently exploded DU shell. Even
low doses of low-level radiation can cause some damage to the DNA in living cells.
Whether that damage is enough to significantly increase the risk of cancer and
other acute health effects is a matter of much debate, and up until now there
has been no conclusive evidence of adverse health effects from exposure to natural
uranium. We cannot emphasize strongly enough, however, that an absence of evidence
about health effects is not evidence that there are no health effects.
DU is no different from natural uranium in its chemical toxicity. It is a heavy
metal that, in its soluble form, accumulates in the kidneys (the primary target
organ for uranium) and that, in sufficient quantities, can increase the risk of
renal damage. The scientific evidence to date suggests that ingestion of uranium,
even in unusual amounts, does not by itself cause serious or enduring health problems
due to chemical toxicity. Nevertheless, like all heavy metals, DU is a risk factor
that cannot be casually dismissed. Uranium Health
Studies Studies conducted over several decades have found
that populations with well-above-average occupational exposure to inhaled or ingested
uranium do not suffer from increased rates of the cancers most likely to be associated
with radiation, nor do they exhibit the blood disorders that might be expected
as a result of chemical toxicity. Other causes, such as radon exposure among uranium
miners and mill workers, have been pinpointed for certain specific illnesses [6,7]),
but these studies do not account for new experimental data suggesting a role for
dust toxicity in the lung. The aerosol particles generated by DU weapons are in
a very hard "ceramic" state, so are likely to be retained in the lung and its
regional lymph nodes for a prolonged period, increasing the risk of cellular damage
from alpha radiation. The main risk from internal radiation, whether the exposure
is due to manufacturing processes or DU weapons, is from this inhaled dust.
As mentioned earlier, there is evidence that the DU munitions
used in the Gulf war and in the Balkans were tainted with plutonium, U-236, and
other substances far more intensely radioactive than U-238. Recent studies have
pointed to the possiblility of genetic damage resulting from exposure to some
forms of radiation emitted from particles such as those deposited by DU weapons
[8]. Any such genomic effect, if substantiated, could point
toward increased risk of cancer or leukemia in the lung or regional lymph nodes
above the standard -- and controversial -- predictions of radiation protection
models [9]. It is simply too early to say. Precisely for that
reason, the health of military and civilian populations that have been exposed
to DU in the Gulf and in the Balkans should be monitored closely in the years
ahead. What Should Be Done About DU Weapons? While
IPPNW generally concurs with the BMJ's assessment that the jury is still
out on DU, and that the other hazards to which civilians and military personnel
were exposed, individually and in combination, are themselves very likely causes
of the kinds of post-war health problems from which civilians and military personnel
have been suffering in the aftermath of these conflicts, we condemn the use of
DU weapons and support the calls for a ban on their use.
A basic principle in radiation protection is that all exposures
should be justified; that is, the benefit for those exposed should exceed the
risk. This is the standard for medical radiography. The military utility of DU
weapons for the users does not justify any added health risk for non-combatants,
no matter how small. The precautionary principle states that in the absence of
convincing proof that a substance or process is harmless, the presumption must
be risk. This principle applies clearly to the use of DU weapons. Furthermore,
DU weapons indiscriminately contaminate the places in which they are used, and
the contamination persists long after the conclusion of hostilities, adding to
the radioactive and toxic burden imposed upon civilians, wildlife, and ecosystems.
From this perspective, DU weapons should be considered a form of ecological warfare
prohibited by the Geneva Conventions [10].
DU weapons may already be illegal under international law
and international humanitarian law, and this case is being made in compelling
fashion by members of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear
Arms (IALANA), who have formed a working group to study this issue. The damage
caused by DU weapons cannot be contained to "legal" fields of battle; they continue
to act after the conclusion of hostilities; they are inhumane because they place
the health of non-combatants, including children and future generations, at risk;
and they cannot be used without unduly damaging the natural environment [11].
The fact that military authorities in both the US and NATO
advise their own soldiers to take precautions when handling DU munitions and have
prepared detailed training manuals and videos to ensure troop safety [12],
while issuing blanket denials of health risks to the public, strikes us as hypocritical
at the very least, and reinforces our judgment that these weapons should be withdrawn
from service. Whether or not DU weapons are ultimately
shown to have the health effects for which they have been blamed, they are only
one example of the continuing ways in which militaries pollute our planet. They
are emblematic of the unacceptable costs of contemporary armed conflict to civilian
populations, who were the predominant casualties of war in the 20th century, and
are likely to remain so in the 21st. They are on the spectrum of indiscriminate
and inhumane weapons that includes landmines and biological and chemical weapons,
and that, at its most devastating end, includes tens of thousands of nuclear weapons
that jeopardize all life on earth. References
1. Spellar J. Statement by the minister for the armed forces
on depleted uranium. UK: Ministry of Defence. 9 January 2001. [Return
to text]
2. Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses.
Environmental exposure report: Depleted uranium in the Gulf. Washington, DC: Department
of Defense. 1998. [Return to text]
3.
UN Environment Programme. UNEP confirms Uranium 236 found in DU penetrators. Geneva:
UNEP. 16 January 2001. [Return to text]
4.
McDiarmid MA. Depleted uranium and public health: Fifty years' study of occupational
exposure provides little evidence of cancer (Editorial). BMJ 2001;322. 20 January
2001. [Return to text]
5. IPPNW,
IEER. Plutonium: Deadly gold of the nuclear age. Cambridge, MA: International
Physicians Press. 1992. [Return to text]
6.
Harley NH, Pasternack BS. A model for predicting lung cancer risks induced by
environmental levels of radon daughters. Health Phys 1981;40:307-316. [Return
to text]
7. Harley NH. Radon and lung cancer in mines
and homes. N Engl J Med 1984;310:1525-1527. [Return to text]
8. Kadhim MA, Macdonald DA, Goodhead DT, Lorimore SA, Marsden
SJ, Wright EG. Transmission of chromosomal instability after plutonium-particle
irradiation. Nature 1992;355:738-40. [Return to text]
9. Köhnlein W, Nussbaum RH. False alarm or public health
hazard?: Chronic low-dose external radiation exposure. Medicine & Global Survival
1998;5:14-21. [Return to text]
10.
Protocol additional to the Geneva conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating
to the protection of victims of international armed conflicts (Protocol I). Section
IV, Article 55. [Return to text]
11.
Parker K. Conference statement. International conference: campaign against depleted
uranium. Manchester, UK. 4-5 November 2000. [Return to text]
12. US Army. Contaminated and damaged equipment management
operations (training video). 1995. [Return to text]
Approved by the IPPNW Executive Committee
19 February 2001 | |
