SOUTHERN DEMILITARIZED ZONE, Iraq -- On the "Highway of Death," 11 miles north
of the Kuwait border, a collection of tanks, armored personnel carriers and other
military vehicles are rusting in the desert.
They also are radiating nuclear energy.
In 1991, the United States and its Persian Gulf War allies blasted the vehicles
with armor-piercing shells made of depleted uranium -- the first time such weapons
had been used in warfare -- as the Iraqis retreated from Kuwait. The devastating
results gave the highway its name.
Six-year-old Fatma Rakwan, being held by her mother at the Basra Hospital for
Maternity and Children, was recently diagnosed with leukemia. (November 12, 2002)
Paul Kitagaki Jr. / P-I
|
Today, nearly 12 years after the use of the super-tough weapons was credited with
bringing the war to a swift conclusion, the battlefield remains a radioactive
toxic wasteland -- and depleted uranium munitions remain a mystery.
Although the Pentagon has sent mixed signals about the effects of depleted
uranium, Iraqi doctors believe that it is responsible for a significant increase
in cancer and birth defects in the region. Many researchers outside Iraq, and
several U.S. veterans organizations, agree; they also suspect depleted uranium
of playing a role in Gulf War Syndrome, the still-unexplained malady that has
plagued hundreds of thousands of Gulf War veterans.
Depleted uranium is a problem in other former war zones as well. Yesterday,
U.N. experts said they found radioactive hot spots in Bosnia resulting from the
use of depleted uranium during NATO air strikes in 1995.
With another war in Iraq perhaps imminent, scientists and others are concerned
that the side effects of depleted uranium munitions -- still a major part of the
U.S. arsenal -- will cause serious illnesses or deaths in a new generation of
U.S. soldiers as well as Iraqis.
THE DANGERS
Depleted uranium, known as DU, is a highly dense metal that is the byproduct
of the process during which fissionable uranium used to manufacture nuclear bombs
and reactor fuel is separated from natural uranium. DU remains radioactive for
about 4.5 billion years.
Uranium, a weakly radioactive element, occurs naturally in soil and water everywhere
on Earth, but mainly in trace quantities. Humans ingest it daily in minute quantities.
DU shell holes in the vehicles along the Highway of Death are 1,000 times more
radioactive than background radiation, according to Geiger counter readings done
for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Dr. Khajak Vartaanian, a nuclear medicine
expert from the Iraq Department of Radiation Protection in Basra, and Col. Amal
Kassim of the Iraqi navy.
The desert around the vehicles was 100 times more radioactive than background
radiation; Basra, a city of 1 million people, some 125 miles away, registered
only slightly above background radiation level.
But the radioactivity is only one concern about DU munitions.
A second, potentially more serious hazard is created when a DU round hits its
target. As much as 70 percent of the projectile can burn up on impact, creating
a firestorm of ceramic DU oxide particles. The residue of this firestorm is an
extremely fine ceramic uranium dust that can be spread by the wind, inhaled and
absorbed into the human body and absorbed by plants and animals, becoming part
of the food chain.
Once lodged in the soil, the munitions can pollute the environment and create
up to a hundredfold increase in uranium levels in ground water, according to the
U.N. Environmental Program.
Studies show it can remain in human organs for years.
Dr. Khajak Vartaanian, a radiation expert, holds a Geiger counter next to a hole
in an Iraqi tank destroyed by depleted uranium weapons in the Persian Gulf War
in 1991. The shell holes show 1,000 times the normal background radiation level.
(November 12, 2002) Paul Kitagaki Jr. / P-I
|
The U.S. Army acknowledges the hazards in a training manual, in which it requires
that anyone who comes within 25 meters of any DU-contaminated equipment or terrain
wear respiratory and skin protection, and states that "contamination will make
food and water unsafe for consumption."
Just six months before the Gulf War, the Army released a report on DU predicting
that large amounts of DU dust could be inhaled by soldiers and civilians during
and after combat.
Infantry were identified as potentially receiving the highest exposures, and
the expected health outcomes included cancers and kidney problems.
The report also warned that public knowledge of the health and environmental
effects of depleted uranium could lead to efforts to ban DU munitions.
But today the Pentagon plays down the effects. Officials refer queries on DU
munitions to the latest government report on the subject, last updated on Dec.
13, 2000, which said DU is "40 percent less radioactive than natural uranium."
The report also said, "Gulf War exposures to depleted uranium (DU) have not
to date produced any observable adverse health effects attributable to DU's chemical
toxicity or low-level radiation. . . ."
In response to written queries, the Defense Department said, "The U.S. Military
Services use DU munitions because of DU's superior lethality against armor and
other hard targets."
It said DU munitions are "war reserve munitions; that is, used for combat and
not fired for training purposes," with the exception that DU munitions may be
fired at sea for weapon calibration purposes.
In addition to Iraq and Bosnia, DU munitions were used in Kosovo and Serbia
in 1999.
Also in 1999, a United Nations subcommission considered DU hazardous enough
to call for an initiative banning its use worldwide. The initiative has remained
in committee, blocked primarily by the United States, according to Karen Parker,
a lawyer with the International Educational Development/Humanitarian Law Project,
which has consultative status at the United Nations.
Parker, who first raised the DU issue in the United Nations in 1996, contends
that DU "violates the existing law and customs of war."
She said there are four rules derived from all of humanitarian law regarding
weapons:
Weapons may only be used in the legal field of battle, defined as legal military
targets of the enemy in war. Weapons may not have an adverse effect off the legal
field of battle.
Weapons can only be used for the duration of an armed conflict. A weapon that
is used or continues to act after the war is over violates this criterion.
Weapons may not be unduly inhumane.
Weapons may not have an unduly negative effect on the natural environment.
"Depleted uranium fails all four of these rules," Parker said last week.
On Oct. 17, 2001, Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., introduced a bill calling for
"the suspension of the use, sale, development, production, testing, and export
of depleted uranium munitions pending the outcome of certain studies of the health
effects of such munitions. . . ."
More than a year later, the bill -- co-sponsored by Reps. Anibal Acevedo-Vila,
Puerto Rico; Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.; Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio; Barbara Lee, D-Ca.;
and Jim McDermott, D-Wash. -- remains in committee awaiting comment from the Defense
Department.
THE STUDIES
Hamdin and his brother Amhid are receiving follow-up treatment after being treated
successfully for leukemia two years ago at the Basra Hospital for Maternity and
Children. (November 12, 2002)
Paul Kitagaki Jr. / P-I
|
Gulf War veterans faced a wide array of potentially toxic materials during the
war: smoke from oil and chemical fires, insecticides, pesticides, vaccinations
and DU.
Of the 696,778 troops who served during the recognized conflict phase (1990-1991)
of the Gulf War, at least 20,6861 have applied for VA medical benefits. As of
May 2002, 159,238 veterans have been awarded service-connected disability by the
Department of Veterans Affairs for health effects collectively known as the Gulf
War Syndrome.
There have been many studies on Gulf War Syndrome over the years, as well as
on possible long-term health hazards of DU munitions. Most have been inconclusive.
But some researchers said the previous studies on DU, conducted by groups and
agencies ranging from the World Health Organization to the Rand Corp. to the investigative
arm of Congress, weren't looking in the right place -- at the effects of inhaled
DU.
Dr. Asaf Durakovic, director of the private, non-profit Uranium Medical Research
Centre in Canada and the United States, and center research associates Patricia
Horan and Leonard Dietz, published a unique study in the August issue of Military
Medicine medical journal.
The study is believed to be the first to look at inhaled DU among Gulf War
veterans, using the ultrasensitive technique of thermal ionization mass spectrometry,
which enabled them to easily distinguish between natural uranium and DU.
The study, which examined British, Canadian and U.S. veterans, all suffering
typical Gulf War Syndrome ailments, found that, nine years after the war, 14 of
27 veterans studied had DU in their urine. DU also was found in the lung and bone
of a deceased Gulf War veteran.
That no governmental study has been done on inhaled DU "amounts to a massive
malpractice," Dietz said in an interview last week.
THE ACTIVIST
Dr. Doug Rokke was an Army health physicist assigned in 1991 to the command
staff of the 12th Preventive Medicine Command and 3rd U.S. Army Medical Command
headquarters. Rokke was recalled to active duty 20 years after serving in Vietnam,
from his research job with the University of Illinois Physics Department, and
sent to the Gulf to take charge of the DU cleanup operation.
Today, in poor health, he has become an outspoken opponent of the use of DU
munitions.
"DU is the stuff of nightmares," said Rokke, who said he has reactive airway
disease, neurological damage, cataracts and kidney problems, and receives a 40
percent disability payment from the government. He blames his health problems
on exposure to DU.
Rokke and his primary team of about 100 performed their cleanup task without
any specialized training or protective gear. Today, Rokke said, at least 30 members
of the team are dead, and most of the others -- including Rokke -- have serious
health problems.
Rokke said: "Verified adverse health effects from personal experience, physicians
and from personal reports from individuals with known DU exposures include reactive
airway disease, neurological abnormalities, kidney stones and chronic kidney pain,
rashes, vision degradation and night vision losses, lymphoma, various forms of
skin and organ cancer, neuropsychological disorders, uranium in semen, sexual
dysfunction and birth defects in offspring.
"This whole thing is a crime against God and humanity."
Speaking from his home in Rantoul, Ill., where he works as a substitute high
school science teacher, Rokke said, "When we went to the Gulf, we were all really
healthy, and we got trashed."
Rokke, an Army Reserve major who describes himself as "a patriot to the right
of Rush Limbaugh," said hearing the latest Pentagon statements on DU is especially
frustrating now that another war against Iraq appears likely.
"Since 1991, numerous U.S. Department of Defense reports have said that the
consequences of DU were unknown," Rokke said. "That is a lie. We warned them in
1991 after the Gulf War, but because of liability issues, they continue to ignore
the problem." Rokke worked until 1996 for the military, developing DU training
and management procedures. The procedures were ignored, he said.
"Their arrogance is beyond comprehension," he said. "We have spread radioactive
waste all over the place and refused medical treatment to people . . . it's all
arrogance.
"DU is a snapshot of technology gone crazy."
BIRTH DEFECTS IN IRAQ
At the Saddam Teaching Hospital in Basra, Dr. Jawad Al-Ali, a British-trained
oncologist, displays, in four gaily colored photo albums, what he says are actual
snapshots of the nightmares.
The photos represent the surge in birth defects -- in 1989 there were 11 per
100,000 births; in 2001 there were 116 per 100,000 births -- that even before
they heard about DU, had doctors in southern Iraq making comparisons to the birth
defects that followed the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WWII.
There were photos of infants born without brains, with their internal organs
outside their bodies, without sexual organs, without spines, and the list of deformities
went on and on. There also were photos of cancer patients.
Cancer has increased dramatically in southern Iraq. In 1988, 34 people died
of cancer; in 1998, 450 died of cancer; in 2001 there were 603 cancer deaths.
On a tour of one ward of the hospital, doctors pointed out boys and girls who
were suffering from leukemia. Most of the children die, the doctors said, because
there are insufficient drugs available for their treatment.
There was one notable exception, a young boy whose family was able to buy the
expensive drugs on the black market.
Al-Ali said it defies logic to absolve DU of blame when veterans of the Gulf
War and of the fighting in the Balkans share common illnesses with children in
southern Iraq.
"The cause of all of these cancers and deformities remains theoretical because
we can't confirm the presence of uranium in tissue or urine with the equipment
we have," said Al-Ali. "And because of the sanctions, we can't get the equipment
we need."
OTHER LINKS
U.S. Department of Defense: www.defenselink.mil/
The National Gulf War Resource Center, Inc.: www.ngwrc.org/Dulink/du_link.htm
Uranium Medical Research Centre: www.umrc.net/
Dr. Doug Rokke, a U.S. Army health physicist assigned to help clean up depleted
uranium after the Persian Gulf War, will speak in Seattle on Saturday from 2 to
4 p.m. at University Baptist Church, Northeast 47th Street and 12th Avenue Northeast.
Rokke is on a six-state speaking tour sponsored by The Interfaith Network of Concern
for the People of Iraq, and co-sponsored by the Traprock Peace Center in Deerfield,
Mass.
©1999-2002 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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