- "I'm horrified. The people out there - the Iraqis,
the media and the troops - risk the most appalling ill health. And the
radiation from depleted uranium can travel literally anywhere. It's going
to destroy the lives of thousands of children, all over the world. We all
know how far radiation can travel. Radiation from Chernobyl reached Wales
and in Britain you sometimes get red dust from the Sahara on your car."
- The speaker is not some alarmist doom-sayer. He is Dr.
Chris Busby, the British radiation expert, Fellow of the University of
Liverpool in the Faculty of Medicine and UK representative on the European
Committee on Radiation Risk, talking about the best-kept secret of this
war: the fact that, by illegally using hundreds of tons of depleted uranium
(DU) against Iraq, Britain and America have gravely endangered not only
the Iraqis but the whole world.
- For these weapons have released deadly, carcinogenic
and mutagenic, radioactive particles in such abundance that-whipped up
by sandstorms and carried on trade winds - there is no corner of the globe
they cannot penetrate-including Britain. For the wind has no boundaries
and time is on their side: the radioactivity persists for over 4,500,000,000
years and can cause cancer, leukemia, brain damage, kidney failure, and
extreme birth defects - killing millions of every age for centuries to
come. A crime against humanity which may, in the eyes of historians, rank
with the worst atrocities of all time.
- These weapons have released deadly, carcinogenic and
mutagenic, radioactive particles in such abundance that there is no corner
of the globe they cannot penetrate - including Britain. Yet, officially,
no crime has been committed. For this story is a dirty story in which the
facts have been concealed from those who needed them most. It is also a
story we need to know if the people of Iraq are to get the medical care
they desperately need, and if our troops, returning from Iraq, are not
to suffer as terribly as the veterans of other conflicts in which depleted
uranium was used.
- A Dirty Tyson
- 'Depleted' uranium is in many ways a misnomer. For 'depleted'
sounds weak. The only weak thing about depleted uranium is its price. It
is dirt cheap, toxic, waste from nuclear power plants and bomb production.
However, uranium is one of earth's heaviest elements and DU packs a Tyson's
punch, smashing through tanks, buildings and bunkers with equal ease, spontaneously
catching fire as it does so, and burning people alive. 'Crispy critters'
is what US servicemen call those unfortunate enough to be close. And, when
John Pilger encountered children killed at a greater distance he wrote:
"The children's skin had folded back, like parchment, revealing veins
and burnt flesh that seeped blood, while the eyes, intact, stared straight
ahead. I vomited." (Daily Mirror)
- The millions of radioactive uranium oxide particles released
when it burns can kill just as surely, but far more terribly. They can
even be so tiny they pass through a gas mask, making protection against
them impossible. Yet, small is not beautiful. For these invisible killers
indiscriminately attack men, women, children and even babies in the womb-and
do the gravest harm of all to children and unborn babies.
- A Terrible Legacy
- Doctors in Iraq have estimated that birth defects have
increased by 2-6 times, and 3-12 times as many children have developed
cancer and leukaemia since 1991. Moreover, a report published in The Lancet
in 1998 said that as many as 500 children a day are dying from these sequels
to war and sanctions and that the death rate for Iraqi children under 5
years of age increased from 23 per 1000 in 1989 to 166 per thousand in
1993. Overall, cases of lymphoblastic leukemia more than quadrupled with
other cancers also increasing 'at an alarming rate'. In men, lung, bladder,
bronchus, skin, and stomach cancers showed the highest increase. In women,
the highest increases were in breast and bladder cancer, and non-Hodgkin
- On hearing that DU had been used in the Gulf in 1991,
the UK Atomic Energy Authority sent the Ministry of Defense a special report
on the potential damage to health and the environment. It said that it
could cause half a million additional cancer deaths in Iraq over 10 years.
In that war the authorities only admitted to using 320 tons of DU-although
the Dutch charity LAKA estimates the true figure is closer to 800 tons.
Many times that may have been spread across Iraq by this year's war. The
devastating damage all this DU will do to the health and fertility of the
people of Iraq now, and for generations to come, is beyond imagining.
- The radioactivity persists for over 4,500,000,000 years
killing millions of every age for centuries to come. This is a crime against
humanity which may rank with the worst atrocities of all time.
- We must also count the numberless thousands of miscarried
babies. Nobody knows how many Iraqis have died in the womb since DU contaminated
their world. But it is suggested that troops who were only exposed to DU
for the brief period of the war were still excreting uranium in their semen
8 years later and some had 100 times the so-called 'safe limit' of uranium
in their urine. The lack of government interest in the plight of veterans
of the 1991 war is reflected in a lack of academic research on the impact
of DU but informal research has found a high incidence of birth defects
in their children and that the wives of men who served in Iraq have three
times more miscarriages than the wives of servicemen who did not go there.
- Since DU darkened the land Iraq has seen birth defects
which would break a heart of stone: babies with terribly foreshortened
limbs, with their intestines outside their bodies, with huge bulging tumors
where their eyes should be, or with a single eye-like Cyclops, or without
eyes, or without limbs, and even without heads. Significantly, some of
the defects are almost unknown outside textbooks showing the babies born
near A-bomb test sites in the Pacific.
- Doctors report that many women no longer say 'Is it a
girl or a boy?' but simply, 'Is it normal, doctor?' Moreover this terrible
legacy will not end. The genes of their parents may have been damaged for
ever, and the damaging DU dust is ever-present.
- Blue on Blue
- What the governments of America and Britain have done
to the people of Iraq they have also done to their own soldiers, in both
wars. And they have done it knowingly. For the battlefields have been thick
with DU and soldiers have had to enter areas heavily contaminated by bombing.
Moreover, their bodies have not only been assaulted by DU but also by a
vaccination regime which violated normal protocols, experimental vaccines,
nerve agent pills, and organophosphate pesticides in their tents. Yet,
though the hazards of DU were known, British and American troops were not
warned of its dangers. Nor were they given thorough medical checks on their
return-even though identifying it quickly might have made it possible to
remove some of it from their body. Then, when a growing number became seriously
ill, and should have been sent to top experts in radiation damage and neurotoxins,
many were sent to a psychiatrist.
- Over 200,000 US troops who returned from the 1991 war
are now invalided out with ailments officially attributed to service in
Iraq-that's 1 in 3. In contrast, the British government's failure to fully
assess the health of returning troops, or to monitor their health, means
no one even knows how many have died or become gravely ill since their
return. However, Gulf veterans' associations say that, of 40,000 or so
fighting fit men and women who saw active service, at least 572 have died
prematurely since coming home and 5000 may be ill. An alarming number are
thought to have taken their own lives, unable to bear the torment of the
innumerable ailments which have combined to take away their career, their
sexuality, their ability to have normal children, and even their ability
to breathe or walk normally. As one veteran puts it, they are 'on DU death
row, waiting to die'.
- Whatever other factors there may be, some of their illnesses
are strikingly similar to those of Iraqis exposed to DU dust. For example,
soldiers have also fathered children without eyes. And, in a group of eight
servicemen whose babies lack eyes seven are known to have been directly
exposed to DU dust.
- They too have fathered children with stunted arms, and
rare abnormalities classically associated with radiation damage. They too
seem prone to cancer and leukemia. Tellingly, so are EU soldiers who served
as peacekeepers in the Balkans, where DU was also used. Indeed their leukemia
rate has been so high that several EU governments have protested at the
use of DU.
- The Vital Evidence
- Despite all that evidence of the harm done by DU, governments
on both sides of the Atlantic have repeatedly claimed that as it emits
only 'low level' radiation DU is harmless. Award-winning scientist, Dr.
Rosalie Bertell who has led UN medical commissions, has studied 'low-level'
radiation for 30 years. 2 She has found that uranium oxide particles have
more than enough power to harm cells, and describes their pulses of radiation
as hitting surrounding cells 'like flashes of lightning' again and again
in a single second.2 Like many scientists worldwide who have studied this
type of radiation, she has found that such 'lightning strikes' can damage
DNA and cause cell mutations which lead to cancer.
- Moreover, these particles can be taken up by body fluids
and travel through the body, damaging more than one organ. To compound
all that, Dr. Bertell has found that this particular type of radiation
can cause the body's communication systems to break down, leading to malfunctions
in many vital organs of the body and to many medical problems. A striking
fact, since many veterans of the first Gulf war suffer from innumerable,
seemingly unrelated, ailments.
- In addition, recent research by Eric Wright, Professor
of Experimental Haematology at Dundee University, and others, have shown
two ways in which such radiation can do far more damage than has been thought.
The first is that a cell which seems unharmed by radiation can produce
cells with diverse mutations several cell generations later. (And mutations
are at the root of cancer and birth defects.) This 'radiation-induced genomic
instability' is compounded by 'the bystander effect' by which cells mutate
in unison with others which have been damaged by radiation-rather as birds
swoop and turn in unison. Put together, these two mechanisms can greatly
increase the damage done by a single source of radiation, such as a DU
particle. Moreover, it is now clear that there are marked genetic differences
in the way individuals respond to radiation-with some being far more likely
to develop cancer than others. So the fact that some veterans of the first
Gulf war seem relatively unharmed by their exposure to DU in no way proves
that DU did not damage others.
- The Price of Truth
- That the evidence from Iraq and from our troops, and
the research findings of such experts, have been ignored may be no accident.
A US report, leaked in late 1995, allegedly says, 'The potential for health
effects from DU exposure is real; however it must be viewed in perspective...
the financial implications of long-term disability payments and healthcare
costs would be excessive.'3
- Clearly, with hundreds of thousands gravely ill in Iraq
and at least a quarter of a million UK and US troops seriously ill, huge
disability claims might be made not only against the governments of Britain
and America if the harm done by DU were acknowledged. There might also
be huge claims against companies making DU weapons and some of their directors
are said to be extremely close to the White House. How close they are to
Downing Street is a matter for speculation, but arms sales makes a considerable
contribution to British trade. So the massive whitewashing of DU over the
past 12 years, and the way that governments have failed to test returning
troops, seemed to disbelieve them, and washed their hands of them, may
be purely to save money.
- The possibility that financial considerations have led
the governments of Britain and America to cynically avoid taking responsibility
for the harm they have done not only to the people of Iraq but to their
own troops may seem outlandish. Yet DU weapons weren't used by the other
side and no other explanation fits the evidence. For, in the days before
Britain and America first used DU in war its hazards were no secret.4 One
American study in 1990 said DU was 'linked to cancer when exposures are
internal, [and to] chemical toxicity-causing kidney damage'. While another
openly warned that exposure to these particles under battlefield conditions
could lead to cancers of the lung and bone, kidney damage, non-malignant
lung disease, neuro-cognitive disorders, chromosomal damage and birth defects.5
- A Culture of Denial
- In 1996 and 1997 UN Human Rights Tribunals condemned
DU weapons for illegally breaking the Geneva Convention and classed them
as 'weapons of mass destruction' 'incompatible with international humanitarian
and human rights law'. Since then, following leukemia in European peacekeeping
troops in the Balkans and Afghanistan (where DU was also used), the EU
has twice called for DU weapons to be banned.
- Yet, far from banning DU, America and Britain stepped
up their denials of the harm from this radioactive dust as more and more
troops from the first Gulf war and from action and peacekeeping in the
Balkans and Afghanistan have become seriously ill. This is no coincidence.
In 1997, while citing experiments, by others, in which 84 percent of dogs
exposed to inhaled uranium died of cancer of the lungs, Dr. Asaf Durakovic,
then Professor of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine at Georgetown University
in Washington was quoted as saying, 'The [US government's] Veterans Administration
asked me to lie about the risks of incorporating depleted uranium in the
human body.' He concluded, 'uranium does cause cancer, uranium does cause
mutation, and uranium does kill. If we continue with the irresponsible
contamination of the biosphere, and denial of the fact that human life
is endangered by the deadly isotope uranium, then we are doing disservice
to ourselves, disservice to the truth, disservice to God and to all generations
who follow.' Not what the authorities wanted to hear and his research was
- During 12 years of ever-growing British whitewash the
authorities have abolished military hospitals, where there could have been
specialized research on the effects of DU and where expertise in treating
DU victims could have built up. And, not content with the insult of suggesting
the gravely disabling symptoms of Gulf veterans are imaginary they have
refused full pensions to many. For, despite all the evidence to the contrary,
the current House of Commons briefing paper on DU hazards says 'it is judged
that any radiation effects from possible exposures are extremely unlikely
to be a contributory factor to the illnesses currently being experienced
by some Gulf war veterans.' Note how over a quarter of a million sick and
dying US and UK vets are called 'some'.
- The Way Ahead
- Britain and America not only used DU in this year's Iraq
war, they dramatically increased its use-from a minimum of 320 tons in
the previous war to at minimum of 1500 tons in this one. And this time
the use of DU wasn't limited to anti-tank weapons-as it had largely been
in the previous Gulf war-but was extended to the guided missiles, large
bunker busters and big 2000-pound bombs used in Iraq's cities. This means
that Iraq's cities have been blanketed in lethal particles-any one of which
can cause cancer or deform a child. In addition, the use of DU in huge
bombs which throw the deadly particles higher and wider in huge plumes
of smoke means that billions of deadly particles have been carried high
into the air-again and again and again as the bombs rained down-ready to
be swept worldwide by the winds.
- The Royal Society has suggested the solution is massive
decontamination in Iraq. That could only scratch the surface. For decontamination
is hugely expensive and, though it may reduce the risks in some of the
worst areas, it cannot fully remove them. For DU is too widespread on land
and water. How do you clean up every nook and cranny of a city the size
of Baghdad? How can they decontaminate a whole country in which microscopic
particles, which cannot be detected with a normal geiger counter, are spread
from border to border? And how can they clean up all the countries downwind
of Iraq-and, indeed, the world?
- So there are only two things we can do to mitigate this
crime against humanity. The first is to provide the best possible medical
care for the people of Iraq, for our returning troops and for those who
served in the last Gulf war and, through that, minimize their suffering.
The second is to relegate war, and the production and sale of weapons,
to the scrap heap of history-along with slavery and genocide. Then, and
only then, will this crime against humanity be expunged, and the tragic
deaths from this war truly bring freedom to the people of Iraq, and of
- 1. The Lancet volume 351, issue 9103, 28 February 1998.
- 2. Rosalie Bertell's book Planet Earth the Latest Weapon
of War was reviewed in Caduceus issue 51, page 28.
- 3. http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabl1
- . htm#TAB L_Research Report Summaries
- 4. www.wagingpeace.org/articles/02.01/020117moret.htm
- The secret official memorandum to Brigadier General L.R.Groves
from Drs Conant, Compton and Urey of War Department Manhattan district
dated October 1943 is available at the website www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2003/Leuren-Moret-Gen-Grove
- 5. http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_iitab11.
- htm#tab L_research report summaries
- Further information
- The Low Level Radiation Campaign hopes to be able to
arrange a limited number of private urine tests for those returning from
the latest Gulf war. It can be contacted at: The Knoll, Montpelier Park,
Llandrindod Wells, LD1 5LW. 01597 824771. Web: www.llrc.org
- James Denver writes and broadcasts internationally on
science and technology.