SOME OF THE armor-piercing, tank-killing depleted-uranium ammunition used in combat by the U.S. military was contaminated with highly radioactive substances, possibly including plutonium, according to a recent Swiss study.
That simple scientific fact has serious political consequences for the United States. Large amounts of depleted-uranium shells were used during the Persian Gulf war and more recently in Kosovo. Peace activists and U.S. military scientists for some time have expressed concerns about the health effects even of "uncontaminated" depleted uranium, including claims of links to severe birth defects, leukemia and the mysterious Gulf War Syndrome in U.S. veterans. Those concerns have always been dismissed by U.S. government officials, who say that depleted uranium is relatively harmless because of its low radioactivity.
These revelations of highly radioactive contaminants should be the last straw -- it's time for a worldwide ban on depleted-uranium munitions. The facts are straightforward: Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology discovered that depleted-uranium munitions used in Kosovo were contaminated with uranium 236, an isotope of uranium not found in nature. Numerous other scientists, including former U.S. military biologist and retired Col. Asaf Durakovic, have found traces of U-236 in the urine of gulf war veterans.
U-236 is created only in nuclear reactors and bombs; there is no other known source. The depleted uranium being used by the U.S. military must have come from reprocessed reactor fuel. This means that "depleted" uranium almost certainly contains plutonium and other extremely carcinogenic substances.
A recently released book: "Depleted Uranium: The Invisible War," by Martin Messonnier, Frederick Loore and Roger Trilling, cites a 1999 Energy Department report stating that a Paducah, Ky., plant "created depleted uranium potentially containing neptunium and plutonium." Paducah is one of three places where most of the world's depleted uranium is generated.
The U.S. government had kept the issue mostly under wraps until the recent controversy caused by the deaths from leukemia of eight Italian veterans of Balkan operations -- dozens of other Europeans have also died -- and the Pentagon's revelations that it used depleted uranium extensively in Bosnia in 1995. Before that, the concern of Americans for the millions of Iraqis, Serbs and Kosovar Albanians potentially at risk was too slight to provoke serious action. The government's "concern" for its veterans, to which any serviceman in Vietnam exposed to Agent Orange can attest, was equally slight.
Government officials also used scientific arguments to obfuscate and confuse the issue. Against the circumstantial evidence associating depleted uranium with a dramatic increase in birth defects and leukemia in southern Iraq, they pointed to the absence of any epidemiological study of affected areas.
Against the numerous claims of depleted uranium's health hazards from other scientists and the unexplained illnesses of tens of thousands of gulf war veterans, they pointed to a handful of scientific studies that showed some veterans with depleted uranium in their bodies had not experienced any increase in health problems.
Against the acknowledgement in the U.S. Army's field manuals of the hazards of depleted uranium on the battlefield, they maintained a stony silence. All this must change. The serious study that veterans' groups and peace activists have asked for must begin. The government should make good on its covenant with its soldiers to look out for their well-being, as well as on its ethical obligation to assess the effects on innocent victims, such as the civilians of Iraq and Serbia.
We also need an international tribunal on depleted uranium. When Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica contended that NATO's use of depleted uranium was a war crime, the United States scoffed. Can it do the same now that Dr. Doug Rokke, former head of the U.S. Army's depleted-uranium assessment team, has agreed? Standard U.S. tactics during recent wars, such as deliberate destruction of electrical grids and water treatment facilities, clearly violate international law, but the "lone superpower" does not often allow itself to be investigated. On the depleted-uranium issue, in the face of mounting international and domestic outrage, America may not have a choice. So far, the U.S. government and NATO have been hostile and negligent, refusing to destroy stocks of depleted-uranium weapons.