Dallas Morning News
Wednesday | February 7, 2001
Depleted Uranium
NATO should find a less risky tank killer
http://www.dallasnews.com/editorial/280799_depleteduraniu.html
02/07/2001

The depleted uranium artillery shell made its reputation as a prodigious tank killer during the wars in the Persian Gulf, Bosnia and Kosovo. It was effective because depleted uranium is among the heaviest and densest of metals. Fired from the cannons of A-10 Warthog jet fighter airplanes, it easily pierces tank armor. The crumbled hulks of numerous Iraqi and Yugoslav army tanks – and even those of U.S. army tanks hit by "friendly fire" – testify to its power.

But the depleted uranium shell has become controversial because of some European governments' suspicions that it caused leukemia and other ailments in some soldiers and other people who served in the Balkans. In response to the furor, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Environmental Program and the European Union are appropriately studying the risks to human health and to the environment from exposure to it.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, of which the United States is one of 19 members, insists that depleted uranium is safe. The metal emits little radioactivity, the mutual defense body insists.

However, the metal would appear to be quite less safe after it strikes a tank. For then a significant percentage of the shell turns to toxic dust, which can be inhaled or otherwise ingested. NATO commanders in Kosovo acknowledged the danger by warning troops not to approach contaminated areas.

NATO's credibility on the question of whether depleted uranium is safe wasn't helped by the recent revelation that the shells used in Kosovo contained traces of plutonium, neptunium and americium – byproducts of nuclear reactors that are more radioactive than depleted uranium.

Regardless of whether depleted uranium caused what the Europeans are calling "Balkans syndrome," people shouldn't stoically accept that battlefields must remain poisonous no man's lands long after the fighting has abated. Let NATO find an alternative to depleted uranium among the several that military experts believe are available. And let it accept responsibility for removing the environmental and health hazards that it created there so as not to tarnish its victories or to cause more harm to the people it fought to save.