Australia is far from an innocent bystander to the damage being done by weapons that use depleted uranium -- writes Helen Caldicott.

The evil legacy of the depleted uranium, or DU, weapons used by the allied forces in Iraq, Kuwait, Bosnia and Kosovo is causing a furore in Europe. Seven Italian soldiers who served in the Balkans have died of leukemia, while 30 are seriously ill, 12 with cancer. France, Portugal, Holland, Belgium and Spain also have soldiers who are developing malignancies.

The British Government, facing an anguished and angry outcry from its military veterans, has finally and reluctantly agreed to study the issue.

The Pentagon, however, steadfastly maintains that DU poses no threat to health.

Why should Australians care? Because these DU munitions almost certainly contained uranium mined in Australia.  DU is actually uranium 238. It is what is left after the fissionable element uranium 235 is extracted from the ore used as fuel for weapons and nuclear reactors.

About 700,000 tonnes of this seemingly useless but hazardous radioactive material had accumulated over the past half century throughout the United States until the American military discovered that it was not so useless after all.

Almost twice as dense as lead, it sliced through the armour of tanks like a hot knife through butter. Eureka: it was there and what's more it was free, so DU bullets and shells would be cheap to make as well.

But uranium 238 has other properties. It is pyrophoric, bursting into flames when it hits a tank at great speed.

The fire oxidises the uranium, converting it to tiny aerosolised particles that can be inhaled into the small air passages of the lung where the material often remains for many years.

As far back as 1943, scientists in the Manhattan Project were postulating that uranium could be used on the battlefield as an air and terrain contaminant.

Inhaling it would cause "bronchial irritation" and the acute radiation effects could induce ulcers and perforations of the gut followed by death. Because it is radioactive, uranium 238 can damage cells in the lung, bone, kidney, and lymph glands, causing cancer in those organs as well as cancer of the white blood cells,  leukemia.

It is also a heavy metal and causes a kidney disease called nephritis. It is not surprising that Gulf War veterans are excreting uranium 238 in their urine and semen.

Children in Iraq - where over a million pounds of DU in spent shells and aerosolised powder was left by the allies - are reported to have a higher than normal incidence of malignancies and congenital malformations.

Similar reports are emerging from Bosnian and Kosovo hospitals, while studies of children of American veterans seem to show a higher than normal incidence of congenital disease.

Because uranium 238 has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, and plutonium, which is by orders of magnitude more carcinogenic than uranium, has a shorter half life of only 240,400 years, Iraq, Kuwait, Bosnia and Kosovo are now contaminated with carcinogenic radioactive elements forever. And because the latent period of carcinogenes - that is, the incubation time for cancer - is two to 10 years for leukemia and 15 to 60 years for solid cancer, it is almost certain that the reported malignancies in the NATO troops and peacekeepers who served in the Balkans, and in the American soldiers and their allies who served in the Gulf, as well as civilians who live in these countries, are just the tip of the iceberg.

So what is the Australian connection? The Department of Energy in the US has just admitted that contaminated uranium reprocessed from military reactors had been mixed in with the "pure" DU.

This contaminated uranium also contains traces of plutonium and uranium 236, and probably neptunium and americium - elements which are actually thousands of times more carcinogenic than the uranium 238.

These DU munitions almost certainly contain Australian uranium because the thousands of tonnes of ore we ship routinely to the US is enriched at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion plant in Paducah, Kentucky, the same plant where the DU for weapons is sourced.

Thus the evil legacy of DU is partly Australia's.

When will we act to stop it?
--
Dr. Helen Caldicott is a pediatrician and founder of Our Common Future Party.

Copyright © 2001. All rights reserved.