Helena Peace Seekers
Action for peace, economic and social justice and environmental responsibility

CAKE & ROSES:
WITNESS THROUGH ART
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15 W. Placer St, just off Last Chance Gulch (Click here for full schedule)

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Mission Statement

For thousands of years in our human history war has been a failed and ineffective method of resolving conflict.

I was floored, several years ago, on first hearing that the United States was using high-caliber bullets and tank shells made from depleted uranium (DU). How could my country be using radioactive munitions, I wondered? That any American would consider doing this seemed to me to be so outrageous as to be unthinkable.

Natural uranium contains 99.27% U-238 and 0.72% U-235. DU is referred to as “depleted” because it is what is left over after most of the U-235 (used to promote fission in nuclear reactors and nuclear bombs) has been removed from natural uranium. So DU is 99.8% Uranium 238. Though U238 is not unstable enough to initiate fission, it is a radioactive emitter of Alpha ionizing radiation with a half-life of 4.5 billion years, capable of causing genetic mutations in the DNA of cells that it contacts, potentially causing cancers and birth defects. So how could it be that our military is using radioactive munitions, contaminating the sites where they’re used for the rest of all time?

On the one hand, our national government has been warning us since 9/11/2001 that unethical terrorists might attack us using “dirty bombs” (combining conventional explosives with radioactive material with the goal of spreading radioactive contamination), and on the other hand, this same national government, during combat in the last 15 years, has released into the environments of Bosnia and Iraq, and perhaps Afghanistan, at least 500 tons of radioactive DU munitions, and perhaps as much as 2000 tons. How could this be? Why is it that this startling fact is largely unknown, and how could this spreading of radiation by our country not be considered a war crime?

The Pentagon would challenge me and accuse me of being an irrational alarmist. To quote the official Department of Defense (DoD) “Briefing on Depleted Uranium” by Col. James Naughton, US Army Materiel Command, and Dr. Michael Kilpatrick (3/14/2003): “We looked at some 90 Gulf War veterans who were in or on an armored vehicle when it was struck by depleted uranium in friendly fire. And those individuals have been followed on an annual basis now we are talking 12 years post-incident. And we do not see any kidney damage in those individuals….and they have had no other medical consequences of that depleted uranium exposure….no cancer of bone or lungs….no leukemias.”

Regarding the widely covered story about Italian troops from the Balkans becoming ill, where the US says it fired 40,000 depleted uranium rounds, the same Pentagon briefing stated: “…the Italians did the epidemiological study and found basically the rate of leukemia in their military personnel was no greater than their civilian population.” And yet, in contradiction to this Pentagon briefing, a just-published BBC-news article (January 10, 2007) stated: “…50 [Italian] veterans have died and 200 are seriously ill…[and] many of those who have died or are ill have contracted cancer. In 2002 the Italian defence ministry published a report compiled by independent scientists which found a higher than average number of servicemen were suffering from cancer. It is said there was an excessive number of Hodgkin’s disease victims among Italian Balkan peacekeepers. A number of children fathered by the soldiers have been born with disabilities. There are similar reports from soldiers’ associations in Belgium, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands.” Veterans groups in the US similarly report disabilities, malignancies, birth defects, and deaths that they believe are related to veterans’ exposure to DU.

Those of us in the Helena area who are troubled by the US use of DU have formed a group we call the Montana Depleted Uranium Education Project. We are trying to educate ourselves about DU and we are trying to share the results of our educational efforts with others. A central project of our group has been to try to help Montana combat vets receive testing and treatment for DU exposure. We have written a resolution that will be carried forward in the current Montana legislative session that seeks to help get this goal accomplished.

With the Pentagon and some others stating that DU is essentially harmless and still others stating otherwise, it is hard to know what to believe. A November 1, 2006 BBC News article stated: “Dr. Mike Repacholi, who oversaw work on the [World Health Organisation 2001] report, told Angus Stickler of BBC Radio Four’s Today programme that depleted uranium was ‘basically safe’. ‘You would have to ingest a huge amount of depleted uranium dust to cause any adverse health effect,’ he said. But Dr. Keith Baverstock, who worked on the project, said research conducted by the US Department of Defense suggested otherwise….The research was not included in the WHO report, and Dr. Baverstock believes it was blocked. Mr. Repacholi said the findings were not corroborated by other reports and it was not WHO policy to publish ‘speculative’ data. He denied any pressure was brought to bear.”

It is clear from reading Department of Defense (DoD) documents that US military leaders love DU, both as armor plating (causing other countries’ munitions to bounce off DoD vehicles) and as penetrators of armor as part of bullets and tank shells. DU is approximately twice as dense as lead. DU’s denseness and hardness repel less-dense objects that strike it, and DU’s denseness and hardness enable it to penetrate less-dense objects that it strikes. Another characteristic of DU is that it burns when penetrating armor, sharpening as it bores through the armor and igniting whatever is inside the vehicle it has penetrated. The DoD likes the war fighting advantage that DU gives it. DU helps protect DoD fighters from the enemy and helps to destroy the enemy. But this advantage comes with a cost that I believe is too great.

The outer layers of a DU penetrator, upon striking an object, oxidize into an aerosol of radioactive dust that can be microscopic in size, hard to see but able to be breathed and eaten. U.S. Army tests show that a single round from an Abrams tank creates 2 to 7 pounds of uranium oxide dust upon impact. Each radioactive dust particle will be an emitter of ionizing Alpha radiation for the next 4.5 billion years. Should such a dust particle lodge against a particular, living cell, that cell would be irradiated and could suffer chromosomal damage that could cause the cell to become cancerous. Should a DU particle lodge next to a testes cell, its ionizing radiation could cause that testes cell to produce sperm with damaged chromosomes that could cause a baby to be created with birth defects.

In addition to the irradiation harms caused by DU, it also causes chemical harms due to its heavy-metal toxicity. The kidneys work hard to try to excrete any DU found in the blood. In the process, the DU particles can cause the atrophy or death of kidney cells, impairing the kidney’s ability to filter toxins from the blood.

Though the Department of Defense and some others claim that DU is not a significant health risk, many claim otherwise. A basic understanding of how ionizing radiation affects living cells leads me to conclude that we should not be putting additional sources of ionizing radiation into the environment. The 500 to 2000 tons of DU that US troops have shot into the environment over the past 15 years will be emitting ionizing radiation for the next 4.5 billion years, with the potential to cause cancers, birth defects, and tissue damage and death, again and again, throughout all time. Considering this, I concur with the conclusion of the Boston University School of Public Health, published in September 2003: “We conclude that DU exposure in and after war adds long-term radiation and chemical exposure to the already existing risks of death, injury, and environmental damage from war. We advocate that depleted uranium not be used to augment weapons of war because its health effects on those acutely and chronically exposed are not know, because it persists in the environment in zones of conflict, and because contaminated sites are not adequately documented and remediated.”

I hope you will support the Helenans who have formed the Montana Depleted Uranium Education Project, as we call for testing and treatment for all vets who have served in combat areas where DU has been used. And I personally hope that you will do what you can to influence our political leaders to remove DU munitions from our arsenal.