The Persian Gulf War of 1990-91 saw the first large-scale use of depleted uranium on the battlefield. Used as a warhead, it tends to burn on impact, converting an estimated twenty percent of its weight to uranium dioxide. Estimates of the amounts of DU (depleted uranium) used in the 1990-91 war vary, but it seems that the amount used was well in excess of a hundred tons.

burning on impact - detail

After the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91, many members of the military who had served in the Desert Storm campaign became ill, suffering from what came to be known as Gulf War Syndrome. While DU has been accused of being the cause of Gulf War Syndrome, the health statistics do not seem to support this. Gulf War Syndrome does not seem to be statistically related to where a service member was in the Gulf theatre, to how long they were in the theatre, or to what they were doing in the theatre.

Gulf War Syndrome location-netural - statistics

It follows that DU is not the cause of Gulf War Syndrome. However, this leaves open the possibility that a certain number of military personnel have fallen ill as a consequence of exposure to DU.

The official position of the American military establishment seems to be that DU has caused little if any damage to the health of troops who served in the Persian Gulf War.

official American military establishment stance - June 2003

However, the establishment opinion (that DU has done no substantial damage to human health) requires that over a hundred tons of this material were dispersed in the environment without harming human health. This seems a little hard to believe in view of the growing body of experimental evidence concerning the dangers of DU.

DU data and theory - synergies between chemical toxicity and radioactivity

One thing that clearly emerges from a study of this subject is that the radioactive debris strewn about Iraq remains a hazard to the health of the inhabitants. In 1991, a German epidemiologist found "a high rate of illness and death" amongst children in the southern part of Iraq, many of whom had collected spent DU shells.

Iraqi children seen gathering DU shells

At this point, the bland dismissals of danger issued by the British and American military authorities seem cavalier, to put it mildly, and Anglo-American reluctance to getting involved in the task of cleaning up contaminated battlefields in Iraq and elsewhere seems callous.

Put it another way: if al-Qaeda dumped a hundred tons of depleted uranium into the atmosphere over the state of Texas, would the White House respond with mild amusement or with Biblical wrath?

As of 2003 June 14, by the way, an extreme DU position (a Biblical wrath position, I think we could call it) is available here:-

Depleted uranium will affect Iraq for generations to come

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Document discovery note 2003 June 14:-

After a lot of pretty helpless thrashing around, trying to do online research into depleted uranium, I've finally found a lode of documents. The search engine trick was to look for "free medical information" rather than "depleted uranium".

This allowed me to sidestep the million and one depleted uranium pages, a lot of which are disturbingly cranky, and arrive at the site of the United States National Library of Medicine where you can drill down to a huge collection of references and abstracts from over 4600 biomedical journals.

Once having arrived, you can punch "depleted uranium" into the search box and get real scientific documents, for example the abstract for "Military use of depleted uranium: assessment of prolonged population exposure" by Giannardi C, Dominici D., which deals with "a residential farming scenario". This says, in part:-

Critical pathways and groups are identified in soil inhalation and ingestion; critical group is identified in children playing with the soil. From the available information on DU released at targeted sites, both critical and average exposure can produce toxicological hazards. The annual dose limit for the population can be exceeded within a few years from DU deposition for soil inhalation. As a result, clean up at targeted sites must be planned on the basis of measured concentration, when available, while special measures must be adopted anyway to reduce unaware exposures.

I found this lode of documents while I was in the process of updating my war links page.

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