The West's Poisonous Legacy
The Independent (05/28/1998)
In Britain, depleted uranium is treated
as a hazard. In Iraq, it still lies in
the soil.
By Robert Fisk
Across the sands of southern Iraq, the
residue of Allied depleted uranium (DU)
shells lies untreated in the soil. But
in Britain, the Government goes to
enormous lengths to protect its people
from the results of test firing the
very weapons suspected of causing an
increase in cancers among Iraqi
children.
A Government document, published almost
six months ago but virtually ignored,
reveals that test-firing of DU shells
in Britain is carried out into an
open-sided concrete building called the
"tunnel" and that radioactive residues
are washed off, sealed in cement and
transported to Cumbria for disposal.
Iraqi doctors have long suspected that
the children suffering from a four-fold
increase in cancer in the south of the
country - revealed in The Independent
on 4 March - contracted their sickness
from the Allied use of depleted uranium
shells in the 1991 war. Tens of
thousands of these projectiles were
fired at the Iraqis in February 1991 in
the fields south of the city of Basra,
the fertile lands from which millions
of Iraqis acquire their food. Many of
the children dying of leukemia and
lymphoma cancer were not even born when
the war took place.
There has been no attempt by the US or
Britain to find out the cause of the
cancer outbreaks in Iraq, though US
veterans' groups suspect DU shells,
made of hard alloys which are tougher
than tungsten and which ignite inside
armoured vehicles, are responsible for
thousands of cases of "Gulf War
Syndrome" (including lymphoma cancers)
among American soldiers who fought in
the war. The US National Gulf Resource
Centre says 40,000 US servicemen may
have been exposed to depleted uranium
dust on the battlefields. Tony Flint,
acting chairman of the British Gulf War
Veterans' and Families' Association
says the same shells could be
responsible for the death of 30 British
veterans.
A review of the Ministry of Defence's
radioactive waste and management
practices, published by the Department
of the Environment in December last
year, however, shows government
specialists here take the risk of
contamination more seriously than
imagined. According to the report by
the Radioactive Waste Management
Advisory Committee, depleted uranium
shells tested at the range at Eskmeals,
on the Cumbrian coast, are fired into a
special tunnel fitted with a filtered
extract system and pressure-washed with
water to avoid contamination.
"The washings are transferred to
collecting tanks for eventual disposal
in cemented drums to Drigg," the report
says. If the DU shell is fixed into
armour plate, then the plate itself is
sent to Drigg for disposal. So
concerned are the British authorities
about health hazards from DU shells
that an on-site health physics
laboratory exists to monitor the
workforce on the Eskmeals firing range.
The Department of the Environment
report says firings involving uranium
have been going on at the range since
1981, and "just over 90 per cent of the
total weight of the shells has been
recovered". On 1991 Gulf War
battlefields, not a single attempt was
made to recover contaminated residues.
The Eskmeals range possesses seven
high-volume air samplers and 1,000
samples are taken annually. A special
sampler operates to check what the
document calls "the critical group
within the public [sic]...identified as
those living in Monk Moors". Depleted
uranium shells are also test-fired at
Kirkcudbright in Scotland where 1.5
tonnes of the projectiles are targeted
every year into the Solway Firth. The
shells, the report says alarmingly,
"remain on the sea bed where they will
corrode with time to form an insoluble
sludge composed of hydrated uranium
oxide ... Unsuccessful attempts were
made in 1993 to recover some of these
shells in order to assess their
corrosion state." A small amount of
depleted uranium waste also occurs at
the Defence Evaluation and Research
Agency's site at Fort Halstead in Kent
disposed of, like the contamination at
Eskmeals, to Drigg in Cumbria.
According to another American Gulf
veterans' association, Swords to
Plowshares, when a depleted uranium
shell strikes armour, up to 70 per cent
of the round burns, scattering
radioactive and chemically toxic dust
in and around the target.
The group quotes a US army report as
stating that "aerosol DU exposures to
soldiers on the battlefield could be
significant with potential radiological
and toxicological effects ...
short-term effects of high doses can
result in death, while long-term
effects of low doses have been
implicated in cancer". A 1993 US
General Accounting Office report stated
that American soldiers of the 144th
Supply Company of the National Guard
were never told of radiation hazards
when ordered to recover US military
vehicles in the Gulf that were the
victim of "friendly fire" attacks using
depleted uranium projectiles.
Western evidence is, thus, beginning to
bear out the claim by Iraqi doctors
that the residues of Allied DU shells
may be a grave health hazard on the
Gulf War battlefields. Almost all farm
produce consumed by residents of Basra
is grown in lands in which thousands of
depleted uranium shells were fired.
When The Independent visited the area
in February, local farmers complained
of high levels of cancer in their
families.
The effectiveness of armour-piercing
ammunition principally depends on its
density of the material from which is
it manufactured, and the British
government report says depleted uranium
shows "significant performance
advantages over other metals". Which is
not much comfort to Iraqi cancer
sufferers, or Gulf War veterans.
