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Subject: SNET: [piml] [Fwd: Garden: KOSOVO: Depleted Uranium in Kososvo]
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Subject: Garden: KOSOVO: Depleted Uranium in Kososvo
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Christian Science Monitor

April 29, 1999


The Trail Of A Bullet


The armor-piercing wonders of depleted uranium helped
win the Gulf War. As it is loaded for use in Kosovo, questions about
its long-term dangers linger.


First of two parts.


By Scott Peterson, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor


American anti-tank gunners in the Gulf War raved about it. It was their
"silver bullet," piercing the armor of Iraq's Soviet-made tanks as if
they were soda cans.


Gunners became accustomed to first-round, tank-fired shots that ignited
Iraqi T-72s with such force and fire that the result was dubbed
"Dante's Inferno." Fired from A-10 "tank-buster" planes in 30-mm form,
this bullet stopped armored convoys in their tracks.


This is the tale of a high-density bullet made of depleted uranium
(DU), a low-level radioactive waste left over from the making of
nuclear fuel and bombs. Because of its success, DU has already become a
staple of the US military's arsenal. It has been sold by the US and
Russia to other forces all over the world.


In the war over Kosovo today, NATO has loaded DU rounds into the guns
of Air Force A-10s. So far, the Air Force says, this highly effective
antitank ordnance has not yet been used.


Wherever it is fired, it leaves a radioactive trail. A Monitor
investigation of the Persian Gulf war zone, where this bullet saw its
first live action in 1991, found that it has left the desert sprinkled
with radioactive and chemically toxic dust.


Clues in how DU is handled


How dangerous is this unseen residue once the battle is over -
whether in Iraq's southern desert or in a Kosovo to which hundreds of
thousands of refugees are meant to return?


The US military has given mixed signals. A series of Pentagon reports
and regulations cite serious health risks from depleted uranium, and
still stipulate stringent, moon-suit type protective gear when
approaching objects hit with DU bullets.


And the Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires the military to have a
license to make or test fire a single DU round. In part because of
safety and environment concerns over DU, the US Navy opted to use
tungsten for its armor-piercing bullets.


But Pentagon officials today downplay that risk and cite other Pentagon
reports that back their view. They confirm that thousands of US
soldiers were "unnecessarily exposed" to DU in the Gulf, adding their
view that those exposures were "not medically significant."


In Iraq, however, physicians describe a sharp upward spike after the
Gulf War in the kind of health diagnoses - such as cancer - associated
with exposure to radiation. Iraqi veterans interviewed by the Monitor
supported those claims, if only anecdotally.


Perhaps one cause among many


But any increase in Iraqi health problems may have another
cause, or many causes. The Gulf War was the scene of a "toxic soup" of
dangerous chemicals. The Iraqis, and some American physicians and
scientists, argue that DU is one of the most dangerous.


Indeed, some Western scientists who have examined DU believe that it
could be one of the factors behind Gulf War syndrome - the
much-studied, little understood set of symptoms claimed by as many as 1
in 7 US Gulf War veterans.


The American military designed DU bullets in the 1970s, during the cold
war, to counter Moscow's advanced T-72 tanks. Denser than lead, DU
burns and self-sharpens when it hits a hard target and scorches its way
through inch after inch of armor in, literally, a flash.


American forces - and, to a very small degree, their British allies -
fired the 320 tons of DU that was shot across the deserts of Kuwait and
southern Iraq, where most of it still lies.


But it does not lie quietly. A Monitor reporter who traveled throughout
the region watched a radiation detector carried over parts of those
battlefields register about 35 times normal background radiation.
Portions of old tanks "killed" with DU bullets showed radiation levels
50 times above background - results similar to what US Army teams found
during the war.


Risks as a breathable dust


When DU is protectively encased and carefully handled, its
health risks are considered small. So if DU is outside the body, these
are not especially dangerous levels of radiation.


But when it smashes at Mach II into metal, DU burns and pulverizes into
dust that can soar in the heat column of a flaming tank and waft for
miles on the desert wind.


It is when this dust is inhaled or ingested that it becomes most
dangerous as a radioactive substance and a toxic heavy metal, some
experts say.


So far, DU bullets have received only limited public attention, though
the Pentagon predicts that every future battlefield is likely to be
strewn with their residue.


Reporting from Iraq, Kuwait, and the US, this Monitor series examines
the possible long-term effects of this powerful spinoff of the nuclear
age.


If there is a connection between human suffering and DU, then its use
in the future will mean that lands of conflict will remain contaminated
for the 4.5 billion years - a figure comparable to the age of the solar
system - that DU remains radioactive.




Second Part:


Will America Risk Use Of DU In Kosovo?


By Scott Peterson


If depleted uranium (DU) has not already been fired in Yugoslavia, what
are the prospects that it will be?


The US Army has no DU munitions "in theater" and no plans to send them,
says Lt. Col. Bill Wheelehan, an Army weapons spokesman at the
Pentagon. But the US Air Force does have DU capability in the
conflict.


President Clinton announced April 13 that NATO forces were "taking our
allied air campaign to the next level" against Yugoslav President
Slobodan Milosevic - and that "we are striking now at his tanks, and at
his artillery."


America's best-suited plane for that task is the 1970s-designed A-10
"Warthog." It was "literally built around" a seven-barrel Gatling gun,
a Pentagon report noted last year. "To further exploit the new cannon's
tremendous striking power the Air Force opted to use the DU 30-mm
round," the report said.


During the Gulf War, the 780,000 DU bullets shot from these planes
accounted for 80 percent of all DU fired.


A-10s - which also carry an array of weapons other than DU - have been
in action over Yugoslavia for weeks. The Air Force says it has the
"capability" to use DU, but that it hasn't so far. "We still have not
had any reports of any DU use in Kosovo," says Margaret Gidding, a US
Air Force spokeswoman.


Chris Hellman, a senior analyst with the Center for Defense Information
in Washington, finds that surprising: "If it is in fact true [that DU
has not been used], it would require the Air Force to go significantly
out of its way not to use DU," he says. DU rounds, he says, are the
"standard load" for the A-10.


NATO used DU rounds against Bosnian Serb targets in 1995. Fragments
were tested in Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital, so Serbs are aware of
the propaganda value of any allied use of the bullets. A subcommission
of the UN Human Rights Commission resolved in 1996 that DU was a weapon
of mass destruction that should be banned.


"If you go after tanks that are moving, and ground forces, that is
typically when those 30-mm depleted-uranium rounds would be used," says
the Air Force's Ms. Gidding. Now, she says, the A-10s are instead using
missiles.


What about President Clinton's "next level" of tank-busting? "I heard
his comments as well," says Gidding. "But we have no reports that DU
has been used."






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