What is Depleted Uranium?

Depleted Uranium (DU) is the isotope U238 which results when the high level, radioactive, fissionable isotope U235 is extracted from natural uranium. It's used in munitions, tank armor and the ballast of cruise missiles.

The U. S. Department of energy also plans to recycle massive quantities of radioactive waste (1,250,000 pounds of DU) into the commercial marketplace for reuse in consumer products. A March 25 N. Y. Times article states that" slightly radioactive buildings materials, cars, furniture, cooking utensils and other items as well as bullets and tanks will be produced and sold with no warning labels." Yet, exposure to so called "minute" doses of DU is known to carry risks of cancer, leukemia, genetic defects and a host of other illnesses associated with impaired immunity.

DU is available in large quantities. It has high density, it is cheap, easily available and it burns on impact. It can also injure or kill military personnel or civilians not subject to the weapons  immediate impact. However, when  it does impact a target surface, a large amount of kinetic energy is dissipated as heat. This results in smoke with a high concentration of DU particles which if inhaled or ingested are severely toxic.

Particles of uranium smaller than 5 microns in diameter can become permanently trapped in the lungs. Once trapped, a small particle of this size can cause damage to surrounding lung tissue. It exposes that tissue to 1360 rem per year, 800 times the annual radiation dosage permitted by federal regulations for external whole body exposure. Particles not trapped in the respiratory system may be ingested and can travel to the kidneys (one of the organs most sensitive to DU destruction) and the reproductive organs. DU bullets wounded and killed Gulf War soldiers and left many with embedded fragments.

The U. S. Army has been developing  DU munitions for over 30 years. In operation Desert Storm where DU bullets were first introduced, U. S. forces fired  940,000 small caliber and 4000 large caliber DU rounds in combat. Since the Gulf War none of the more than 600,000 pounds of DU have been cleaned up. No responsibility has been taken for the exposure of veterans and active U. S. forces now in the area or the exposed populations of Kuwait and Iraq. DU  shells used by American and British forces have been targeted as the cause of increasing amounts of cancer in Iraq, with hospital wards filled with children suffering serious malignancies. Many of these children were unborn at the time of the Gulf War.
Since that war, U. S. forces deployed to Somalia with DU munitions five years ago, the Air Force shot DU penetrators in Bosnia four years ago and evidence is now accumulating that DU was used in the Balkan war as well. Many environmental and health groups are concerned that the use of DU in the Balkans will result in some of the same environmental and health consequences that occurred in Iraq and Kuwait after the Gulf War.

A recent scandal erupted in Japan after the U. S. military command there admitted that U. S. forces had test fired and left behind small amounts of DU rounds on an uninhabited island near Okinawa. The Japanese Diet condemned the action and received an official apology from the United States. Now the army is trying to mask its use of DU overseas.

The Department of Defense had known for many years that human exposure to DU can result in serious, long term health problems but refuses to acknowledge publicly increasing numbers of illnesses identified in civilians and veterans who had come in contact with this substance. The Military Toxic Project newsletter stated in 1997" DU harms not only troops and rescue workers on the battlefield but also the communities near the uranium mines, the workers who process uranium and manufacture the DU weapons, the communities whose land is contaminated by DU weapons testing and warfare and the communities who ultimately serve as DU repositories."

Uranium mining in the Southwest where the Navajo Nation resides has caused the death from lung cancer and other illnesses of most of the 2000 Navajo uranium miners who worked in the four comers (northeast Arizona, northwest New Mexico, southeast Utah, and southwest Colorado) from 1947 to 1971. Yet few Navajo widows have been compensated.

From 1946 to 1968 more than 13 million tons of uranium were mined on the Navajo reservation to make atom bombs. Despite evidence that cancer is ravaging the Navajo communities and that birth defect rates are abnormally high, the U. S. government has denied funding for a complete epidemiological study.

The numbers of victims exposed to DU is incalculable and is in violation of the International Laws of War. DU weaponry has been listed by the United Nations Human Rights Sub-committee on the Preventions of Discrimination and protection of Minorities as among those "weapons of mass destruction or with indiscriminate effects." Its use causes widespread, long lasting and severe contamination to the sites of production testing and use. The DU issue must be addressed by the international community and steps must be taken to halt its proliferation and stop its production and use.
It is important to educate the public about the perils of DU Organizations should pass resolutions advocating the banning of DU weaponry and campaign against using DU for military and commercial purposes. Local and state governments must be urged to pass resolutions to ban DU and we should demand from Congress that the production, testing, manufacturing, proliferation and use of DU weapons must be halted.

And finally we should pursue the establishment of an independent international scientific and medical commission to analyze the health situation in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and in other areas where DU was more recently used and the health problems affecting more than 10,000 Gulf War veterans and their families. This analysis should include radiological tests and risk assessments for all battle fields where DU had been utilized.

On January 7, 1998, the office of the Special Assistant on Gulf War illness acknowledged "The failure to properly disseminate information (about DU) to troops at all levels may have resulted in thousands of unnecessary exposures." This must not happen again!