By Nigel Thorpe
Senior English Editor
Albawaba.com - Amman
Many and varied are the Israeli munitions that rain down on civilian targets in the occupied Palestinian lands. If Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s complaints to the recent Amman Arab Summit are correct, the most insidious and long term threat to the beleaguered Palestinian population comes from depleted uranium weapons. At the summit meeting, the Palestinian Authority President waved two documents, one reportedly American, the other Canadian, that he says prove Israel is using the controversial weapons against Palestinian targets. The Israeli government has repeatedly denied that charge.
Uranium Tipped Projectiles
Bullets and shells tipped with depleted uranium (DU) represent the ‘state of the art munitions’ for armies needing to knockout tanks and damage buildings. The fire-gutted tanks that lined roads in Kuwait and Iraq during the Gulf War, and the highways of Serbia during the Balkans Conflict, bore awesome testimony to the destructive powers of this new type of projectile designed to penetrate the steel plate defenses of tanks and armored vehicles. DU shells have greater penetrating powers because of the high momentum they possess when they arrive at their targets.
Dimly remembered high school physics lessons remind us that momentum equals mass times velocity. Increase either the mass (weight) or the velocity of an object and you increase its momentum. While you would hardly feel a feather hitting you at 30 kilometers an hour, a steel hammer travelling at the same speed would inflict a painful and dangerous wound. Depleted uranium can “out hammer” a hammer any day because it is over two and half times denser (heavier) than steel. Because of this high density, DU shells can be made smaller than a traditional shell of the same weight. Small shells experience less drag (air resistance) and therefore travel faster and, in turn, have more momentum.
Depleted Uranium
Uranium with a chemical symbol U, is the heaviest of the 50 most abundant elements found in the earth’s crust. The heavy metal never occurs naturally in a pure free state, but is found as the oxide or complex salt in minerals such as pitchblende and carnotite. Most uranium mined in the US is obtained from caranotite deposits, a high-grade ore containing about 60 percent uranium.
Once extracted and purified from such ores, natural uranium consists of 99 percent of the uranium-238 isotope, and less than one percent of the more radioactive uranium-235 that is needed for nuclear fuel and to make nuclear weapons. Uranium to be used as fuel or in weapons needs to be enriched by removing the uranium-238 and leaving
the purified uranium 238. The ‘waste’ depleted uranium 238 left over by this enrichment process can then be used to make DU munitions.
The Dangers of DU Munitions
Radiological Hazards
The question as to whether DU shells constitute a radiological hazard that can cause human illness has caused great controversy over the past year with the focus on the military personnel and civilians involved in the Gulf War and Balkan Conflict.
The International Action Center (www.iacenter.org) has described depleted uranium as being the “metal of dishonor” and highlighted the growing evidence that the long-term effects of low-level radiation have been underestimated.
Douglas Herbert, who writes on Europe for CNN.com, reported that there were 16 deaths and 57 cases of serious illness (the so-called Balkan Syndrome) amongst military personnel from NATO countries who served in the Balkans. Some cases, Herbert suggests, might be attributed to handling depleted uranium shells during anti-tank operations. Since, according to the World Health Organization, the latency period for leukemia is between two and five years, and can be as much as 10 years, the true picture is unlikely to be clear until sometime in the future.
According to the CNN Brussels Bureau Chief, Patricia Kelly, there are suspiciously high rates of cancer-related deaths amongst military personnel in Italy, Portugal and Belgium. In Italy, Kelly reports, six veterans of the Balkan war have died from cancer and many experts argue that this number is too high to be a coincidence.
Out of the 9,000 Belgian serviceman who responded to a survey of 12,000 Bosnia veterans, 1,600 claim to suffer from an illness that might be linked to their missions whilst in the Balkans. Nine of the servicemen are seriously ill, and four have died. The Belgian Defense Minister, Andre Flahaut, however, maintains that there is no link between the use of UD weapons and the development of cancer in ex-servicemen. Medical statisticians also point out that isolated numbers can be very misleading. What is important is the relative difference between the incidence of cancer in the group of servicemen, and the incidence in a control group of the same size, age, and socioeconomic background.
In January 2001, a US Defense Department study claimed that there was no evidence to link uranium weapons with reports of ill health in former military personnel who had served in either the Gulf War, or the Balkan conflict. The British defense ministry echoed the US findings but promised to investigate fully the health problems of ex-servicemen such as hair loss and fatigue.
A fact-finding mission to the Serbian Province in November, 2000, which included two experts form the International Atomic Energy Agency and a team of investigators from the UN Environmental Program, reported finding slightly higher than normal levels of radiation at 8 out of 11 sites in Kosovo selected at random from a NATO list of 112 targets attacked with DU munitions.
NATO forces have always maintained that, with correct handling, DU munitions do not present a radiological hazard to either military personnel, or civilians who move into an area after it has been bombed. The words “correct handling” are particularly crucial. Large numbers of ex-serviceman who served in the Balkan campaign insist that they were given inadequate training on the use of DU munitions and never saw the list of NATO guidelines, dated November 22, 1999, on the correct way to handle deleted uranium.
A survey of official and media websites confirms that most experts now agree that the correct handling of intact DU munitions represents minimal risks. Gloves, clothing and the human skin can stop all of the alpha radiation and most of the beta radiation emitted by a mildly radioactive sample of depleted uranium.
Fortunately, depleted uranium emits extremely small amounts of the very penetrating gamma radiation so this is unlikely to be a problem.
The radiological hazards are, however, likely to be very different once the shell has hit its target and the intense heat of impact has pulverized the uranium into a cloud of radioactive dust. The uranium dust formed in this way is the crux of the controversy over DU munitions, and the key to understanding the long-term health hazards of the radioactivity remaining at a targeted site.
Once inside the body, especially within the lungs, alpha-radiation could become a problem because it can penetrate body cells and set off a chain of biochemical reactions that could lead ultimately to leukemia and other forms of cancer.
Dr Roug Rokke, an assistant professor of environmental science at Jacksonville State University, Alabama, and a US Gulf veteran, gave BBC Radio 4 a graphic description of this process. “The shell would hit an armoured vehicle and the uranium would catch fire and split into burning fragments. About 70 percent of the shell was coverted into dust. When we climbed into vehicles after they'd been hit, no matter what time of day or night it was, you couldn't see three feet in front of you. You breathed in that dust." Two out the 15 people who were in Dr. Rokke’s clean-up team are now dead, and Pentagon tests in 1996 revealed that the levels of uranium within Rokke’s body were 5,000 times the permissible level.
"My lungs are trashed, I've got rashes, neurological problems. And I'm not the only one - this is what's happened to everybody else,” Dr Rouke concluded.
A report by the UN Environment Program published on March 13,2001, expressed concern that ammunition dust buried in the soil could contaminate ground water, leading to anything up to a 100-fold increase in uranium levels in drinking water.
Uranium’s Toxicity as a Heavy Metal
Even if the fears about the radiological hazards of depleted uranium prove to be unfounded, it is important to remember that chemically, uranium is a toxic heavy metal and potential environmental poison.
In a densely populated area such as the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the chemical toxicity of DU cannot be ignored especially because it is likely that uranium dust will find its way into drinking water. The UN environmental report continues “while the radiation doses will be very low, the resulting uranium concentration might exceed World Health Organization health standards for drinking water. A child swallowing a small amount of contaminated soil could also obtain a dose which would be above normally approved biochemical standards. Touching a piece of ammunition would not be dangerous, but if it were kept in a pocket for several weeks, the carrier could suffer "quite high local radiation doses."
Besides its dangers as a source of harmful radiation and a toxic heavy metal, the simple fact remains that DU munitions were not intended to target, nor should they target, civilian targets such as Palestinian homes. Their renowned armour-piercing, tank-busting properties are totally inappropriate for use in controlling civil unrest and demonstrations. The alleged use of these munitions once more highlights the need for international observers to monitor military operations in the Palestinian lands.
If the allegations about the use of DU bullets and shells are proved to be true, the new generation of Palestinians will have to learn very quickly that U-235 is not just a heavy metal rock group they hear on the radio, but a hidden danger lurking in the soil and ground water of their occupied lands.
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
