THE true extent of contamination with cancer-causing uranium in soldiers who
served in Bosnia and Kosovo may never be known, because the test government
officials are planning to use to screen veterans will not pick up metal lodged
deep in the body.
Unusual levels of illness seem to have struck veterans of the 1999 NATO-led
campaign to force Serbian troops from Kosovo, and 17 of them have died of
leukaemia. Suspicions centre on depleted uranium which the US used in anti-tank
weapons. Belgium, Portugal, France, Spain and Italy, along with the European
Commission, have all now called for an inquiry into depleted uranium
weapons.
The nuclear industry extracts the fissile isotope uranium-235 from the
natural metal to fuel reactors. The depleted uranium left over is half as
radioactive as natural uranium, 1.7 times as dense as lead, and burns on impact.
Depleted uranium projectiles can pierce otherwise impenetrable armour, and were
used for the first time in the Gulf War. In Kosovo, A-10 鈥淲arthog鈥� aircraft
fired 31,000 rounds of ammunition containing 8.4 tonnes of uranium. Last week,
the UN Environment Programme reported that some bomb sites are still
radioactive.
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NATO, the US and Britain insist that depleted uranium is safe
(快猫短视频, 5 June 1999, p 20).
The US Department of Defense reported last
month that of 33 soldiers exposed to depleted uranium in the Gulf, only the 15
who still had shrapnel in their bodies had more uranium in their urine than
normal, and they had no related health problems.
European governments are planning to test their veterans鈥� urine for uranium.
鈥淣othing else is practical for so many,鈥� says Alain Vilet of the Belgian
Ministry of Defence. But the most dangerous contamination might not show up in
urine, warns Dudley Goodhead, head of the British Medical Research Council鈥檚
radiation and genome stability unit at Harwell.
Burning uranium forms small particles of uranium oxides, between 0.1 and 10
micrometres wide, which can be inhaled. White blood cells scavenge the particles
in the lungs, and deposit them in the tracheobronchial lymph nodes. They are
highly insoluble, and might not show up at all in urine, while still emitting
intense local alpha and beta radiation, says Goodhead. That could damage blood
stem cells, causing leukaemia.
鈥淚f the urine tests show normal levels [of uranium], that does not mean there
is no danger,鈥� he warns. What鈥檚 needed is chemical analysis of lymph nodes from
the servicemen who died, but there have been no reports of such autopsies.
