WESTERN governments are failing to conduct the tests needed to gauge the risk
posed to war veterans by exposure to depleted uranium, radiation experts
say.
The warning comes after the release of a German government study which
concludes that depleted uranium (DU) fallout did not cause illness in soldiers
who served in Kosovo 1999.
Critics say that neither this study, nor others planned so far, actually
measure how much DU the soldiers have absorbed. And it is this statistic, a
direct indicator of the amount of destructive alpha radiation in the body, that
really counts
(see 鈥淥ne too many鈥�).
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More than 8 tonnes of DU was used in anti-tank rounds in Kosovo in 1999. The
uranium burns on impact, creating tiny particles of uranium oxide. The US and
Britain already warn soldiers to avoid inhaling the dust.
The National Research Center for Environment and Health near Munich measured
levels of uranium in soldiers before and after they served in Kosovo, and in
others who did not go. They found no differences, and concluded DU did no
damage.
But 鈥渏ust measuring uranium in urine is useless鈥�, says Nick Priest of
Middlesex University in London, who is devising a DU test protocol for Britain鈥檚
National Radiological Protection Board. People constantly take in natural
uranium, and quickly excrete it. 鈥淎bout 95 per cent of urine uranium is what you
ate yesterday,鈥� he says. The tiny amount released by DU deposited in bone after
exposure may form part of the remaining 5 per cent. 鈥淏ut just measuring total
uranium won鈥檛 show that.鈥� The only way, says Priest, is to compare levels of
uranium isotopes in urine, using mass spectroscopy. DU contains very little
uranium-235, so if there is DU in someone鈥檚 bone their urine will contain an
unusually low proportion of uranium-235 compared with other uranium
isotopes.
Once isotope data has permitted an estimate of the total body burden of DU,
monitoring veterans鈥� health will show whether higher DU burdens cause problems,
Priest says. It is not clear whether Britain鈥檚 Ministry of Defence or any other
European governments plan such measurements.
Pat Horan at Memorial University in Newfoundland has already found lower
uranium-235 ratios in 9 of the 16 British, Canadian and American Gulf veterans
represented by the Uranium Medical Project, an advocacy group in Toronto. Isaac
Zimmerman of the UMP complains that neither the Canadian nor the US government
has made any such measurements in Gulf veterans.
Despite the furore over DU weapons, the European Union鈥檚 planned rapid
reaction force will almost certainly be armed with them. That鈥檚 another good
reason to find out for sure how much damage they do, say radiation
researchers.
But Pekka Haavisto, a UN official who has surveyed Kosovo battlegrounds for
DU contamination, points out that we already know uranium is hazardous. 鈥淚 am
uncomfortable seeing children playing football where low-level radiation is just
lying on the ground,鈥� he says. So far NATO has rejected calls to clean up its
battlefields. And no one is planning to measure uranium-235 in Kosovars.