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Den
internationella moderorganisationen för
Svenska Läkare mot kärnvapen,
International Physicians for the Prevention of
nuclear War, har genom verkställande utskottet
i sin styrelse gjort följande uttalande om
effekterna av utarmat uran.
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The
Executive Council of International Physicians for
the Prevention of Nuclear War, on February 19,
2001, issued the following statement on the effects
of depleted uranium.
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International
Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
(IPPNW)
Depleted
Uranium Weapons and Acute Post-War Health Effects:
An IPPNW Assessment
The US-led military coalition that fought the 1991 Gulf
War is reported to have used about 300 tons of ammunition
containing depleted uranium (DU) against Iraqi tanks and
other armored vehicles. During the 1999 war in the Balkans,
NATO forces used about 11 tons of DU in missiles that were
fired into the former Yugoslavia [1]. DU weapons
have military utility because the density and tensile
strength of uranium (which is relatively cheap and abundant)
give it unusual armor-piercing capabilities. Concerns about
the potential health effects of DU weapons arise primarily
from immediate and long term uranium contamination in the
areas where they are used. On penetration, for example,
about 20% of the DU burns spontaneously, creating a fine
aerosol smoke of uranium oxide that can be easily inhaled
and lodge itself in the lungs. Fragments of DU weapons are
scattered around battlefields, and can become embedded as
shrapnel in human and animal flesh.
In the months and years following both of these armed
conflicts, a large number of soldiers, UN peacekeepers, and
civilians have exhibited unexpected and unexplained health
problems, including excess leukemias and other cancers,
neurological disorders, birth defects, and a constellation
of symptoms loosely gathered under the rubric "Gulf War
Illnesses." Depleted uranium, because of its radioactivity
and chemical toxicity, has been linked to these acute health
effects in the press and in public forums. Some opponents of
DU weapons have categorically asserted that exposure to
depleted uranium is the direct cause of these excess
cancers. US and NATO officials, citing the published
research on the health effects of uranium, have dismissed DU
as a potential cause of the acute health effects for which
it has been blamed.
IPPNW deplores the use of depleted uranium weapons and
supports the calls in the European Union and elsewhere for a
ban on their use. We urge caution, however, in making
categorical assertions or denials about health effects until
systematic, independent, peer-reviewed studies of depleted
uranium exposure have been conducted. The US government and
NATO have an absolute obligation to provide independent,
unbiased researchers with the funding, data, and access
required to conduct such studies. The World Health
Organization has requested $2 million as an immediate
payment toward a four-year $20 million clinical study of DU
health effects in Iraq and the Balkans. The US and NATO have
an obligation to promptly and unconditionally fund the WHO's
work in this area.
While the peer-reviewed studies of health effects from
natural uranium exposure are weighted against the
probability that DU exposure, in and of itself, is likely to
have caused an increase in leukemias or other cancers in the
relatively short time since it has been dispersed in the
Balkans environment, the science is controversial and the
possibility cannot be ruled out. The Office of the Special
Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses, which reports to the US
Department of Defense, has itself stated that DU can pose a
chemical toxicity and radiological hazard under specific
conditions [2]. Moreover, any impurities that may
have found their way into the DU munitions used in either
the Gulf or the Balkans -- including plutonium, actinides,
and the highly radioactive manufactured isotope U-236
[3] -- pose unquestionably serious health threats,
and the extent to which at-risk populations may have been
exposed to these substances must be studied promptly and
thoroughly by unbiased investigators.
Allied soldiers and Iraqi soldiers and civilians were
exposed to many other health hazards before, during, and
after the Gulf War. These included multiple vaccines,
insecticides, and chemical weapon protectives. Any chemical
weapons released as a result of the bombing of Iraqi
munitions-dumps would be an additional hazard (as would
chemical weapon residues from the prior Iran-Iraq war). The
petrochemical fires that raged for weeks at the conclusion
of the war added to the toxic burden. In the former
Yugoslavia, chemical factories were targeted and destroyed
during NATO air strikes, and large amounts of toxic
chemicals, some of them known carcinogens, were released.
Risk factors can interact (e.g., smoking compounds the risk
of radiation exposure among uranium miners).
The British Medical Journal, in a recent editorial,
concluded that "the argument for uranium being the cause of
leukaemia in peacekeeping forces is thin, notwithstanding
the short latencies implied, even by the standards of
haematological malignancies," and that, with regard to
non-cancer illnesses, "no single candidate hazard...serves
as its unifying explanation, depleted uranium included"
[4]. To point to these other exposures as possible
contributors to post-war health problems is not to exonerate
DU weapons in the absence of independent clinical study of
the populations that were actually exposed.
Depleted Uranium:
The Facts in Brief
Natural uranium is composed of three isotopes: U-238
(99.3%), U-235 (0.7%), and U-234 (0.006%). These isotopes
decay at different rates, expressed in scientific parlance
as half-lives. A shorter half-life means more intense
radiation and, in general, greater potential to damage or
destroy cells. The half-life of U-238 -- the time in which
its radioactivity is reduced by half -- is 4.5 billion
years; that of U-235 is 710 million years; and that of U-234
is 250 thousand years. For comparison, the half-life of
plutonium -- which can be lethal in even microscopic amounts
-- is 24,000 years [5].
Depleted uranium is the byproduct of a process known as
uranium enrichment -- the manufacture of uranium with a
concentration of highly radioactive U-235 for use in nuclear
weapons and in nuclear power plants. DU, which has been
depleted of its U-235 and U-234, is about 60% as radioactive
as natural uranium. Most of that radiation -- about 95% --
is emitted as alpha particles that cannot penetrate the
skin. A minute amount of beta and gamma radiation could
strike deeper cell tissue were fine particles of DU inhaled
or ingested, as they could easily be by any soldier or
civilian in the vicinity of a recently exploded DU shell.
Even low doses of low-level radiation can cause some damage
to the DNA in living cells. Whether that damage is enough to
significantly increase the risk of cancer and other acute
health effects is a matter of much debate, and up until now
there has been no conclusive evidence of adverse health
effects from exposure to natural uranium. We cannot
emphasize strongly enough, however, that an absence of
evidence about health effects is not evidence that there are
no health effects.
DU is no different from natural uranium in its chemical
toxicity. It is a heavy metal that, in its soluble form,
accumulates in the kidneys (the primary target organ for
uranium) and that, in sufficient quantities, can increase
the risk of renal damage. The scientific evidence to date
suggests that ingestion of uranium, even in unusual amounts,
does not by itself cause serious or enduring health problems
due to chemical toxicity. Nevertheless, like all heavy
metals, DU is a risk factor that cannot be casually
dismissed.
Uranium Health
Studies
Studies conducted over several decades have found that
populations with well-above-average occupational exposure to
inhaled or ingested uranium do not suffer from increased
rates of the cancers most likely to be associated with
radiation, nor do they exhibit the blood disorders that
might be expected as a result of chemical toxicity. Other
causes, such as radon exposure among uranium miners and mill
workers, have been pinpointed for certain specific illnesses
[6,7]), but these studies do not account for new
experimental data suggesting a role for dust toxicity in the
lung. The aerosol particles generated by DU weapons are in a
very hard "ceramic" state, so are likely to be retained in
the lung and its regional lymph nodes for a prolonged
period, increasing the risk of cellular damage from alpha
radiation. The main risk from internal radiation, whether
the exposure is due to manufacturing processes or DU
weapons, is from this inhaled dust.
As mentioned earlier, there is evidence that the DU
munitions used in the Gulf war and in the Balkans were
tainted with plutonium, U-236, and other substances far more
intensely radioactive than U-238. Recent studies have
pointed to the possiblility of genetic damage resulting from
exposure to some forms of radiation emitted from particles
such as those deposited by DU weapons [8]. Any such
genomic effect, if substantiated, could point toward
increased risk of cancer or leukemia in the lung or regional
lymph nodes above the standard -- and controversial --
predictions of radiation protection models [9]. It
is simply too early to say. Precisely for that reason, the
health of military and civilian populations that have been
exposed to DU in the Gulf and in the Balkans should be
monitored closely in the years ahead.
What Should Be Done
About DU Weapons?
While IPPNW generally concurs with the BMJ's assessment
that the jury is still out on DU, and that the other hazards
to which civilians and military personnel were exposed,
individually and in combination, are themselves very likely
causes of the kinds of post-war health problems from which
civilians and military personnel have been suffering in the
aftermath of these conflicts, we condemn the use of DU
weapons and support the calls for a ban on their use.
A basic principle in radiation protection is that all
exposures should be justified; that is, the benefit for
those exposed should exceed the risk. This is the standard
for medical radiography. The military utility of DU weapons
for the users does not justify any added health risk for
non-combatants, no matter how small. The precautionary
principle states that in the absence of convincing proof
that a substance or process is harmless, the presumption
must be risk. This principle applies clearly to the use of
DU weapons. Furthermore, DU weapons indiscriminately
contaminate the places in which they are used, and the
contamination persists long after the conclusion of
hostilities, adding to the radioactive and toxic burden
imposed upon civilians, wildlife, and ecosystems. From this
perspective, DU weapons should be considered a form of
ecological warfare prohibited by the Geneva Conventions
[10].
DU weapons may already be illegal under international law
and international humanitarian law, and this case is being
made in compelling fashion by members of the International
Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA), who
have formed a working group to study this issue. The damage
caused by DU weapons cannot be contained to "legal" fields
of battle; they continue to act after the conclusion of
hostilities; they are inhumane because they place the health
of non-combatants, including children and future
generations, at risk; and they cannot be used without unduly
damaging the natural environment 11].
The fact that military authorities in both the US and
NATO advise their own soldiers to take precautions when
handling DU munitions and have prepared detailed training
manuals and videos to ensure troop safety [12],
while issuing blanket denials of health risks to the public,
strikes us as hypocritical at the very least, and reinforces
our judgment that these weapons should be withdrawn from
service.
Whether or not DU weapons are ultimately shown to have
the health effects for which they have been blamed, they are
only one example of the continuing ways in which militaries
pollute our planet. They are emblematic of the unacceptable
costs of contemporary armed conflict to civilian
populations, who were the predominant casualties of war in
the 20th century, and are likely to remain so in the 21st.
They are on the spectrum of indiscriminate and inhumane
weapons that includes landmines and biological and chemical
weapons, and that, at its most devastating end, includes
tens of thousands of nuclear weapons that jeopardize all
life on earth.
References
- Spellar J. Statement by the minister for the armed
forces on depleted uranium. UK: Ministry of Defence. 9
January 2001.
- Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses.
Environmental exposure report: Depleted uranium in the
Gulf. Washington, DC: Department of Defense. 1998.
- UN Environment Programme. UNEP confirms Uranium 236
found in DU penetrators. Geneva: UNEP. 16 January
2001.
- McDiarmid MA. Depleted uranium and public health:
Fifty years' study of occupational exposure provides
little evidence of cancer (Editorial). BMJ 2001;322. 20
January 2001.
- IPPNW, IEER. Plutonium: Deadly gold of the nuclear
age. Cambridge, MA: International Physicians Press.
1992.
- Harley NH, Pasternack BS. A model for predicting lung
cancer risks induced by environmental levels of radon
daughters. Health Phys 1981;40:307-316.
- Harley NH. Radon and lung cancer in mines and homes.
N Engl J Med 1984;310:1525-1527.
- Kadhim MA, Macdonald DA, Goodhead DT, Lorimore SA,
Marsden SJ, Wright EG. Transmission of chromosomal
instability after plutonium-particle irradiation. Nature
1992;355:738-40.
- Köhnlein W, Nussbaum RH. False alarm or public
health hazard?: Chronic low-dose external radiation
exposure. Medicine & Global Survival
1998;5:14-21.
- Protocol additional to the Geneva conventions of 12
August 1949, and relating to the protection of victims of
international armed conflicts (Protocol I). Section IV,
Article 55.
- Parker K. Conference statement. International
conference: campaign against depleted uranium.
Manchester, UK. 4-5 November 2000.
- US Army. Contaminated and damaged equipment
management operations (training video). 1995.
Approved by the IPPNW Executive Committee
19 February 2001
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