Radiation-Sickness Scare Ignores Scientific Facts

It happened in the United States over the so-called “Gulf War Syndrome”--a misunderstanding over numbers. Any group of 570,000 people will include “x” number of cancer cases, mental cases, etc. And it is happening again, over depleted-uranium ammunition, after seven of the 60,000 Italian servicemen who have served in the Balkans died of leukemia, causing a huge public controversy, with bitter polemics against NATO and the United States. Overlooked is the simple fact that in any group of 60,000 Italian males, 10.8 will develop leukemia, according to medical statistics.

It is a paradox of our times that scientific and technological questions are increasingly important in our lives, but the scientific education of the general public continues to decline in both Europe and North America. Until the 1960s, schools continued to add scientific subjects to the curriculum. But once science became associated with gas chambers and nuclear weapons, all that changed. The public turned its back on science, schools dropped compulsory science education, and university students lost interest. We now have people with one degree or perhaps two who know nothing at all about chemistry and physics. Bookshops sell more books on magic and astrology than on the natural sciences.

Every time there is a controversy with a scientific aspect, governments and politicians must contend with the clamor of a public easily frightened because elementary scientific principles are ignored. In the media, few reporters seek expert advice to find out the facts. Most treat it as a good story, the bigger the better, adding to the hysteria. Politicians know that anything they say will be mistrusted, so they prefer to surrender without a fight, issuing moratoriums left and right, promising elaborate investigations, even when all the facts are already known.

Depleted uranium, or DU, is called “depleted” because it is what’s left after taking out radioactive isotopes to enrich uranium for nuclear reactors or weapons. Highly enriched uranium, U-235, is so radioactive that it causes the chain reactions that explode in nuclear weapons. Natural uranium is also radioactive, emitting the same alpha, beta and gamma rays as U-235 but in amounts so much smaller that it can be handled safely with bare hands. Depleted uranium is 40% less radioactive than natural uranium. That is why it can be safely used to balance the center of gravity of civilian aircraft and sailboats.

Years ago, the safety question was thoroughly researched in designing the U.S. Army’s M1 tank, the only tank now in U.S. service. Its composite armor needed a proportion of heavy metal. The choices were DU or lead. DU was chosen because it was much cheaper, after it was calculated that the danger from radiation to the crews was zero.

There is more natural radioactivity in homes in many parts of the U.S. (and Europe) than inside an M1 tank. Trace amounts of uranium are common in nature, and some other metals are also radioactive. Thus there is radioactivity in the earth, in the water and the air. Many thousands of U.S. soldiers have served in M1 tanks without contracting leukemia.

Of course DU is poisonous, like other heavy metals, starting with lead. If DU armor is shattered in war, particles could be ingested. The result would not be leukemia but chemical poisoning, its severity depending on the amount of particles. That is why after the 1991 Gulf War, troops that came into contact with fragmented DU in examining destroyed Iraqi tanks wore face masks.

DU is used in American, British, French and Russian cannon ammunition. A-10s flew roughly 100 sorties during the 1999 Kosovo war, firing about 31,000 projectiles. Earlier, in 1994-95, about 10,000 DU projectiles were fired in Bosnia by A-10s.

Italian service personnel stationed in Kosovo and Bosnia may well have come into contact with DU fragments on the ground, but they could not have developed leukemia because the disease takes years to emerge. Even if they somehow ingested DU particles, they would have suffered instantaneous chemical poisoning, not contracted leukemia.

In the 1991 Gulf War, 33 American soldiers were wounded by DU ammunition fired in error by a U.S. aircraft. Half of them still have sizable DU fragments inside their bodies, something far more contaminating than the ingestion of tiny DU particles. All are being monitored very closely. Some still show radioactivity in their urine when measured with very sensitive instruments, but none is suffering from any form of radiation disease, let alone leukemia.

Given all this, the unfortunate Italian service personnel should have been left to their doctors. Instead there has been an outburst of hysteria and anti-American polemics.

Once again, political leaders have surrendered to ignorance. Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission, rushed in to call for a moratorium on the use of DU ammunition. Italian Prime Minister Giuliano Amato has given solemn assurances that the Italian armed forces do not have DU ammunition, in effect telling the public that DU is dangerous for soldiers to handle, when it is not. The Italian government also pressed NATO for an “urgent” investigation, even though all the facts are known.

A study conducted in Kosovo by the United Nations’ environmental program has provided quite enough farcical entertainment: The head of the team noted with “alarm” that DU fragments remained on the ground 1 1/2 years after the war, as if Kosovo were a neatly kept public park. He also reported that radioactivity was detected underneath the DU fragments, without mentioning that its level was so low that it would only cause radiation sickness if one slept on it, naked, for roughly 50 years. Naturally the U.N. has instructed its personnel to stay away from the 122 target zones against which DU ammunition was used, except that those zones are unmarked, making the U.N. instructions quite useless.

The paradox is at work once again, and so far it is science 0, ignorance 2.