U.S.-ENVIRONMENT: Activists See DU Link to Gulf War Illnesses

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Oct 22 1996 (IPS) - Activists convinced of the health risks of depleted uranium (DU) are urging the U.S. government to investigate whether the use of DU in tanks and bullets during the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq harmed U.S. soldiers.

In support of their request, such groups as the New York-based International Action Centre (IAC) and Maine-based Military Toxics Project point out that the Pentagon is now also convinced of the need to study particular health problems arising from the Gulf War.

“We’re very encouraged by the new focus on Gulf War syndrome,” IAC spokesman Frank Alexander said.

Until this summer, he noted, the Pentagon only recognised about 150 cases of illnesses specifically linked to the war. But over the past two months, the government has disclosed that tens of thousands of soldiers could have been exposed to chemical weapons, such as sarin gas, during the war.

“The Army agrees that more study needs to be done,” said Dolly Lymburner, national organiser for the Military Toxics Project. She noted that President Bill Clinton’s advisory committee on Gulf War illnesses has decided to consider whether DU can be traced to Gulf War health problems.

But she argues that health groups need to investigate the topic independently of the government, since the Pentagon downplayed the risks of DU for six years, and it continues to use DU to fortify tanks and bullets used in combat operations, most recently in Bosnia-Hercegovina.

DU consists largely of the uranium-238 isotope, an extremely dense substance which is radioactive, but relatively stable compared to uranium-235 extracted for use in nuclear weapons.

A 1994 report by the U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute (AEPI) says that more than 14,000 large-calibre DU rounds were fired during the Gulf War — enough, Lymburner says, to expose U.S. and Iraqi troops to radioactivity sufficient to cause thyroid or kidney problems.

But the activists face one major problem: there is no common definition of the various ailments now lumped together as ‘Gulf War syndrome’, and scientists dispute all the various hypotheses now used to explain the syndrome.

Most recently, an 18-member committee assembled by the non- profit Institute of Medicine (IOM) reported to Congress that they found no evidence of any chronic illness suffered by Gulf War troops.

“The committee has not identified scientific evidence to date demonstrating adverse health consequences specifically of service” in the Gulf War, the IOM report said. But the committee added that troops deployed in Iraq suffered high rates of the tropical disease leishmaniasis and psychological problems linked to war.

But the group was just the latest one to doubt that major health problems — such as liver and kidney dysfunction, memory loss, respiratory problems and birth defects in newborn children — have struck the U.S. Gulf War veterans hard.

“Puzzling reactions and symptoms seen during and after prior conflicts may have been incorrectly attributed to battle casualties and infectious diseases that were considered unavoidable and even relatively acceptable outcomes of war,” the IOM committee wrote.

“I don’t think there is any scientific credibility at all that the Gulf War symptoms can be attributed to the use of DU in the Gulf War,” added Tom Cochran, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington.

Gulf War troops, he said, suffered a “low level of exposure” to DU that could increase long-term cancer risks, but would not explain the maladies the veterans now say they suffer.

Of the 697,000 U.S. troops who served in the Gulf War, some 90,000 have reported some type of unexplained medical problem. The complaints most commonly mentioned are fatigue, memory loss, headaches, rashes, muscle and joint paios, and mood swings.

Lymburner argues that DU could be traced at least to the problems with muscles and joints, since DU oxides, created when DU weapons strike other objects, can store themselves in human bones.

“If DU enters the body, it has the potential to generate significant medical consequences,” the 1994 AEPI report warns. “The risks associated with DU in the body are both chemical and radiological.”

But Lymburner and Alexander agree with the IOM on one key argument: there likely is no single cause for the illnesses that typify Gulf War syndrome.

To support his contention that the “Gulf War syndrome isn’t reducible to any one cause” Alexander pointed out that in addition to use of DU weaponry, “nuclear reactors were bombed, chemical weapons facilities were bombed indiscriminately.”

“My personal opinion is that there are multiple causes,” added Chris Hillman of the Washington-based Physicians for Social Responsibility. “But the body of information so far is partial at best.”

One other theory has recently been added to the mix: the possibility that sarin gas, a toxic chemical compound which the Iraqi government possessed in large quantities, could have infected troops when two Iraqi munitions dumps were destroyed in March 1991.

Defence sources now say that more than 15,000 U.S. soldiers could have been exposed to sarin following the explosions. The Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) are now conducting tests to determine if and how troops could have come in contact with the poisonous gas.

Following the reports of possible sarin exposure, Clinton signed an executive order that allows the government to begin a 10- million-dollar study of the links between chemical weapons and Gulf War syndrome.

Alexander, however, contends that such a focus is an effort “to pin Gulf War syndrome on the Iraqis.”

Still, the activists believe that, after six years of relative quiet, the chances of further research into Gulf War maladies have been boosted during the past few weeks.

But it may take years before such research offers clear results, Hillman added, noting the slow pace of research into the health consequences of Agent Orange, a chemical agent used during the U.S. war in Vietnam. That research, he said, “is still going on — and we’re 30 years into it.”