Irradiating Kosovo

If and when the refugees return to Kosovo, reports Patrick Cain, they will not only face devastated homes and Serbian hostility. They will also, in many places, be breathing in radioactive uranium dust from NATO'S latest military toys. Published The Ecologist Volume 29 Number 4, July 1999; first published in Now magazine.

American scientist and radiation expert Han Sharma released a study last month showing that about 45,000 people affected by the Gulf War - Western soldiers, Iraqi soldiers and civilians - are likely to end up with fatal cancers as a direct result of the Allied use of depleted uranium, or DU, ammunition during that war. Depleted Uranium is also thought to be responsible for the mysterious 'Gulf War Syndrome' that many veterans of the conflict are suffering from today.

Five hundred thousand people are thought to have been exposed to airborne dust from exploded DU rounds during the Gulf War, radioactive traces of which still show up in urine samples from Allied veterans of the conflict and Iraqi civilians. NATO is now using DU weapons carried by A-10 and 'Warthog' tank-killing aircraft to attack Yugoslav armoured vehicles.

Depleted uranium ammunition was born of a grim, sophisticated battle of wits between designers of weapons developed to destroy armoured vehicles, and designers of armour. In our own era, this has reached such a point of complexity that the precise composition of tank armour is often a state secret, as it is on the U.S. 'Abrams' main battle tank.

When DU weapons were introduced before the Gulf War, they seemed like a solution to several problems. The nuclear industry liked them because they were a way to dispose of otherwise troublesome waste. Armies liked them because they were cheap and chewed holes in enemy tanks. During the Gulf War, tank crews liked DU because it made them unquestioned masters of the battlefield.

But Hari Sharma argues that exploding DU rounds produce a potent radioactive aerosol that is inhaled by friend, foe and civilian alike and persists in the environment for many years after battle has ceased. The key to understanding how that happens is to look at what occurs after a DU round is fired.

Armies chose depleted uranium for antitank rounds because uranium's density - almost twice that of lead - transmits kinetic energy to an armoured vehicle better than any other substance that has been used. If a tank is hit accurately, the impact, intense fire and spall, (or fragments of the tank's inner lining) flying around inside it, will kill the crew. And DU rounds destroy tanks much more reliably than anything used previously.

But DU is also extremely damaging to those who come into contact with it. Uranium is highly pyrophoric, and once it catches fire it keeps burning till it's all gone. In that process, a very fine powder is produced, a mixture of uranium dioxide and uranium trioxide. These particles become aerosols and travel in the air for long distances. If people are around, the particles are inhaled and end up in the lungs.

Some say that the use of DU violates international treaties. Bev Delong, President of Lawyers for Social Responsibility, says that a 1977 protocol to the Geneva Convention prohibits means of warfare that cause widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment. The bits of armament that are lying around Iraq are still presumably emitting radioactivity; that could be considered long-term, she says. And Kosovo may go the same way.

Sharma says that "NATO is trying to save Kosovars, but if they leave Kosovo filled with depleted uranium, it's not a happy situation. They [would be) poisoning them. If you are going to use depleted uranium in warfare, it's better to drop an atom bomb and kill 30,000 people instantaneously rather than killing them over 20 or 30 years".