Depleted uranium (DU) is a by-product caused by extracting fissionable isotopes (uranium 234 and 235) from natural
uranium (238) for use in nuclear weapons and reactors.
Approximately 700,000 tonnes of this waste has accumulated in the United States and Britain. With nuclear waste disposal and cleanup being so expensive and problematic, it is no wonder America’s nuclear waste is given free to arms manufacturers.
DU is resold packaged in cruise missiles, bombs, shells and bullets. These weapons are being made and used, despite being classified by a 1996 United Nations resolution as illegal weapons of mass destruction.
DU is wonderfully destructive in several ways. Extremely dense, DU has excellent amour piercing capability. While other heavy metals flatten on impact, DU self-sharpens by igniting and oxidising into tiny insoluble aerosol particles. Once the target has been blasted apart these tiny particles of DU remain, easily spreading throughout the ecosystem.
DU has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. DU bombs may only ignite once, but the destructiveness of each bomb is indefinite.
The Pentagon has estimated that it unloaded at least 320 metric tonnes of DU onto the battlefields in the 1991 Gulf War. A whistle-blowing US Special Operations Command Colonel claims the figure is closer to 500 metric tonnes – 100 of which was dropped on Baghdad. He also claims that the Pentagon has known for years of the detrimental effects of DU, yet continues to use it in warfare, putting at risk enemy countries, civilians and even their own troops.
This new-style warfare is providing America with a much-needed disposal facility for toxic nuclear waste that no-one knows quite what to do with. However, this solution is already backfiring, with its effects increasingly being felt in the US and Britain. During the first Gulf War the official US casualty total was 300 dead and 500 wounded. Now 8 000 service personnel are dead and 221 000 are claiming disability benefits. Over 50% of those disabled have been classified with the mysterious Gulf War Syndrome (GWS), the symptoms of which are the same as radiation poisoning.
Some scientists now believe DU may be implicated in GWS. Dr Asaf Durakovic, a medical professor and former US army colonel, found "significant" DU levels in two-thirds of the Gulf veterans he tested in 2000.
The radiation that troops are exposed to not only affects their own bodies and lives, but has seeped into subsequent generations. A survey of 250 veterans’ families in the USA found 67% of the children conceived and born since the war have rare illnesses and genetic deformities – such as missing eyes, blood infections and fused fingers. As the full effects of radiation take time to manifest, it will only be in the coming decades that we will be able to see the effects on health and livelihood for veterans, their children and grandchildren. It is estimated that even greater levels of DU were used in the second Gulf War.
Similar to the sudden post-war jump in deaths and disabilities in allied veterans, the average monthly death rate in Iraq has increased from just over 2000 a month in 1989 to over 15,000 in recent years. Civilians continue to live in a contaminated environment, prolonging their exposure to radioactivity. Children can be seen playing in war debris such as destroyed armoured vehicles, which would have been one of the major DU targets. In 1998, UNICEF cited a total of half a million excess deaths of children under five years of age since 1989.
The story of radioactive warfare doesn’t end in the Gulf. High levels of uranium, not DU as yet, have been found in Afghanistan, and some researchers have come to believe that other kinds of radioactive weapons may have been used in the recent conflict there. Veterans of Afghanistan suffer similar symptoms to GWS, yet none of the commonly cited causes of GWS – such as oil fires and the use
of pesticides – occurred in Afghanistan.
In 2002, tests by the Uranium Medical Research Centre on randomly selected Afghani civilians showed an average of 315.5 nanograms of uranium per litre of urine – over 26 times the maximum permissible level. A 12-year-old boy living near Kabul had 2031 nanograms.
Subsequent urine testing has revealed similar results, including concentrations of toxic and radioactive uranium between 100 and 400 times that of Gulf veterans tested in 1999.
If these findings are representative of the wider population of Afghanistan, the country faces a massive public health crisis.

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