more DU on BBC - Bertell, etc.

["Franta, Jaroslav" <frantaj@aecl.ca>]

FYI
posted at http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/newsid_362000/362484.stm
Sunday, June 6, 1999 Published at 23:38 GMT 00:38 UK 
BBC World
 <<...>> Depleted uranium: the lingering poison 
By Alex Kirby, 
News Online Environment Correspondent and presenter of BBC Radio 4's Costing
the Earth 
Ray Bristow used to run marathons for charity. His last was the 1990 London
marathon. 
Then he went off to the Gulf, as a medical theatre technician. When he came
home to Hull, things were different, he told Costing the Earth. 
"I gradually noticed that every time I went out for a run my distance got
shorter and shorter, my recovery time longer and longer. 
"Now, on my good days, I get around quite adequately with a walking stick,
so long as it's short distances. Any further, and I need to be pushed in a
wheelchair." 
Ray Bristow says he is open-minded about the cause of his illness. But he
was tested - in Canada - for depleted uranium (DU), used in tank-busting
rounds by US and British forces in the Gulf. 
"I remained in Saudi Arabia throughout the war. I never once went into Iraq
or Kuwait, where these munitions were used. 
"But the tests showed, in layman's terms, that I have been exposed to over
100 times an individual's safe annual exposure to depleted uranium." 
DU poisoning fears 
The Armed Forces Minister, Doug Henderson, says only a small number of
British Gulf veterans believe DU has made them ill. 
His door is open to scientists and doctors, he says. But he says he has no
evidence that the dust left after a DU round has exploded can travel very
far from the vehicle it has hit. 
And he believes you would have to absorb unfeasibly large amounts of the
dust to suffer any harm. 
Yet a Canadian epidemiologist, Dr Rosalie Bertell, told the programme that
DU had been detected 42km from its source in a factory accident in New York
state. 
Doug Henderson believes there is no case for a systematic programme to test
UK service personnel for DU poisoning. 
Gulf veterans hit 
But an adviser to the Gulf Veterans' Association, Professor Malcolm Hooper
of Sunderland University, says nobody has looked coherently at what British
veterans are reporting. 
"We've got people saying: 'I've got kidney problems, problems with
urination'. We don't know the cause. Some have got enlarged livers. 
"But a big study of US veterans has found very severe damage to the nervous
system. The level of cancers is about 2.4 times higher. 
"And there've been massive birth defects in some cases. In one unit, 67% of
children born to US Gulf veterans had severe illnesses or birth defects." 
The Pentagon says studies of the group with the highest DU exposure show
their levels are "still well below occupational exposure limits". 
But it acknowledges that, of all the US troops sent to the Gulf, it has
tested just 36 for DU contamination. 
Ray Bristow says he is now "on death row". The study which established his
DU level found contamination in about 40 people, British and US veterans,
and a few Iraqis. 
It was conducted by Dr Hari Sharma, of the University of Waterloo, Ontario.
"Inhalation of DU occurs in 1991, and we are looking at it after eight
years", he says. 
"To find something after a lapse of eight years was indeed a surprise." 
Dr Sharma says cancer in southern Iraq is two or three times commoner than
in 1991. Around Basra some cancers are seven times as common. 
He says the World Health Organisation regards the figures as "substantially
correct". 
The Pentagon confirmed in early May that US aircraft were firing depleted
uranium rounds over Kosovo. 
Costing the Earth is broadcast on BBC Radio Four at 2100 BST on 7 June.
<><><><><><><><><><>

comments: 

As for birth defects or cancers in Iraq, what about the incident when 6,530
people ate mercury-treated seed grain ? (see
http://www.birthdefects.org/MAIN.HTM )

As for detecting uranium 42km from a factory -- how about 20,000km away, on
the other side of the earth ? the moon ? Mars ? etc..

jaro
************************************************************************
The RADSAFE Frequently Asked Questions list, archives and subscription
information can be accessed at http://www.ehs.uiuc.edu/~rad/radsafe.html