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U.S. Adding Uranium Weapons to Long List of Ukraine War Systems

By John LaForge

The Biden administration is expected to supply Ukraine with highly controversial depleted-uranium shells which are to be fired from the Abrams battle tanks the U.S. is sending to Kyiv, the Wall St. Journal reported June 13.

Any delivery of U.S. depleted uranium (DU) weapons to Ukraine would be in addition to the State Department’s Dec. 22, 2022 approval of the sale to Poland of as many as 112,000 heavy 120-millimeter DU shells which was announced by the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency. The large120mm DU anti-tank shells are so heavy that the uranium in 112,000 munitions could weigh as much as 36 tons.

The British Ministry of Defense announced last March 20 that it too would send depleted uranium weapons to Ukraine along with its Challenger battle tanks. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov responded then alleging that sending DU into Ukraine would mean the U.K. was “ready to violate international humanitarian law as in 1999 in Yugoslavia.” The reference is to the United Nations Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights which in 2002 labeled the use of DU “inhumane” and a violation of treaties that expressly forbid any use of “poison or poisoned weapons.”

The Wall St. Journal’s understated June 13 sub-headline warned: “The armor-piercing ammunition has raised concerns over health and environmental effects.” Indeed, between 1997 and 2004, USA Today, the Associated Press, New York Daily News, Life magazine, CNN, and others all reported that studies were finding an significantly increased rate of birth abnormalities among children of U.S. Gulf War veterans and among Iraqi children born after 1991.

The Wall St. Journal acknowledged that “The United Nations Environment Program said in a report last year that the [depleted uranium] metal’s ‘chemical toxicity’ presents the greatest potential danger, and ‘it can cause skin irritation, kidney failure, and increase the risks of cancer.’”

However, the paper “balanced” this U.N. warning by quoting John Kirby, a National Security Council coordinator, who reportedly dared to say last March that “studies indicate it isn’t a radioactive threat.”

In fact, the most damning reports about the harmful health and environmental effects of exposure to DU contamination come from the U.S. military itself. (See below.)

If the shells are used in the Ukraine war, the soil and water of the territory being contested will likely be contaminated with uranium and the other radioactive materials that are in the armor-piercing shells.

In 2003, experts at the Pentagon and the United Nations estimated that between 1,000 and 2,000 tonnes of DU were used by U.S.-led forces during their attack on Iraq in March and April that year.

That same year, the British Royal Society, declared that hundreds of tons of DU used by Britain and the U.S. against Iraq should be removed to protect the civilian population, contradicting Pentagon claims it was not necessary.

After NATO’s use of DU weapons in Kosovo in 1999, the Council of Europe called for a world-wide ban on the production, testing, use, and sale of DU weapons, asserting that DU pollution would have “long term effects on health and quality of life in South-East Europe, affecting future generations.” The call went unheeded.

A U.S. soldier holds a 120-mm depleted uranium anti-tank round which disperses poison heavy metal dust when it burns through hard targets. Photo by the U.S. Department of Defense.
Background

Depleted uranium is uranium hexafluoride or uranium-238, a waste material left from reactor fuel and nuclear warhead production. It is radioactive and a toxic heavy metal, and there are between 560,000 and 700,000 metric tons of this waste stored in the United States. On March 25, 1997 the New York Times reported the volume as 1.25 billion pounds. The military calls the DU munitions “armor piercing cartridges” avoiding the taint of the word “uranium.”

As Nukewatch reported in the 2000s, when DU smashes through tank armor, it becomes an aerosol of dust or gas-like particles that can be inhaled and carried long distances on the wind, contaminating soil and water.

In 1991, between 300 and 800 tons of DU munitions were blasted into Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait by U.S. forces. The Pentagon says the U.S. military fired about 10,800 DU rounds — about three tons — into Bosnia in 1994 and 1995. Over 31,000 DU rounds — about ten tons — were shot into Kosovo in 1999 according to NATO. In Iraq, in the number of birth abnormalities skyrocketed following the massive use of DU in the Persian Gulf War.

The U.S. Department of Energy admitted in January 2000 that the metal in DU shells is often contaminated with plutonium, neptunium, and americium, long-lived, highly radioactive isotopes, much more hazardous than DU, or uranium-238.

While the U.S. military repeatedly declares that its uranium weapons contain only uranium-238, and that its DU shells “are less radioactive than natural uranium,” the United Nations Environment Program and others proved that uranium shells used by the U.S. and the U.K. were spiked with fission products including plutonium.

In Plutonium: Deadly Gold of the Nuclear Age (International Physicians Press, 1992), the authors say “A safe conclusion is that plutonium is probably the most carcinogenic substance known.

Government evidence of harm

* The Army’s Office of the Surgeon General’s 1993 manual “Depleted Uranium Safety Training” says the expected effects of DU exposure include a possible increase of cancer (lung and bone) and kidney damage. It recommends that the Army “… convene a working group … to identify countermeasures against DU exposure.”

* The U.S. Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute found in 2002 that DU produces one-million times as much chromosome damage as would be predicted from its radioactivity alone, and that it causes a form of long-term “delayed reproductive death” of cells. The institute then canceled the funding of this research.

* In 1979, the U.S. Army Mobility Equipment, Research & Development Command warned, “Not only the people in the immediate vicinity (emergency and fire-fighting personnel) but also people at distances downwind from the fire are faced with potential over exposure to airborne uranium dust.”

* In 1995, the U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute reported, “The radiation dose to critical organs depends upon the amount of time that depleted uranium resides in the organs. When this value is known or estimated, cancer and hereditary risk estimates can be determined.” Depleted uranium has the potential to generate “significant medical consequences” if it enters the body, the AEPI found.

* In 1997, the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute reportedly found that, “In animal studies, embedded DU, unlike most metals, dissolves and spreads throughout the body depositing in organs like the spleen and the brain, and a pregnant female rat will pass DU along to a developing fetus.”

* In 1990, the Army’s Armaments, Munitions and Chemical Command radiological task group said that depleted uranium is a “low level alpha radiation emitter … linked to cancer when exposures are internal, [and] chemical toxicity causing kidney damage.” The report said that “long term effects of low doses [of DU] have been implicated in cancer … there is no dose so low that the probability of effect is zero.”

 

– Beyond Nuclear, April 16; Common Dreams Mar 21; Chris Bugsby “Uranium weapons being employed in Ukraine have significantly increased Uranium levels in the air in the UK,” March 2023; ICBUW Jul 3, 2022

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U.S. Depleted Uranium to Make Ukraine War Dirtier

By John LaForge

The Biden administration is expected to supply Ukraine with highly controversial depleted-uranium munitions which are to be fired from the Abrams battle tanks the U.S. is sending to Kyiv, the Wall St. Journal reported June 13.

Any delivery of U.S. depleted uranium (DU) weapons to Ukraine would be in addition to the State Department’s Dec. 22, 2022 approval of the sale to Poland of as many as 112,000 heavy 120-millimeter DU shells, which was announced by the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency.

The British Ministry of Defense announced last March 20 that it too would send depleted uranium munitions to Ukraine  along with its Challenger battle tanks. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov responded at the time charging that sending DU into Ukraine would mean the U.K. was “ready to violate international humanitarian law as in 1999 in Yugoslavia.”  The reference may be to the United Nations Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights which in 2002 labeled the use of DU “inhumane” and a violation of treaties like the Hague Conventions which expressly forbid any use of “poison or poisoned weapons.”

The Wall St. Journal’s understated sub-headline on June 13 warned: “The armor-piercing ammunition has raised concerns over health and environmental effects.” Indeed, between 1997 and 2004, USA Today, the Associated Press, New York Daily News, Life magazine, CNN, and others reported that studies were finding a significantly increased rate of birth abnormalities among children of U.S. Gulf War veterans and among Iraqi children born after 1991. (“DU in UKRAINE – John Pilger & Phil Miller,” Consortium News, May 11, 2023; “Tainted uranium, danger widely distributed,” USA Today, June 25, 2001)

The Journal’s article acknowledged that “The United Nations Environment Program said in a report last year that the [depleted uranium] metal’s ‘chemical toxicity’ presents the greatest potential danger, and ‘it can cause skin irritation, kidney failure, and increase the risks of cancer.’”

However, the paper “balanced” this U.N. warning by quoting John Kirby, a National Security Council coordinator, who reportedly dared to say last March that “studies indicate it isn’t a radioactive threat.” In fact, the most damning reports about the harmful health and environmental effects of exposure to DU contamination come from the U.S. military itself. (See below.)

If the shells are used in the Ukraine war, the soil, water, crops, and livestock of the territory being contested will likely be contaminated with uranium and the other radioactive materials that are in the armor-piercing munitions. This is because when DU smashes through tank armor, it becomes an aerosol of dust or gas-like particles that can be inhaled and carried long distances on the wind.

In 2003, experts at the Pentagon and the United Nations estimated that between 1,000 and 2,000 tonnes of DU were used by U.S.-led forces during their attack on Iraq in March and April that year. That same year, the British Royal Society, declared that hundreds of tons of DU used by Britain and the U.S. against Iraq should be removed to protect the civilian population, contradicting Pentagon claims it was not necessary. (“Scientists Urge Shell Clear-Up to Protect Civilians, Royal Society spells out dangers of depleted uranium,” The Guardian, April 17, 2003)

After NATO’s use of DU weapons in Kosovo in 1999, the Council of Europe called for a world-wide ban on the production, testing, use, and sale of DU weapons, asserting that DU pollution would have “long term effects on health and quality of life in South-East Europe, affecting future generations.” The call went unheeded.

Background

Depleted uranium is uranium hexafluoride or uranium-238, a waste material left from reactor fuel and nuclear warhead production. It is radioactive and a toxic heavy metal, and there are between 560,000 and 700,000 metric tons of this waste stored in the United States. On March 25, 1997 the New York Times reported the volume as 1.25 billion pounds. The military calls DU munitions “armor piercing cartridges” avoiding the taint of the word “uranium.”

In 1991, between 300 and 800 tons of DU munitions were blasted into Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait by U.S. forces. The Pentagon says the U.S. military fired about 10,800 DU rounds — about three tons — into Bosnia in 1994 and 1995. Over 31,000 DU rounds — about ten tons — were shot into Kosovo in 1999 according to NATO. In Iraq, in the number of birth abnormalities skyrocketed following the massive use of DU in the Persian Gulf War. (“EU begins inquiry of veterans’ cancer,” Knight Ridder Newspapers, January 4, 2001) In Plutonium: Deadly Gold of the Nuclear Age (International Physicians Press, 1992), the authors say, “… plutonium is probably the most carcinogenic substance known.”

The U.S. Department of Energy admitted in January 2000 that the metal in DU shells is often contaminated with plutonium, neptunium, and americium, long-lived, highly radioactive isotopes, much more hazardous than DU, or uranium-238. (“Pentagon admits plutonium exposure: NATO shells used radioactive metals,” London, AP, The Capital Times, February 3, 2001; New York Times, February 14, 2001)

While the U.S. military repeatedly declares that its uranium weapons contain uranium-238, and that its DU shells “are less radioactive than natural uranium,” the United Nations Environment Program and others demonstrated that uranium shells used by the U.S. and the U.K. were contaminated with fission products including plutonium. (“DU at Home,” The Nation, April 9, 2001)

Government evidence of harm

* In 2002, the U.S. Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute found in a preliminary report that DU produces one-million times as much chromosome damage as would be predicted from its radioactivity alone, and that it causes a form of long-term “delayed reproductive death” of cells. The AFRR institute then canceled the funding of this research.

* In 1997, the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute reportedly found that, “In animal studies, embedded DU, unlike most metals, dissolves and spreads throughout the body depositing in organs like the spleen and the brain, and a pregnant female rat will pass DU along to a developing fetus.”  The Army’s Office of the Surgeon General’s 1993 manual “Depleted Uranium Safety Training” says the expected effects of DU exposure include a possible increase of cancer (lung and bone) and kidney damage. It recommends that the Army “… convene a working group … to identify countermeasures against DU exposure.”

* In 1995, the U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute reported, “The radiation dose to critical organs depends upon the amount of time that depleted uranium resides in the organs. When this value is known or estimated, cancer and hereditary risk estimates can be determined.” Depleted uranium has the potential to generate “significant medical consequences” if it enters the body, the AEPI found.

* In 1990, the Army’s Armaments, Munitions and Chemical Command radiological task group said that depleted uranium is a “low level alpha radiation emitter … linked to cancer when exposures are internal, [and] chemical toxicity causing kidney damage.” The group’s report said that “long term effects of low doses [of DU] have been implicated in cancer … there is no dose so low that the probability of effect is zero.”

* In 1984, the Federal Aviation Administration warned its investigators, “If particles are inhaled or ingested, they can be chemically toxic and cause a significant and long-lasting irradiation of internal tissue.”

* In 1979, the U.S. Army Mobility Equipment, Research & Development Command warned, “Not only the people in the immediate vicinity (emergency and fire-fighting personnel) but also people at distances downwind from the fire are faced with potential over exposure to airborne uranium dust.”

Any threatened or actual use of poisonous, gene-busting depleted uranium munitions in Ukraine cannot be considered lawful or ethical and must be condemned unreservedly by civil society on all sides of the Ukraine war.  ###

— John LaForge is a co-director of Nukewatch, a nuclear watchdog group in Wisconsin, and is co-editor with Arianne Peterson of Nuclear Heartland, Revised: A Guide to the 450 Land-Based Missiles of the United States. A version of this was published June 30, 2023 by CounterPunch.org.

 

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Contaminated Middle School Indefinitely Closed in Ohio

Zahn’s Corner Middle School in Piketon, Ohio, was closed May 14, after the Department of Energy disclosed that it had two-year-old evidence of radioactive contamination in and around its buildings. The school is two miles from the uranium enrichment factory known as the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant. Photo by KDAK, Channel 2/CBS, Pittsburgh.
Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2019
See Fall 2019 update here.

Cancer-causing radioactive poisons found outside and inside an Ohio middle school near a former H-bomb materials factory have led to the school’s abrupt closure. Students won’t be returning there in the fall.

Zahn’s Corner Middle School in Piketon—two miles from the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant which for decades processed uranium for nuclear weapons—was closed in the face of parents’ frantic concern for their children’s health.

In mid-May 2019, the US Department of Energy (DOE) acknowledged that in 2017 it found trace amounts of highly radioactive neptunium-237 in air monitors on the school grounds, the Ironton Tribune reported. The DOE also admitted that it found similarly toxic americium there in 2018. The Dayton Daily News reported that neptunium is a carcinogen linked to bone cancers. Why the discovery of radioactive chemicals was not made public at the time—and the school closed then—has not been explained by the DOE.

A more recent and independent study, conducted by Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, found enriched uranium actually inside the middle school itself, and it found “plutonium, uranium, and neptunium in water and dust samples from other parts of the community” the Associated Press reported.

Fifteen years ago, in 2003 and 2004, the DOE disclosed that it had found traces of uranium in milk and eggs from area farms, and in vegetables from gardens next to the factory. Uranium, plutonium and or technetium were found in air, water, sediment and fish from area waterways, the Dayton Daily reported in November 2006. “Energy officials say none of the amounts are large enough to pose a health threat,” the Dayton Daily reported at the time. This reassurance is untrue because internal radiation exposures can never be considered safe, no matter how small.

In a May 14 press release, the Pike County General Health District raised concern that the government’s radioactive waste clean-up and disposal activities at Portsmouth have spewed radioactive dust clouds causing widespread dispersal downwind. The DOE has so far refused the Health District’s request to suspend its operations, claiming more data is needed.

Dusty bulldozing and open air demolition operations are now under way at the site to deconstruct the complex, decontaminate the grounds, and build a radioactive waste abandonment facility. NBC News reported May 15 that although “the contamination came from [the Portsmouth] plant … the Department of Energy has repeatedly refused to cease operations there.”

While environmental contamination with uranium-235 and other uranium isotopes is worrisome, more troubling still is the detection of neptunium, americium, cesium, technetium, and plutonium in surrounding homes, surface waters, gardens and farmlands.

Between 1954 and 2001, the Portsmouth complex did uranium “enrichment” for US nuclear weapons—the dirty, dangerous process of increasing the amount of uranium-235 in large volumes of uranium.* The factory made weapons-grade uranium (more U-235) for H-bombs, and low-enriched uranium (less U-235) for nuclear reactor fuel.

*******

As before, the Department of Energy said the radioactive contamination in and around the school is “well below established thresholds of concern for public health.” Likewise, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency’s deputy director said “the amount reported is far below the risk level.” And in a May 16 letter to the DOE, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said his understanding was that the amounts of neptunium and americium detected “are far below any public health risks.”

In the case of the neptunium, uranium, plutonium, americium and technetium found in the water, vegetables, fish and school yards of Piketon, Ohio, the authorities do not know what has happened or for how long, or, like before, are withholding the information. They do know that alarmed parents could become enraged.

Plutonium is an extremely toxic alpha radiation emitter that if ingested or inhaled seeks bone and attacks the body’s ability to make red blood cells.

The authoritative Institute for Energy and Environmental Research reported on plutonium contamination in drinking water in its September 2005 edition of Science for Democratic Action. The institute concluded that the maximum contaminant level (MCL) for plutonium-239, and for toxins akin to it, in drinking water “should be tightened by about a factor of 100.”

“The black star in the middle shows the tracks made by alpha rays emitted from a particle of plutonium-239 in the lung tissue of an ape. The alpha rays do not travel very far, but once inside the body, they can penetrate more than 10,000 cells within their range. This set of alpha tracks (magnified 500 times) occurred over a 48-hour period.” Robert Del Tredici, At Work in the Fields of the Bomb (1987), plate 39.

Children are more vulnerable to the damaging health effects of radiation than are men, according to the National Academy of Sciences and independent experts. As Science for Democratic Action (SDA) reported in August 2009, “This is because radiation doses received in childhood are more likely to lead to cancer than the same dose received as an adult.”

In spite of this, radiation risk models still in use today are often based on an outdated “reference man” standard. The model estimates the risk that radiation poses to a hypothetical adult white male between 20 and 30 years of age, 5’7” tall, and weighing 154 pounds. As SDA made clear, the vast majority of people fall outside the definition. Not a single middle school kid falls inside of it.

—Beyond Nuclear’s Kevin Kamps contributed reporting to this story. Other sources were WKRC, May 27; Downwinders, Washington Bureau, May 22; the BBC, and the Ironton Tribune, May 15 & 16; WOSU Public Radio, May 15; Newsweek, and the Pike County General Health District, May 14; the Columbus Dispatch, May 13, 2019; the Dayton Daily News, May 15, 2019 & Nov. 12, 2006; and Science for Democratic Action from the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.

—John LaForge

* Separating uranium-238 from the bomb-grade uranium-235 produces mountains of radioactive waste. Some 700,000 tons of waste uranium-238, known as depleted uranium, is now stored in the United States, although some is given to weapons producers that make armor plate for tanks and poisonous armor-piercing ammunition.

See Fall 2019 update here.

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Saying ‘No’ to a Treaty Ban, ‘Yes’ to Nuclear Weapons Tests

Can you find the seven countries the United States is bombing? US attacks often hit civilians with Reaper and Predator drones, Cruise missiles, depleted uranium munitions, and even a 21,600-pound “Massive Ordnance Air Blast”device, a version of fuel-air explosive or “thermobaric” bomb, that was tested on Afghanistan April 13.

By John LaForge

Last week the Air Force shot a Minuteman rocket off California toward the Martial Islands, but the government refused to join in treaty negotiations for a ban on nuclear weapons. Using a blizzard of hypocrisy and self-contradiction, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley explained March 27 why the US would boycott the “treaty ban” negotiations.

Amb. Haley said about US nuclear weapons, “[W]e can’t honestly say that we can protect our people by allowing the bad actors to have them, and those of us that are good, trying to keep peace and safety not to have them.” North Korea’s president could have said the same thing about his six or seven nuclear warheads, especially in view of the US “trying to keep peace and safety” using bombs and missiles against seven countries — Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya — and the joint US/S. Korea war exercises off the Korean peninsula.

Ambassador Haley managed to avoid being two-faced on one level. Joining the ban treaty talks would have been tactless and seamy while her colleagues in the war department were preparing a series of nuclear weapons tests. An April 13 test, at the Tonopah bombing range in Nevada, was of the so-called “B61-12,” a new H-bomb still in development and scheduled to go into production after 2022.

Jackie Cabasso, of the Western States Legal Foundation, explained April 20, “In 1997… President Bill Clinton signed Presidential Directive-60, reaffirming the threatened first use of nuclear weapons as the ‘cornerstone’ of US national security.… President Obama left office with the US poised to spend $1 trillion over the next 30 years to maintain and modernize its nuclear bombs and warheads…. Over the past couple of years, the US has conducted a series of drop tests of the newly modified B61-12 gravity bomb…. Each new bomb will cost more than twice its weight in solid gold.” Of the 480 B61s slated to become B61-12s, about 180 are scheduled to be placed at six NATO bases in Europe.

Another test, April 26 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Calif., launched a modernized Minuteman-3 long-range ballistic missile. (Nukewatch co-directors Arianne Peterson, Bonnie Urfer and I recently finished NUCLEAR HEARTLAND, a book about these very rockets.) This was to be followed by another Minuteman-3 test fired at the Martial Islands May 3.

US: “We are prepared to use nuclear weapons”

 As on Feb. 21 and Feb. 25, 2016, Vandenberg regularly tests Minuteman-3s. Deputy Pentagon Chief Robert Work said then the US had conducted “at least” 15 since January 2011. Before the Feb. 25 test Mr. Work said, “And that is a signal … that we are prepared to use nuclear weapons in defense of our country if necessary.” This is the Big Lie, since using nuclear weapons only produces massacres, and massacres are never defensive.

Jason Ditz put the rocket tests in context April 26 at antiwar.com: “Everywhere and (mostly) without exception, the test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) would be angrily condemned by the United States as a dangerous provocation, and the firing of a nuclear-capable rocket would be treated as tantamount to an act of war. Not today [April 26], of course, when the missile in question was test-fired from California by the United States flying some 4,000 miles before hitting a test target near the Marshall Islands. The missile was identified as a Minuteman III, a nuclear-capable weapon of which the US has 450 in service.”

The two times Amb. Haley flubbed her March 27 “peace and safety” speech were alarming. Haley stumbled once saying: “We would love to have a ban on nuclear treat… nuclear weapons.” A ban on nuclear treaties is more like what Amb. Haley’s bosses do want, so she didn’t mis-speak later (and did not correct herself) when she said: “One day we will hope that we are standing here saying, ‘We no longer need nuclear weapons.’” But today she doesn’t even hope to be saying such a thing. A trillion dollars is very big business.

Instead, the United States is relentlessly bombing and rocketing, hitting civilians with drones, Cruise missiles, depleted uranium munitions, and even a 21,600-pound “Massive Ordnance Air Blast” or MOAB bomb, also tested April 13 but against caves Afghanistan,. This ghastly “thermobaric” fuel-air-explosive (FAE) has the mass of five Lincoln Continentals, and reportedly killed 95 people including a teacher and his son. One Defense Intelligence Agency report uncovered by Human Rights Watch said that because “shock and pressure waves cause minimal damage to brain tissue…it is possible that victims of FAEs are not rendered unconscious by the blast, but instead suffer for several seconds or minutes while they suffocate.” Such is the peace and safety from those of us that are good.

On March 29, two days after her UN performance, Amb. Haley spoke to the Council on Foreign Relations and cleared up any confusion our globalized bombings might be causing. Haley declared, “The United States is the moral conscience of the world.” Yes Ms. Parker, “And I am Marie of Romania.”

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Dirty Bombs, Undeclared Wars Raise Prospect of US Criminal Culpability

US Uranium Weapons Used in Syria

Nukewatch Quarterly  Winter 2016-17

In October, the Pentagon admitted it used “depleted” uranium weapons in attacks inside Syria—violating its public promise last year that it would not use DU there, and contradicting the government’s promise that US bombing is done in defense of the Syrian people, according to the International Campaign to Ban Uranium Weapons.

US military officials have repeatedly assured the public that US uranium munitions are not known to cause health problems. Made from waste uranium-238—left from H-bomb and reactor fuel production—the heavy shells are called “depleted uranium” or DU. Ironically, the best evidence that DU weapons are dangerously toxic and radioactive, comes from the Pentagon itself. A June 1995 report to Congress by the Army’s Environmental Policy Institute (AEPI) concluded: “Depleted uranium is a radioactive waste and, as such, should be deposited in a licensed repository.”

Military studies done in 1979, ‘90, ‘93, ‘95 and ‘97, make clear that uranium weapons are chemically toxic, alpharadiation-emitting poisons that are a danger to target populations and to invading/occupying US forces alike. In spite of this cautionary written record, the military has been shooting its radioactive waste all over the world: into population centers in Iraq in 1991 (380 tons), in Afghanistan in 2001 (amounts unknown); in Bosnia in 1994-‘95 (five tons); in Kosovo in 1999 (10 tons), in Iraq again in 2003 (170 tons); and now in Syria.

The AEPI report above also says that DU has the potential to generate “significant medical consequences” if it enters the body. The Army’s Office of the Surgeon General, in its Aug. 16, 1993 “Depleted Uranium Safety Training Manual,” says that the expected effects of DU exposure include a possible increase of cancer and kidney damage.

The manual also warns, “When soldiers inhale or ingest DU dust, they incur a potential increase in cancer risk … (lung or bone) and kidney damage.” The Army’s Mobility Equipment, Research & Development Command reported way back in 1979 that, “Not only the people in the immediate vicinity but also people at distances downwind from the fire are faced with potential over exposure to air-borne uranium dust.” This uranium “dust” is generated when DU shells hit and burn through hard targets like tanks or armored vehicles. The uranium is spread for miles by the wind, contaminating everything is its path including food, water, soil, schools, hospitals, etc., and DU is radioactive forever, or ten times 4.5 billion years, whichever comes first.

In 1990, the Army’s Armaments, Munitions and Chemical Command radiological task group said that DU is a “low level alpha radiation emitter … linked to cancer when exposures are internal, [and] chemical toxicity causing kidney damage.” It added that “there is no dose so low that the probability of effect is zero.”

With evidence of its radio-toxicity so clear and redundant, any use of uranium weapons today appears to flaunt the military’s own Field Manual prohibition— absolute and universal—against the use of poison or poisoned weapons.

Historical disregard revisited

The military has a long history of deliberately exposing US citizens and others to deadly risks without their knowledge or consent, beginning with the open-air nuclear bomb tests it knew would contaminate vast areas.

The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) chose not to evacuate or even warn downwind populations it knew would be hard-hit by radioactive fallout. (“Fallout risk near atom tests was known, documents show,” New York Times, March 15, 1995.) These bomb tests exposed Nevada Test Site workers to levels of radiation that the AEC knew could cause harm, but the agency chose not to reduce workers’ exposures or to even inform them of the risks because doing so would have scandalized and halted the bombing tests. (“Records say workers faced high radiation: Suit contends US used no safeguards,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, Dec. 14, 1989.)

Likewise, the government refused to inform some 600,000 H-bomb factory workers that workplace radiation exposures posed serious health risks, although enough was known about radiation to warn them in 1948. (“N-plant workers not told of risks: Report says US arms program exposed many to radiation,” Associated Press, Dec. 19, 1989.) Between 1944 and 1974, “medicalized” human radiation experiments were even conducted on unwitting US citizens, 16,000 of them. (The Plutonium Files, by Eileen Welsome, Delta, 1999.)

Today, the Pentagon extends this ghastly history into Syria where it is deliberately exposing human beings to weaponized radiation that it knows can cause cancer and other diseases. As if the undeclared, unconstitutional war in Syria weren’t unlawful enough, now add the crime of using poison in violation of military law, the Hague Regulations of War on Land, and the Geneva Conventions.

Arguing that uranium weapons are poison, a group of four non-lawyers, myself included, convinced a Minneapolis jury in 2004 that AlliantTechsystems Corporation’s manufacture of the shells is unlawful, and potentially criminal enough to excuse a misdemeanor trespass. We argued our minor offense was justified in order to prevent the greater harm of DU weapons production. The use of poison in war is always prohibited, as is the case with gas warfare and torture. This latest US government crime of war must be condemned in the harshest terms. —JL

For more information on DU weapons and the global effort to have them banned, see ICBUW.org.

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