TIME EUROPE
January 22, 2000, Vol. 157 No. 3
Balkan Dust Storm
When news of leukemia cases among NATO soldiers reached Serbia, many civilians viewed them as a sign of heavenly justice. "God is punishing them," says Milica Simic, a Belgrade housewife whose son fought in Kosovo. "That's what they get for bombing us." Divine victims or not, the soldiers present scientists with an opportunity to attempt to track leukemia's cause. Several investigations have begun, carried out by teams from the U.N., the World Health Organization, Britain's Royal Society and Germany's National Research Center for Environment and Health, among others.
The U.N. Environment Program has been focusing on the health and environmental consequences of the Kosovo conflict. Blocked at times by unexploded ordinance, unep researchers spent 12 days in Kosovo in November, taking radioactivity readings and samples of soil, water, vegetation and cows' milk at 11 sites where DU ammunition was used. The materials are being analyzed, and a final report is due by early March. "It was surprising to find remnants of DU ammunition just lying on the ground one-and-a-half years after the conflict," says Pekka Haavisto, chairman of unep's assessment team. "Also, the ground directly beneath the DU ammunition was slightly contaminated... We paid special attention to the risks that uranium toxicity might pose to the ground waters around the sites." Direct contact with such spots, they concluded, would be "an unnecessary risk."
NATO aircraft rained more than 30,000 DU shells on Kosovo during the 11-week air campaign. The military likes the shells because, 1.7 times heavier than lead, they can punch through armored vehicles. They then erupt in a burning cloud of vapor, which settles as radioactive dust. (In addition to its military applications, DU is used in civilian industry, chiefly for stabilizers in boats and planes and for radiation shielding.) About 10 tons of the debris were scattered across Kosovo. While internal U.S. and British defense documents have warned of a "potential" increase in cancer risk from DU dust, the Pentagon insists there is no actual danger. "We have studied depleted uranium at considerable length over the years," said spokesman Kenneth Bacon. "And we have not been able to find any connection between exposure to depleted uranium on the one hand and the constellation of illnesses or symptoms included in the Gulf War illness on the other hand."
Scientists generally agree. While none can spell out a conclusive reason why the European soldiers are falling sick — or explain the myriad illnesses afflicting veterans of the Gulf War, the first conflict in which DU munitions were used — they are certain that DU is not the cause. "So far," notes Naomi Harley, professor of environmental medicine at the New York University School of Medicine, "there are 16 epidemiological studies following 30,000 people, most of them from the atomic energy industry, and following them over 35 years. No one has seen anything. There is just nothing you can ascribe to uranium exposure."
While cancer is the only radiation-associated human disease linked so far to inhalation of radioactive particles, study after study has failed to find a link between the disease and either natural uranium (found all around us) or depleted uranium (about 40% less radioactive than the natural variety). As a heavy metal, though, it has a chemical toxicity that, as with lead, can cause poisoning in high doses. It is this toxicity, rather than radioactivity, that is considered DU's greatest potential hazard in battlefield conditions. DU emits mainly alpha particles, which are blocked by skin, while beta particles are blocked by military clothing and boots. Gamma rays, though highly penetrating, are given off in extremely low amounts. When uranium is ingested, the kidney is the main organ that is targeted. But even wounded Gulf War veterans who have DU fragments imbedded in their bodies suffered no kidney disease attributable to uranium's chemical toxicity, according to a 1999 rand report. Nor do the men appear to show any signs of radiation effects.
So just what is going on with Europe's Balkans veterans? Epidemiologists call it a cluster. Cancer clusters have been identified for well over a century, and a large number involve leukemia. "Except for occupational settings, health researchers almost invariably do not get the cause," says Michael Thun, the American Cancer Society's chief of epidemiological research.
One theory is known as the "two-hit" hypothesis. Cancer generally results from an accumulation of damage — five or six "hits" — to the genes. Some experts think leukemia may need only two. If so, that may also explain why the disease appears relatively quickly — and perhaps an infectious agent, such as a virus, is the second "hit."
Unlike the Gulf War illnesses, the DU cases have spawned investigations shortly after the first signs of trouble. That, to soldiers and their families, officials and scientists, is an important first step. For others, the studies and guidelines on how to deal with DU material have come too late. But before depleted uranium dust settles on another land, the challenge is, simply, to determine the truth.
BACK>>
— Reported by Dejan Anastasijevic/Belgrade, James Graff/Brussels, Andrew Purvis/Vienna, Thomas Sancton/Paris and Dick Thompson/Washington, with other bureaus
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