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Depleted uranium is the super weapon of the '90s; used in the Gulf War and the conflict in Kosovo. But now Canadian troops, soldiers and peacekeepers alike, may be exposed to depleted uranium with its potential danger. Now this threat wasn't one raised by a hostile enemy, but by the arms used by the United States and other NATO allies. They defeated the toughest armoured vehicles with the use of depleted uranium. It packed a knockout punch, but what soldiers often didn't know was that depleted uranium poses a threat to victor as well as vanquished. Dan Bjarnason reports this cautionary tale. The story producer was Marijka Hurko. Jerry Wheat went off to war in the Gulf, He drove a Bradley armoured personnel carrier for the Third armoured Division. Then the war followed Jerry home to New Mexico. "I have had real bad joint pain, abdominal problems," Wheat says. "I get real bad headaches. I went from 220 pounds down to 160 pounds for no reason, and that's when I started suspecting that it was something related to the Gulf."
The ground campaign in the Gulf War involved much fighting by armoured forces. Wheat's unit was in the thick of it, and his vehicle was accidentally hit twice by fire from his own side. What Wheat did not know was that the shells that hit him were made from depleted uranium, the pride of the American arsenal. "It blew off my helmet and blew me into the front of the vehicle," Wheat recalls. "I could feel it. I could feel the burning because when the rounds went through, the aluminum melted. And as it goes in you, just burns; it cauterizes as it goes in. At that point, I felt the shrapnel hit me in the back -- hit me in the back of the head. I had second and third degree burns on the back of my head." It's the new wonder weapon the Pentagon calls a "silver bullet."
In the Gulf War, the U.S. fired almost a million DU rounds, leaving a battlefield littered with 1,400 wrecked radioactive Iraqi tanks, crawled over by victorious GI's who were breathing in contaminated dust. Jerry Wheat and the other Gulf vets were never told of the risks of being exposed to a DU campaign. But after the shooting stopped and back home in Los Lunas, New Mexico, Wheat -- now out of the army -- grew mystified as his health deteriorated. Military doctors had no answers.
"This is shrapnel out of my gear. And there was just a couple pieces that I took out of my body -- a couple small pieces… I kept it since I found out the vehicle was hit with a DU penetrator, I just kept it so I would have it. Just kind of proof," Wheat says. The pieces on the table are not a danger, he says. "But if you actually got a piece that was depleted uranium and you had inhaled it or swallowed it or something, then you would have a potential heavy metal problem," Wheat says. Jerry's great fear is that whatever he brought back with him from the Gulf is now afflicting his family. His older son Joe was hospitalized with breathing problems the day after Wheat dragged his contaminated gear into the house. Derrick, his youngest son, who was born after the war, suffers strange blisters on his hands. His wife suffered a miscarriage. Jerry himself recently had a tumour removed from his shoulder. He now worries continually about cancer. Jerry says the military has never shown any interest in his shrapnel. The military said Jerry's health problems are due to post traumatic stress. At the Pentagon, depleted uranium is no mystery weapon. The American military has been testing it for 40 years, yet no one in the corridors of power gave much attention to ensuring that American GI's knew how to handle the new weapons system. Bernard Rostker is the under secretary of the army, and he admits that over the years, troops were given no proper training. Rostker himself reported in 1998 that American soldiers in their thousands had been unnecessarily exposed to DU; this seven years after the end of the Gulf War, when it was first used.
"So what do you tell the vets who are ailing from something and they feel it's because of depleted uranium weapons?" reporter Dan Bjarnson asks. "We, first of all, don't believe that this is people's imagination. We think people are ill. We have an extensive program trying to understand what they may have been exposed to on the battlefield. We have published over 23 reports. Unfortunately, we have not found a smoking gun." The number of Gulf War vets who were in contact with radioactive tanks or breathed in contaminated dust could be in the tens of thousands. Yet so far, only a fraction -- about 200 vets, like Jerry Wheat -- are being monitored. The Pentagon still insists there is not enough evidence to link exposure with illness.
"It's obvious today that the military did know, but they didn't inform anybody," Rokke says. "There were two memorandums that came to us in March of 1991 as we started the cleanup of the contaminated equipment and the casualties in the Gulf. One memo was known as the Los Alamos memorandum." The Los Alamos memo, written by a Lt.Col. M. V. Ziehmn read, in part, "there has been and continues to be a concern regarding the impact of DU on the environment. Therefore, if no one makes a case for the effectiveness of DU on the battlefield, DU rounds may become politically unacceptable and thus, be deleted from the arsenal. ...Keep this sensitive issue in mind when after action reports are written." "The Los Alamos memorandum specifically gave us guidance that said when we are writing a report, or reporting our findings, make sure -- make sure that we don't disrupt the future use of depleted uranium munitions," Rokke says. Then a second memo, from the Defence Nuclear Agency, arrived about the same time. It read "Alpha particles (uranium oxide dust) from expended rounds is a health concern but, Beta particles from fragments and intact rounds is a serious health threat..." "The two memos, added together now after eight years of thought and research and discussions now, in my mind, are very clear. The United States and the world know about the health and the environmental consequences of using this munition and they don't care," Rokke says. We asked Roskter, if there is no DU problem, why these warnings about DU hazards issued as far back as 1991? "There has been concern all along with every weapon," Roster says, "We have done testing on depleted uranium, from the beginning, to determine whether it is of particular concern." After the Gulf War, Doug Rokke was assigned to produce a Pentagon training video to teach soldiers how to handle depleted uranium. It was a video that was ultimately shelved and never shown to the troops.
"There are four general situations during which depleted uranium may present hazards to soldiers. One: if the equipment is damaged or destroyed in combat or in an accident," the video says.
"In the Gulf, we basically just had dust masks. We were told that the dust masks and the surgical masks would work and we could wear gloves. And all we had was the uniforms that we had available." "And they knew no better; no one had ever hinted to them they were in peril?" Bjarnason asked. "And that's criminal," Rokke replies. The CBC showed that training video to Bernard Rostker at the Pentagon.
The Pentagon built a high security, high priced, high tech cocoon at the Savannah River nuclear facility in Georgia to process radioactive materials from contaminated equipment. It has special walls and flooring to prevent any air or dust from escaping into the outside world. It's known as Building 101. "If they're going to spend millions and millions of dollars to clean up the contaminated equipment that's come back from the Gulf, which you have seen here, then how could they say there is no hazard?" Rokke asks. "Look at the amount of effort we do to take asbestos out of a building or lead paint. That doesn't mean that if you walk past a window that has had lead paint that you're going to immediately get lead paint poisoning," Rostker counters. Doug Rokke's experiences in the Gulf ended eight years ago, but he still fights his battles with the Pentagon from his home in Jacksonville, Alabama. He is convinced his health started to slip away because of his work among contaminated vehicles over there in the deserts of Iraq and Kuwait. "The problems that I have are breathing problems. My lungs have scar tissue in them. When I run or exercise, there are secretions -- fluids just fill up in the lungs. I don't have the fine motor control to do all the fine things that I used to be able to do because the nerves don't work like they should. Eye problems, vision problems, kidney problems," Rokke says. Rokke has one important ally in his fight with the Pentagon. He is Dr. Jack Zerimba, head of the Gulf War Clinic at a U.S. Veteran's affairs clinic in Birmingham, Alabama. He studied Rokke's breathing problems and the scar tissue on his lungs and says, "That is consistent with uranium exposure and other things too, such as metal exposure." This official affirmation of a link is for Doug Rokke, his biggest victory in eight years. In Washington, the Gulf War vets have enlisted the attention of many politicians. Wisconsin Democrat Senator Russ Finegold pressed for and got an investigation by the high powered and independent General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress. "The evidence is contradictory with regard to the connection between depleted uranium and the many soldiers from the Gulf War who are complaining of ill effects," Finegold says. "Some reports indicate a real problem here; others question it. I think we need an independent investigation to determine whether this is really true. We have been through this before with many years of denial with regard to Agent Orange and its use in Vietnam. I don't want to see our government in any way, in fact or in perception, stonewall this issue of the health effects of depleted uranium. In the latest chapter of this revolutionary new weapons system, DU ammunition was fired in this spring's NATO war in Yugoslavia. As usage becomes more frequent, for Finegold, the need for answers becomes more urgent.
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The shadows of that war eight years ago still
haunt him. Wheat brought back more than victory from the
front. Awarded a Purple Heart after being wounded in combat,
Wheat came home with pieces of shrapnel embedded in his body
and with mysterious body pains. Jerry Wheat is convinced
these ominous souvenirs from the firing line are connected.
Then a year after war's end, Wheat got startling
evidence from his father -- a technician at the famous Los
Alamos Nuclear Research Centre, who just out of curiosity
tested the shrapnel that came from his son's body and gear.
The shrapnel was radioactive. Today, eight years after the
Gulf War, that shrapnel still lights up a Geiger counter.
He also keeps other pieces.
"We were not
diligent in training our troops," Rostker says. "That doesn't mean that
there were any health consequences. These are men who
survived friendly fire incidences and have been traumatized;
some had been burned, some have lost limbs. So they are not
without health problems. But those health problems are not
attributable to the heavy metal toxicity or the
radioactivity of depleted uranium."
Doug
Rokke is a thorn in the side of the military today because of what he
learned eight years ago in the Gulf, where he served as lieutenant with
the U.S. Army Preventitive Medicine Command. There he led army teams
that cleaned up contaminated vehicles hit by DU rounds. Now he is
collecting evidence that the Pentagon knew of the health hazards to
himself and other vets all along. He now teaches at Jackson State
University in Alabama. 
"This is part of the training video that we finished
in 1995," Rokke says. "The important part here, what we learned from our
research, is everybody involved in working with depleted
uranium contaminated equipment must wear respiratory
protection and they must have some kind of coveralls or
covering that can protect their clothes. What we learned, is
you can't get this off the clothing."
"Very interesting film, because you notice something
that has been very confusing to some of the troops. Some of
them were in full mop gear -- chemical protective gear and a
gas mask. But they show other soldiers who were in a
bandanna. In fact what you really need is a dust respirator
and that's to meet the standards of the EPA. That does not
mean anybody who didn't meet the standards during the Gulf
War have levels of depleted uranium were likely to be
impacted permanently."
"Keep in mind that depleted uranium was used
recently in Kosovo and may well have effected people there
as well," Finegold says, "This is not just old news. It is real current news
for those who are ill from the Gulf War. And we may be
finding other people, from the Kosovo conflict, who will
experience similar problems in the future because of
depleted uranium."
