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Pentagon Poison: The Great Radioactive Ammo Cover-Up
| Author: | By Bill Mesler |
| Publication: | The Nation |
| Document Dated: | May 13, 1997 |
| Date Posted: | May 13, 1997 |
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There were five of them. Small, BB-shaped pellets, shrapnel from wounds Jerry Wheat suffered in the Gulf War in 1991. They were lodged in the back of his neck and in his right shoulder. It took six months for them to worm their way close enough to the surface of his skin to be squeezed out. Wheat never paid much attention to the little pellets. Not until his father, an industrial hygienist at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, took them to work, measured them with a Geiger counter and discovered they were pieces of uranium-238, a radioactive and toxic byproduct of the process used to make fuel for nuclear weapons and reactors. For the first time in battle, the United States had used radioactive ammunition -- poisoning an unknown number of our own soldiers in addition to the Kuwaiti and Iraqi environment, a story the Pentagon is doing its best to keep quiet but for which a Nation investigation has found abundant evidence.
In fact, extensive interviews with exposed soldiers and veterans' doctors, government documents obtained by The Nation and results of emerging medical research show that the Pentagon knew as early as 1990 of the dangers of its new antitank ammunition made of uranium-238, or depleted uranium (D.U.), but was mainly worried about bad P.R.; that soldiers in the Gulf War were not warned of its toxicity; that hundreds and perhaps thousands of G.I.s were exposed; that the Pentagon at least once rephrased description of this ammunition to hide its radioactivity; that researchers are on the verge of publishing a study documenting a strong connection to cancer; that at least one former Veterans Affairs doctor accuses the V.A. of engaging in a "conspiracy of silence"; and that, six years after the last rounds were fired in the Gulf, concern among veterans has convinced Congressional investigators exploring the causes of Gulf War Syndrome to begin calling for testimony on D.U. next month.
U.S. forces quietly began introducing D.U. rounds into their arsenals in the late seventies but never fired a round in combat before the Gulf War. It turned out to be the most devastating tank-killing ammunition ever used on a battlefield, accounting for about one-third of all Iraqi tank kills. "By using these D.U. weapon systems, the Army gave its soldiers better protection from enemy action and greater confidence in their ability to engage in and survive combat," Department of Defense spokesman Bryan Whitman told The Nation. But the use of D.U. weapons also left behind a host of problems the Pentagon did not foresee. What do you do with the tons of radioactive waste left behind? What do you tell soldiers exposed to burning D.U. rounds? And what do you tell at least thirty-three U.S. veterans who, like Wheat, were left with D.U. shrapnel wounds?
The last question is the one researchers at the Defense Department's Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute (AFRRI) in Bethesda, Maryland, are trying to answer. AFRRI scientists have been trying to determine the effects of embedded D.U. by inserting shrapnel-like pellets of the substance into the legs of rats. According to abstracts of preliminary results of the studies obtained by The Nation, AFRRI scientists have discovered that D.U. leads to the occurrence of oncogenes, tumorous growths believed to be the precursors to cancerous growth in cells, and that it kills suppressor genes. They also found that embedded D.U., unlike most metals, dissolves and is spread through the body, depositing itself in organs like the spleen and the brain; and that a pregnant female rat will pass depleted uranium along to a developing fetus.
Some of the results have been presented to the American Association for Cancer Research and the Society of Toxicology; more is being submitted to the scientific journal Nature this month. Researchers stress that their work is only preliminary. But Dr. David Livengood, the chairman of the department of cellular radiobiology at AFRRI, said, "We were particularly surprised at how quickly we found oncogenes."
Despite the significance of their discoveries, the research has so far drawn scant attention. Money for the studies will run out later this year, and no new appropriations are on the horizon, although scientists are trying to find out more about the interrelationship between uranium's radioactivity and its toxicity (uranium is both a toxic heavy metal and radioactive) and to develop new ways to test for uranium in the human body.
"Even if we would never use it [D.U.] again, other potential enemies will," said Livengood. "And we have to be prepared to know what to do with injured individuals. What do we say, for instance, to a woman with D.U. fragments in her who wants to know if she can safely have children? Nobody knows." He speaks urgently of the need for further study.
So does Jerry Wheat. During the Gulf War, Wheat drove a Bradley armored personnel carrier for the Third Armored Division and won a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. Twice Wheat was knocked unconscious when his vehicle was hit by Iraqi rounds. The Iraqi fire caused the Bradley's own ammunition to explode, leaving him with D.U. shrapnel. Wheat came home from the Persian Gulf a hero, but also sick. "I had these stomach cramps that went on real severe for about six weeks," says Wheat, who used to weigh 220 pounds and now weighs 160. "I couldn't hold anything in me, couldn't eat any food. I still have stomach trouble. And now I have joint pains, fatigue. My bones won't heal right. I broke my collarbone last year and it still hasn't healed."
Wheat believes his ailments are related to the unexplained symptoms reported by other veterans, which have come to be known as Gulf War Syndrome. Since his father's discovery in 1993 that his shrapnel wounds were from D.U., Wheat has been part of a D.U. monitoring program run by the Veterans Affairs Department. Doctors at the V.A. hospital in Baltimore are following closely the health of Wheat and nearly three dozen other veterans known to have suffered D.U. shrapnel wounds.
Nobody at the V.A. told Wheat about the preliminary results of the animal studies at AFRRI, even though he and other vets in the D.U. program were recently flown to Baltimore for a round of testing. "They have a real good way of covering stuff up," said Wheat, who never would have learned his shrapnel was D.U. if his father hadn't taken the initiative to check it with a Geiger counter. "I never even heard of depleted uranium until 1993. They've never warned me about anything at all."
