Depleted Uranium in the Persian Gulf War

The Gulf War

Depleted Uranium

DU radiation caused a marked increase in deformaties and deaths.
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'Crispy critters. That was what Selina Perez, who as a US soldier buried the Iraqi dead of Desert Storm, called the corpses burned to near-cremation. These were people whose blood had boiled and evaporated. Their uniforms burned away with their skin down to naked, blackened bones, leaving vacantly staring charcoaled skeletons brittle enough to break up into skull, torso, legs, arms, and ashes. Calling them crispy critters was Perez's way of dealing with the horror of disposing of the radiated remains of death by depleted uranium (DU) in the Persian Gulf.' by Patricia Axelrod from her article Secrets and Lies The Boston Phoenix, October 7 - 14, 1999 .

In November 1991 it was revealed in a secret report by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority that the allied armies had left forty tons of depleted uranium ammunition on the battlefield. Here it was suggested that the long-term health of thousands of Kuwaitis and Western clean-up teams could be threatened, with the chemically toxic and radioactive waste passing into the water supply and the food chain. The report estimated that US tanks fired some 5000 depleted uranium rounds, US aircraft many tens of thousands of rounds, and British tanks 'a small number'. The tank ammunition alone, it was reckoned, contained more than 50,0001b of depleted uranium, enough material to cause '500,000 potential deaths'.

A particular hazard would exist in the form of the uranium dust produced when the uranium shells hit and burned out Iraqi armoured vehicles. In-gested in sufficient quantities, the uranium dust would cause kidney failure and a range of cancers. In March 1993 an Associated Press (AP) report, citing research by the Boston-based National Toxics Campaign Fund (NTCF), stated that thousands of Gulf War veterans may be suffering from radiation sickness after being exposed to US uranium-tipped weapons (The Guardian, 19 March 1993). The NTCF chairman John O'Connor, referring to the widespread chemical contamination caused by the US in the Vietnam War, commented: 'What we have here is a new problem which we believe could be the Agent Orange of the nineties'.