DEPLETED URANIUM HUMAN HEALTH AND THE ENVIRONMENT

The debate over the human health risks and the environmental hazards from the use of munitions containing depleted uranium continues. The issue first surfaced in the spring of 1999, when the U. S. and NATO military forces intervened in the Yugoslavia. There is little consensus in the medical and scientific communities about consequences of depleted uranium use on human health and the environment. Nuclear experts, medical and scientific scholars, conservative and liberal journalists, and laypersons alike have generally agreed that depleted uranium is at the very least toxic as well as radioactive.

The data for analysis in this study are derived from document materials extracted from newspaper and magazine articles, electronic news, documents archives, and internet reports of special Congressional committee hearings. This analytic strategy has helped in organizing the data within broad themes. Six themes that have emerged through analytic induction have been grouped and categorized within their interpretation into two thematic categories health risks and environmental hazards. The following are the health risk and environmental hazards themes which have emerged through analytic induction:

1. Medical uncertainties
2. Unresponsive medical system
3. Contamination of the natural resources and the
environment
4. Environmental and health consequences
5. Unexplained physical symptoms
6. Long lasting unexplained physical symptom

Medical uncertainties is a theme which has emerged from the documentary materials as a factor involving the diagnostic legitimacy of veterans exposed to the unusual illnesses that the medical communities have nicknamed Gulf War Syndrome. A Medical certainty is perceived as a prerequisite for diagnostic legitimacy, for it gives diagnostic legitimacy in the medical community. It also provides the basis for understanding by the lay community. Furthermore, medical certainty is frequently a prerequisite to mobilize whatever resources are necessary to combat the disease. Absence of diagnostic legitimacy in the medical community created an impediment for diagnosis of the illnesses that were plaguing the veterans exposed to depleted uranium or other chemical agents.

Larry Johnson editorialized in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that “depleted uranium weapons used as a prime suspect for the Gulf War Syndrome that has sickened and killed thousands of U. S. veterans” (The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, August 4, 2003). Six years prior to Johnson’s editorial, Dr. Haley, an epidemio- logist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center had claimed to have established an association between various chemical exposures and certain symptoms clusters as perceived by Gulf War veterans.

Unresponsive medical system is an emergent theme which relates to how those veterans and their families who were exposed to depleted uranium perceived their experiences. For the veterans who are suffering from the unexplained symptoms caused by their exposure to chemical agents, a diagnosis would have provided them some comfort through having a name to give to the unusual illnesses they were experiencing. Diagnosis by the medical community would have provided a legitimization that
their medical complaints were taken seriously by the Defense Department and the American people at large.

Contamination of the natural resources and the environment is one of many themes that resonates with environmental justice which have emerged from general categorization of the
documentary materials in this study. Alex Kirby published a story in The Guardian (March 22, 2000) in which he attributed the use of depleted uranium in Kosovo to cancer -causing agents. Kirby’s report was dismissed by United States and British military authorities, claiming that the risk was minimal, if there was any risk at all.

According to Kirby, the NATO Secretary-General, Lord Robertson, wrote a letter to Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, saying, “DU rounds were used whenever the A-10aircraft engaged armor during operation Allied Force. Therefore, it was used throughout Kosovo during approximately 100,000 missions, a total of approximately 31,000 rounds of depleted uranium ammunitions were used.”

Chris Hedges, writing in the New York Times (July 14, 1999), described farm workers who, after plunging their fingers into the earth, said they came away with rashes that burn and blister. He wrote, “Not only was the earth contaminated with toxic materials, but, also, were the rivers. Those who eat the fish from the river, the vegetables planted in the soil, or drink the tap water from the faucets, come down with illnesses such as diarrhea, vomiting and stomach ache.”

Environmental and health consequences theme emerges from targeting of industrial and military sites and oil factories, actions which pose health and environmental consequences. The report from UNEP on the Kosovo war concluded that the American and NATO military forces action resulted in no ecological catastrophes. Nonetheless, the UNEP report regarded the bombing actions using ammunition tipped with depleted uranium as resulting in some serious hot spots in which hazardous substances released during air strikes posed a risk for human health and the aquatic environment.

The environmental and health consequences themes were identified in documentary materials which claim that American and NATO forces damaged the environment by dropping 10,000-ton bomb munitions tipped with depleted uranium by air strikes. Furthermore, articles related the environmental damage to the burning and destruction of the oil wells and refineries by the defeated Iraqi forces as they retreated from Kuwait. These documentary articles reported that retreating Iraqi forces destroyed more than 700 oil wells in Kuwait, spilling an estimated 60 million barrels of oil. After the end of the Gulf war, reports of unusual illnesses that were later dubbed Gulf War-related illnesses by the medical community began to mount.

Gulf War veterans and their families stated that they were exposed to munitions tipped with depleted uranium and other chemical agents. Members of the U. S. Congress began to question the U. S. Department of Defense (DOD) assertions that no U.S. servicemen were exposed to chemical agents and no chemical agents had been detected during the war. The Department of Defense officials in the Pentagon became wary as the media began to report claims of chemical agent detections and chemical agent exposure by Czechoslovak troops who served in the Persian Gulf War. The issue of low-level chemical exposure was addressed in a report presented in September 1998 by the General Accounting Office (GAO).

Documentary material used in the analysis which relates to the theme of medical uncertainties emerges from claims of medically unexplained symptoms reported by U.S. servicemen who were deployed to the Persian Gulf. Those medical uncertainties resemble multiple chemical sensitivities, symptoms similar to Fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndromes. The other unusual illnesses included memory loss, fatigue, joint pain, dermatitis, headaches, blurred vision, diarrhea, and other symptoms. The U.S. veterans were not the only servicemen who were experiencing these unusual illnesses. Many veterans from multiple nations also began experiencing symptoms for which many of them had sought help. At the conclusion of the 1991 Gulf War, American veterans and veterans from NATO countries who were deployed to the Persian Gulf region began experiencing symptoms for which they sought help in hospitals in the United States, Britain, and other countries.

In the context of medical care. Gulf war veterans seldom received any diagnosis at all for their symptoms. Gulf war veterans who received the diagnosis of Gulf War Syndrome from their physicians received little satisfaction. The veterans were told there symptoms were stress related. An increasing number of veterans who complained about their symptoms were told their mysterious diseases were not traceable to known pathogens or toxins.

Unexplained physical symptoms are interpreted by veterans as a major reason why they failed to receive medical treatment. The theme of environmental pollution and health hazard is interpreted as responsible for the increased risk of birth defects.

Long lasting health effects is a theme used for describing mercury and dioxins being washed into the Danube. Another reason why the Gulf veterans were having difficulties in receiving treatment for their symptoms was because of disputes over the definition and etiology of their symptoms. As a result of medical uncertainty, and the failure of the sufferers of the symptoms to gain diagnostic legitimacy in the medical community, they were unable to receive the care they believed they needed.

Reports on the environmental hazards of munitions containing depleted uranium first began to surface in Bosnia and Herzegovina at the end of the Yugoslavia war in 1999, when American and NATO forces intervened in the Bosnian conflict. In the United States, David Holley’s article (The New York Times, October 27, 1999) brought the nation’s attention to the urgent steps needed to clean up the environmental damage created by American and NATO bombing of Yugoslavia using munitions containing depleted uranium.

In Holley’s New York Times article on the environmental damage caused by American and NATO bombing, “U. N. urges cleanup of ‘Hot Spots’ left by Kosovo War,” Holley failed to mention any direct relationship between the environmental damage and pollution caused by the release of low-level uranium contained in the hundreds of tons of bombs dropped during the Bosnian conflict by American and NATO forces. Holley writes, “The United Nations observers who urge the cleanup of the bombing sites in Yugoslavia did not believe that the bombing by American and NATO forces during the war caused as much environ- mental damage, they suggests that 70% of the pollution had existed there before the bombing started.”

Holley also cited a study sponsored by UNEP and the Human Settlement team, but concluded that it did not find any conclusive evidence of environmental pollution. However, evidence showed that the U.S. and NATO forces’78-day bombing campaigns released enough pollutants to increase the risk of birth defects among the fetuses of pregnant women. Environmental pollution and health hazard is a theme which emerged from the UNEP and Human Settlement team report. United Nations teams of observers who visited the pollution sites in Bosnia at the end of the war blamed much of the pollution in the Danube River from upstream sources and outdated technology used in factories during the 10 to 15 years before the Balkan conflict, and for not following environmental - management development.

This finding is similar to that reported by Holley (New York Times 1999) on the UNEP and Human Settlement team, which also found no evidence in Yugoslavia of radioactivity caused by American and NATO forces’ use of ammunition tipped with depleted uranium.

A long and lasting health effect is another theme which has emerged from newspaper articles about data on the threatening pollution of depleted uranium on the environment. Paul Brown’s article in The Guardian (Oct. 27, 1999) which talks about Pancevo, one of worst hit areas during the war in Yugoslavia, recounts the hazards facing people living on the Danube River in which mercury and dioxins have been detected. Furthermore, these life threatening conditions were spread downstream through drinking water in Bulgaria and Rumania.

Brown wrote, “The environmental and health hazards which resulted from the American and NATO forces bombing using ammunition tipped with depleted uranium will have a long and lasting effect on those populations for time to come.”Joe Laura, (The Globe Aug. 6, 1999),wrote about the contamination sites caused by the American and NATO troops bombing that were revealed in the United Nations Environmental Program/Habitat Balkans Task Force (UNEP/HBTF).

The head of the Task Force, a former Finish environmental minister claimed, “The bombing of industrial sites during the Balkans war has caused very serious environmental and probably also serious health consequences.” Laura further claimed that investigators of the UNEP/HBTF were also able to find asbestos and other toxic substances in the surrounding soil in several of the 15 industrial sites hit by the American and NATO bombardment.

He wrote, “The effects on the human health and the environment from the bombing of the U.S and NATO forces on the industrial sites during the Yugoslavia war had been enormous; more than 100,000 tons of carcinogens were unleashed into the air, the water and the soil” (The Globe Aug. 6, 1999).

The environmental and health hazard conditions in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War stimulated an on going search for etiological explanation. Two years before the United States and NATO troops’ invasion of Iraq, Julie Flint (The Daily Star, Sept, 14, 2004) wrote, a story about a report commissioned by the World Health Organization which had earlier warned, that Health the use of depleted uranium would have long-term damage on the health of Iraq’s civilian population.

Julie Flint cited a World Health Organization report written by three of Europe’s top radiation scientists, including Dr. Keith Baverstock, one of WHO’s leading expert on radiation and health for more than a decade. She wrote, “Dr. Baverstock believes, had the study been published in November of 2001, there would have been more pressure on the Allies to limit their us of depleted uranium during the invasion of Iraq and to clean up afterward, but it was not published” (The Daily Star, Sep. 14, 2004).

The lingering health concerns and birth defects was a leading story in Seattle’s major newspapers (The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, August 4, 2003). Writing from the Baghdad office for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, foreign desk editor Larry Johnson wrote, “Depleted uranium which is a toxic as well as radioactive, is at the very least a potential cause of cancers and birth defects.”

In his editorial, Johnson echoed the views of many Iraqi physicians and other nuclear experts that the United States and the Allied-led NATO forces are to blame for a major increase of cancers and birth defects that have occurred a few years after the 1991 and subsequent Iraqi war. The theme of long lasting health effects was evident from as early as six years prior to the Seattle Post article. Dr. Robert Haley, when asked (PBS Front line, October 1997) about his view on Gulf War Syndrome, replied that he was convinced there is a real Gulf War Syndrome. Dr. Haley stated that “among the 24th Navy Mobile Construction Battalion that we studied, there were 30 syndromes; they are very strong and they are due to neurological damage and they are strongly associated with combinations of organic phosphate chemical exposures.”

However, Dr. Haley’s Gulf Syndrome study was criticized by a number of epidemiologists because, in their view, the study contained bias in that not all of the members of the battalion participated in the study. Some of Dr. Haley’s critics accused him of using the wrong neurological tests for organo-phosphate induced delayed neuropathy. Since the media’s focus is not only on what epidemiologists have come to define as the Gulf War Syndrome, but also on the person with the syndrome, it has helped the American people understand Gulf War-related illnesses.

Haley (PBS Frontline, 1997) spoke about the human side of his epidemiological findings. He said, “This human aspect approach taken by both the print and television media has compelled the American public to start paying keen interest to the health and well-being of those men and women who have sacrificed their lives and those of their families in service of the nation as a whole.” How ever, while veterans with unexplained symptoms continued to seek attention, the media continued to raise issues.

Larry Johnson’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer (August 4, 2003, p. A1) article entitled “War’s unintended effects: Use of depleted uranium weapons lingers as health concern” focused on the abnormally high levels of radiation and environmental contamination throughout Iraq caused by depleted uranium weapons used by the United States-led forces during the Gulf War.

Johnson wrote that the Seattle Post Intelligencer conducted tests in six sites from Basra to Baghdad to see whether they could discover any evidence of remnants of radioactive materials in those sites some 12 years after the end of the first Gulf War. Johnson reported, “They found elevated levels of radiation at all of the six sites they visited, one destroyed tank near Baghdad was 1,500 times more radioactive than normal background radiation. In another site, the paper reported that investigators discovered 1,400 times more radioactive than normal background.” Johnson’s article resonates with the theme of contamination of the natural resources and the environment.

There are many newspaper and magazine articles written in the United States, Britain, and elsewhere that makes claims and provides stories of veterans and their families sustaining health effects that include high incidences of birth defects in their offspring. Such claims include incidences of leukemia and other undiagnosed health problems as a result of exposure to the toxic and radioactive waste released from munitions containing depleted uranium. A prompt response by the medical community would have provided an official label for their illness, and would have legitimized the complaints of the veterans and other sufferers exposed to depleted uranium and other chemical agents. Various journalists attempted to fill in the gap between the veterans and the official medical response.

Again, they wrote stories reporting long lasting unexplained symptoms. An article on severe birth defects among children of women in the local unit of the National Guard in Jackson, Mississippi, which appeared in The Nation (March 7, 1994) entitled, “Mal de Guerre” by Laura Flanders, stirred up controversies between those claiming that the birth defects were a result of depleted uranium exposures and those who argued that there were no relationships between the two.

Flanders wrote, “Among women in the local unit of the National Guard severe birth defects affected thirteen of fifteen babies conceived by veterans or their spouses since the end of the Gulf war” (The Nation, March 7, 1994). She continued, “67% of the children of 25 parents who participated in a Veterans Administration (VA) statewide survey revealed the children they conceived since the end of the war were afflicted with illnesses rated severe or have birth defects including missing eyes and ears, blood infections, respiratory problems, and fused fingers.”

The results of the statewide survey cited in Flanders’s article resonate with the theme of medical uncertainties involving diagnostic legitimacy in the medical community. Immediately after Laura Flanders’s controversial article on birth defects among the children of veterans appeared in The Nation, the VA went on the offensive to discredit her story. Instead of launching an investigation to find out what was happening to the children of women, officials at the Veterans Administration criticized Flanders. They accused her of fabrication and of not providing any references to support statements in her article. The VA argued that they had found no reports to support Flanders’s claims.

The attacks on Flanders’s article by the VA resonate with the theme of unresponsive medical system. Several months after the publication of Flanders’s article, Richard Serrano, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times (Nov. 14, 1994) published a story on a new generation of birth defects in Gulf veterans’ babies. Serrano’s story was about a daughter of Gulf veterans from West Waynesboro, Mississippi, who had been born prematurely with collapsed lungs and a faulty immune system, and the son of another Gulf veteran who was constantly suffering from strange colds, pneumonia, and high fevers.

Serrano wrote: These are just a couple of the Gulf War’s second-generation causalities; there are many others, including children who are dying of heart defects, liver diseases, and other rare disorders in Waynesboro, Mississippi, which was the site of the National Guard quartermaster corps, 13 out of 15 children born to Gulf veterans suffer from serious disorders (Los Angeles Times, Nov. 14, 1994).

Serrano also cited the testimony of Dr. Ellen Silbergeld, a molecular toxicologist at the University of Maryland, at a congressional hearing about the rising number of birth defects among children of Gulf War veterans. In her testimony in a Congressional sub-committee hearing Dr. Silbergeld testified that “men can pass toxic chemicals on to their unborn children through their semen” (Los Angeles Times, Nov. 1994).

The theme of long lasting unexplained physical symptoms resonates with Dr. Silbergeld’s testimony Resonates with the theme of long lasting unexplained physical symptoms. In addition Serrano’s article also contained a story of the wives of Gulf War veterans who claimed that they have been sexually affected by the symptoms that were affecting their ill husbands. In an interview with Ted Koppel of ABC TV News Nightline, Betty Mekdeci, founder of the Association of Birth Defect Children, confirms the occurrence at an alarming and disproportional rate of Goldenhar’s syndrome in Gulf veterans’ offspring. She declared that the type of problems most frequently reported to her organization in connection with the offspring veterans is related “chronic, serious immune problems” (Dec. 27, 1995).

Yet, responses from the military doctors to the veterans were not forthcoming. This lack of medical response repeatedly generated the theme, unresponsive medical system. Cary, Peter, and Tharp’s article entitled “Gulf War’s Grave Aura,” U. S. News and World Report (July 8, 1996, p. 33-34) resonated with the theme of unexplained physical symptoms. Cary, Peter, and Tharp’s article attempted to disprove connections between Gulf War veterans’ illnesses and exposure to munitions containing depleted uranium hazardous waste.

They wrote, “The term Gulf War Syndrome is not one, easily defined problem, but rather encompasses a wide variety of ailments; Army reservist whose Army reserve unit was stationed at a prisoner of war camp in the region feels that Gulf War Syndrome is really a misnomer.”

The second phase in the methodological approach in this study was to explore and analyze reports presented to the sub-committees- of the Senate Veterans Affairs for Gulf War Illnesses hearings, and testimonies and reports of the special investigations unit on Gulf War Illnesses presented to the Sub Committee on Banking and Governmental Affairs in the U.S. House of Representatives. The testimonials presented during the sub-committee hearings resonate with the themes of medical uncertainties and unexplained physical symptoms in relating to the strange, but very dangerous and life threatening illnesses occurring among Gulf War veterans and their families.

U. S. News and World Report (July 8, 1996, p. 33-34) published a story about Steven Bayer, a former Army reservist and now a congressman from Indiana who claimed to have experienced some of the symptoms of the Gulf War Syndrome firsthand. “Bayer claimed that the heightened frequency of illnesses among veterans is due to the wide variety of hazardous substances that they encountered in the Gulf Regions.” Bayer’s battlefield experience with depleted uranium resonates with the theme of environmental and health consequences. His claim is supported by much of what other Gulf War veterans have reported.

Shenon Philip (The New York Times, Dec. 3, 1996, pp. 1, 16) wrote a story which claimed that chemical warfare detector alarms were going off at bases across the Gulf region during the Gulf War, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, denied any evidence of any use of toxic chemicals during the Gulf War. However, Philip wrote, “Many Gulf War veterans who testified before the United States Congressional Committee for Gulf War Related Illnesses claimed that chemical warfare detector alarms at bases across the region were frequently triggered, yet troops were ordered to ignore the alarms.”

This inconsistency between the U.S. Army and evidence presented in testimonies before the sub-Committees on Gulf War-related illnesses resonate with the theme of medical uncertainties. Since the U.S. Army had denied using weapons containing DU or dioxins, the medical doctors at the V.A. hospitals were uncertain about the ill veterans’ medical symptoms.

Philips’ article explained why the V.A.doctors were not certain whether the symptoms they could not identify were due to uranium or another type of dioxin. Bill Mesler’s (The Nation, May 26, 1997) article illustrated the insidious action of depleted uranium in the human body by scientists at the Defense Department Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute (AFRRI) in Maryland. Mesler wrote, “The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and Society of Toxicology tested the effects of embedded depleted uranium by inserting shrapnel-like pellets into the legs of rats, and they were surprised at how quickly they discovered oncogenes believed to be precursors to cancer.

Another finding by the AARC was that depleted uranium kills suppressor, or health-maintaining, genes.” The AACR’s toxicological finding resonates with the themes of unexplained physical symptoms and long lasting unexplained physical symptoms. In his testimony before the Congressional Subcommittee on Human Resources, Committee for Government Reform and Over- sight and long lasting unexplained physical symptoms.

In his testimony before the Congressional sub-committee on Human Resources, a Committee for Government Reform and Oversight (U. S. House of Representatives, June 26, 1997), Dr. Durakovic estimated that 123,000 troops had been exposed to depleted uranium through contact with captured Iraqi tanks.
When asked by the sub-committee about the assessment of the troops who had been exposed to DU in the Gulf, he said that “all work that was conducted on behalf of depleted uranium contamination was coordinated through the Persian Gulf Registry of the Wilmington VA hospital and all records were subsequently lost.” Bernstein, Dennis, and Kelley wrote an article entitled, “The Gulf War and the spread of sickness” (The Progressive, Mar. 1995,pp. 30-34).

In their article they claimed that the United States and Canada were not the only two countries where Gulf veterans were reporting health problems. They wrote, “Dr. Saleh Al-Harbi at the Kuwait Ministry of Public Health has verified that a significant number of Kuwaiti citizens are suffering from a variety of chronic illnesses evidently induced by exposure.” The U.S. Senate Sub-Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs (May 25, 1994) held a hearing to investigate the health of Gulf War veterans. The hearing was held to address complaints from several Gulf War veterans from Michigan that the Department of Veterans Affairs was not adequately treating their medical symptoms. Senator Riegle, chairman of the committee, told the other members of the committee that from the medical symptoms of which the Gulf War veterans were complaining, it appeared they were suffering from Gulf War Syndrome.

An official who testified during the hearing informed members of the committee that many of the Gulf War veterans who have complained about their illnesses were
being treated symptomatically. The VA officials tried to convince the members in the committee that there were no long-lasting, positive effects on the health of the complaining Gulf War veterans.

The denial by officials of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs of the existence of long-lasting health effects while many Gulf War veterans were being referred for psychiatric evaluation relates to the theme of medical uncertainties. The medical uncertainty of the VA officials illustrates the theme of unresponsive medical system.

The issues of chemical warfare agents had been brought to attention of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Chairman Senator Riegle as early as in July of 1993 when the then Czechoslovakia minister of defense announced that Czechoslovakia chemical decontamination units had detected that chemical warfare agent Sarin. Senator Riegle released a staff report on the Czechoslovakia defense minister’s report in September 1993.

This information became known to the public in a declassified document released by the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. The unclassified report released by the committee points to the themes of environment and health consequences and contamination of the natural resources and the environment. It was mentioned in the unclassified report that, “The United States Department of Veterans believes that tens of thousands of U. S. Gulf veterans are suffering from the symptoms associated with the Gulf War Syndrome” (U.S. Senate, Hearing, May 25, 1994).

Veterans who testified during the U. S. Senate Hearing reported an array of medical symptoms ranging from muscle and joint pain, memory loss, intestinal and heart problems, fatigue, nasal congestion, urinary urgency, diarrhea, twitching, rashes, sores, and a number of other symptoms. Their testimonies revealed that they began experiencing these multiple symptoms during and after their tour of duty, and their symptoms often continued many months after their tour of duty. The claims of the veterans who testified during the Senate hearings were supported by Chairman Riegle. Furthermore, Riegle told other members of the committee that in virtually every case, the veterans were in excellent physical condition when they went to the Gulf. In fact, he said, “Under the voluntary Army arrangements, you have to be in exceptionally good condition today just to qualify for service in the Armed Forces, and that was particularly true for many who were asked to serve in the Gulf War” (U.S. Senate Hearing, May 25, 1994 p. 2).

The Committee of Banking Housing and Urban Affairs unclassified report also cites an increasing number of cases of spouses and children who report the same symptoms as the veterans, indicating a strong possibility of the transmissibility of the condition. In her opening statement, Senator Barbara Boxer of California informed members of “hundreds, if not thousands, of California veterans are now suffering from Gulf War Syndrome. Many of them have come into my office; they have told me of their lives disrupted and families destroyed” (U.S. Senate, Hearing, May 25, 1994, pp. 7-8).

In addition, Senator Bond informed other members of the committee that thousands of American servicemen and women are suffering from symptoms and undiagnosed disorders. According to Senator Bond, “It is consistent with exposure to biological or chemical toxins. I think, collectively, the facts make it at least possible that these Gulf War veterans were exposed to chemical and/ or biological toxins.” (U.S. Senate, Hearing, May 25, 1994, p.12).

In his opening statement to the committee Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, Edwin Dorn, testified that, contrary to reports in the press that some veterans were exposed to chemical or biological weapons agent,” There is no information, classified or unclassified, that indicates that chemical or biological weapons were used in the Persian Gulf. We’re especially concerned about those Desert Shield and Desert Storm veterans who since the war have develop symptoms whose causes we cannot identify. These veterans represent a small portion of the nearly 700,000 U. S. military personnel who served in the Persian Gulf region during the conflict, and indeed, they represent a small portion of those who have been treated for illnesses or injuries suffered during the war” (U.S. Senate, Hearing, May 25, 1994, pp. 15-16).

In his testimony to the Senate Committee on the Health of Persian Gulf War veterans, Dr. John Kriese, Chief Officer for Ground Forces, Defense Intelligence Agency, testified that “no chemical or biological weapons were found in Kuwait theater operations, meaning those portions of southern Iraq and Kuwait that constituted the battlefield. We did not find any chemical or biological munitions, live or spent, among the thousands of tons of munitions recovered on the battlefield” (U.S. Senate, Hearing, May 25, 1994, pp. 18-19).

On September 19, 1996, during the 103rd Congress, the director of the Gulf War Research Foundation, James J. Tuite, III, appeared before the Committee on Government Reform Oversight U. S. House of Representatives to illustrate the way the issue of sick Gulf War veteran, was handled by the government. In his testimony, Tuite told the committee that the Gulf War veterans were suffering from Gulf War syndrome. Tuite informed the committee that administration officials and Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency bureaucrats since mid-1993 had been misleading Congress. In his testimony to the committee, Tuite broke ranks when he told them that “the facts continued to argue otherwise” (U. S. House of Representatives, September 19, 1996).

Tuite informed the committee that the report he was submitting for inclusion into the record draws from the existence of documents of which he believed “gratuitously identified both vulnerabilities and intelligence methods and sources that were denied to Congress for the protection of our soldiers” (U. S. House of Representatives, Sept. 19, 1996). Tuite also testified to the House of Representative Governmental Reform and Oversight Committee that “a published peer-reviewed study by Dr. Goran Jamal of British veterans revealed that 14 of 14 randomly selected veterans all showed signs of peripheral neuron-pathies similar to those seen in victims of chronic organophosphate pesticide exposures” (U. S. House of Representatives, Sept. 19, 1996).

Tuite concluded his testimony by informing the committee members that while his testimony “does not establish the link between low-level organophosphate chemical nerve agent exposure and
Gulf War Syndrome, and that the exact processes responsible have not been identified it does, however, scientifically overturn the long-held government position that the troops were not exposed to chemical warfare agents in, as the Central Intelligence Agency Director Deutch claimed on CBS’s 60 Minutes” (U. S. House of Representatives, Sept. 19, 1996).
5.2. Summary: Analysis and Themes

The newspaper and magazine articles, reports from the electronic news media, and Congressional committee hearings, that this study of depleted uranium munitions examined, tell us that since the end of the first Gulf War, a large proportion of the veterans who served in the Persian Gulf region continue to experience chronic and often debilitating health conditions. Their health conditions have been characterized by numerous problems.

Their health problems include severe & persistent headaches,
cognitive problems, somatic pain, fatigue,respiratory conditions gastrointestinal difficulties, and a vast array of symptoms that doctors find difficult to diagnose. There are numerous bodies of evidence from the newspaper and magazine reports to indicate that many of the veterans, if not all the veterans who served in the Persian Gulf War, were exposed to some kind of toxic substances.

These sources provided insights into the conditions affecting not only the Gulf War veterans, but also the families of the Gulf War veterans, and the thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of the civilians in the Persian Gulf region. This research suggests that the health conditions affecting these diverse groups of people appear to be complex. The findings of this study can be summarized on the following observations.

First, because of constant denials after the first Gulf War by civilian and military administrators in the DOD that the military used weapons containing depleted uranium or chemical weapons, the medical community became baffled by what was happening to the veterans of the Gulf War. They failed to arrive at any medical explanation for the veterans’ illnesses.
Second, Gulf War veterans interpreted this medical uncertainty as medical unresponsiveness.

They felt let down and betrayed by their military commanders and their government for not knowing a cure for their symptoms. This apparent failure by the medical community to provide diagnostic legitimacy to the sufferers created impediments for timely medical solutions. As a result, the complaints of veterans and their families who were suffering from what later became known as Gulf War Related Illnesses (GWRI) were not well received by the general public, and funding for treatment was diminished.

Third, evidence from the hearing of the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs on the health of Gulf War veterans suggested that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs was adequately treating the veterans’ myriad of medical symptoms. Furthermore, the military establishment and the Pentagon continue to deny to the veterans and the American public that chemical or biological weapons were used during the Gulf War. The question that remains to be answered is this: What then was causing the strange symptoms to the Gulf War veterans and their families?

Finally, there is no explanation to explain the long-lasting adverse health effects and environmental pollution in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in the battlefield areas of the Persian Gulf regions that is convincing enough short of the admission that the weapons used during these military conflicts contained depleted uranium and other toxic substances. Findings suggest that the only medical and scientific explanations for such results are associated with exposure to hazardous materials.

Nothing short of munitions containing depleted uranium can explain the lingering health concerns and birth defects reported by Gulf War veterans and civilians in the Gulf areas. From the large body of evidence demonstrating excess morbidity in Gulf War veterans, this study has reached the objective conclusion that those service men and women who were deployed in the Persian Gulf regions have been affected by an abnormally high rate of chronic multi-symptom illnesses as a result to depleted uranium exposure. One of the limitations this exploratory study has encountered has to do with direct comparison between those veterans who were deployed to the Persian Gulf region and those who served elsewhere or simply stayed in the United States. Many of the findings in other studies on undiagnosed conditions have reported significantly higher rates of illness among Gulf War veterans than non-deployed veterans. Many studies have documented prevalence estimates of multi-symptom illness in Gulf War veterans and non-Gulf War veterans. Other studies have suggested exposures to alternative contaminants as possibility.

Nonetheless, it can be asserted that a substantial proportion of
Gulf War veterans are ill with multi-symptom conditions not explained by wartime stress or psychiatric illness. From the array of evidence presented in this study, it is clear that service men and women who served a tour of duty in the Persian Gulf during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm have experienced significantly more chronic and often debilitating symptoms, illnesses, and undiagnosed conditions than veterans who were not deployed to that region. Growing bodies of medical and scientific research have indicated that an important component of the Gulf War veterans’ illnesses is neurological in character.

Those who maintain that this explains the many war-related syndromes reported by servicemen assert that servicemen often experience unexplained symptoms after deployment to hostile areas. They view stress as an element common to all deployments, defining it as the extreme psychological trauma associated with a war zone. Despite the numerous Congressional reports and special government and scientific review panels, the controversy and challenges of understanding Gulf War veterans’ illnesses remains elusive.

In summary, this chapter presented analysis and themes that emerged from newspaper and magazines articles, reports from the electronic news media, and document materials and electronic reports of Congressional committee hearings. The next chapter presents a discussion of possible mitigation strategies that, if employed, could ameliorate the damage associated with the use of depleted uranium munitions on the battlefield.