Gulf War uranium exposure ignored
Military didn't warn or test soldiers who were exposed to radioactive bullets, shrapnel
Sunday, June 21, 1998
(06-21) 04:00 PDT PERSIAN GULF -- The explosions that rocked Jerry Wheat's armored personnel carrier in the Iraqi desert blew off his helmet and filled the interior with searing heat and dense smoke.
Burned and bleeding, shrapnel embedded in his neck and back, Wheat ripped off his armor as he stumbled out of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle with other soldiers.
"I thought I was on fire," he said. "My clothes were smokin'."
A year later, Wheat found that the metal shards he'd carried in his body since the war were radioactive. It was his father - a technician at Los Alamos National Laboratory - who told him the shrapnel was "hot."
Now top Army officials are acknowledging the military ignored its own rules by failing to provide medical screenings to Wheat and other Gulf War soldiers who came into contact with the dust and debris created by radioactive ammunition.
The Pentagon admitted this year that "thousands" may have been exposed on the battlefield.
"We probably should have done bioassays (medical tests) on some Gulf War soldiers - but not all," said Col. Bob Cherry, the Army's radiation safety officer. "We didn't. In that sense we didn't follow Army Regulation 40-5."
Veterans advocates say the admission bolsters their call for legislation guaranteeing care and compensation for troops exposed to a variety of toxins in the gulf - even if scientists cannot draw a direct link between their illnesses and exposure.
Pentagon's role
Paul Sullivan, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center in Washington, D.C., described Cherry's statement as a concession "that the Pentagon blew it."
"A Gulf War vet can now say that after seven years the Pentagon is admitting a horrendous error of untold consequences for the health of veterans," he said.
"The Pentagon's negligence, incompetence and insensitivity are mind-boggling, given the high number of undiagnosed illnesses, the lack of health screening at the time, the lack of medical research today and the reluctance of the Pentagon to admit anything."
The ammunition, used for the first time in combat in the gulf, rips through tanks, the Pentagon says, "like a hot knife through butter."
Fired by U.S. tanks and aircraft, the ammunition is made of "depleted uranium," a heavy metal that is 60 percent as radioactive as uranium. The metal is a cheap and plentiful waste product of the process of enriching uranium for use in nuclear power plants and weapons.
Army Regulation 40-5 - the Army's preventive medicine bible - says medical tests "will be performed when radioactive materials are used in such a manner that they could be inhaled, ingested, or absorbed into the body."
Its chapter on radiation protection is based on regulations from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
It says the rules apply "to all elements of the Army."
Cherry said the Army followed the regulation in Somalia, a United Nations peacekeeping mission that began in late 1992. He said it is now in force in Bosnia, Korea and the Persian Gulf.
No contamination warning
In the gulf, combat medics patched up Wheat and sent the 23-year-old cavalry scout on his way. Wheat, who earned a Purple Heart for his injuries and a Bronze Star for valor, returned to his base in Germany.
No one warned him his gear was contaminated with radioactive and toxic residue.
"My gear was filthy - everything was covered in this dust," said Wheat, who now works for the post office in New Mexico. "We weren't allowed to wash our clothes. My sleeping bag had 80 shrapnel holes in it. I had to sleep in it for three more weeks. My cigarette cartons had holes in them. So did my cigarettes. Sometimes when I smoked a cigarette a little piece of metal would fall out."
Wheat's father tested the shrapnel with a Geiger counter.
"There was nothing in my medical records that said I'd been hit with depleted uranium," Wheat said. "They weren't checking for anything like that."
The Pentagon hadn't warned soldiers about the hazards of contact with the dust or debris of depleted uranium explosions. Last year, Cherry called the failure to train troops "an oversight."
In a recent interview, Cherry defended the decision not to provide medical screenings during the Gulf War.
Only in peacetime
Cherry initially said the Army's radiation protection regulations applied only in peacetime.
"When people are going out and shooting at each other, an OSHA regulation is the least of their worries," Cherry said.
"If an infantry commander is leading 120 armed infantrymen into combat, he isn't going to worry about DU exposure, he's worried about bullets flying around. He's probably not even aware of OSHA regulations. He's interested in achieving the mission and keeping his soldiers alive. And applying regulations may not help in doing that."
But when pressed, Cherry said the regulation should have applied to Gulf War soldiers.
"After all the shooting is over, and nobody is getting shot at or the battle is won, then we go back to our peacetime posture," he said.
Cherry downplayed health problems tied to the radioactivity. He said depleted uranium's heavy metal properties - it is twice as dense as lead - are the primary concern, and those hazards were minimal in the gulf.
Other experts say the long-term effects of radiation exposure represent the greatest health concern.
Cherry's statements stunned veterans advocates.
"It seems the Army thinks it can disregard safety measures on a whim, or if they're inconvenient," said Dan Fahey, author of "Case Narrative: Depleted Uranium Exposures," a 1998 report on Gulf War health hazards.
"That attitude shows a basic lack of concern for the health and welfare of soldiers," said Fahey, a staff member at Swords to Plowshares, a San Francisco veterans' rights group. "That's why we've got more than 100,000 sick Gulf War veterans."
Sullivan, of the National Gulf War Resource Center, said the Army can't pick and choose which regulations it will enforce.
"If you draw out the Pentagon's argument, it would be OK for a commander to ignore every regulation - as long as soldiers don't collapse and die until after they're discharged," he said.
Tons of uranium dust
By the end of the war, 630,000 pounds of depleted uranium dust, fragments and penetrators - the ammunition's spear-shaped projectile - were scattered in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq, the Pentagon has said.
New Army training videos advise soldiers to minimize the time they spend around blast sites, maximize their distance, and wear protective clothing, including gas masks if they will be exposed to the dust or debris for more than a few minutes. The video says contaminated dust can be ingested if gloves are not worn, and the dust is not washed off before eating, drinking or using the latrine.
So far, the Pentagon has enrolled Wheat and 32 other veterans and active duty soldiers in a monitoring program at the Baltimore Veterans Affairs Hospital. All of them are friendly-fire survivors.
But the number represents less than one-third of the 113 soldiers involved in friendly-fire incidents.
"That means that 80 vets who the Pentagon has just acknowledged exist have been denied specialized medical care and treatment for the last seven years - for reasons the Pentagon has never explained," Fahey said.
In March, Bernard Rostker, head of the Pentagon's Gulf War Illnesses Office, said the other people "will be contacted and enrolled in the VA program this spring."
But a spokesman in Rostker's office said Wednesday that none has been contacted, because the Pentagon has to notify military hospitals first. The expanded list includes soldiers who were not wounded and those who rushed to the aid of crews.
Rostker also announced plans to extend the monitoring program to soldiers who worked in or around vehicles struck by the ammunition, and to soldiers who took part in the cleanup after an 18-hour fire at the Doha Ammunition Depot in Kuwait.
"A few hundred" affected
"While we don't have a specific count of the number of people (involved), we know that it is likely to be a few hundred, and we will build a more complete list as we notify those whose names we already have," Rostker said.
Fahey said the Pentagon has "grossly underestimated" the number of soldiers involved in those incidents. He estimates the group includes about 4,000 people, based on the number of soldiers stationed at Doha and those downwind of the fire.
Rosalie Bertell, president of the International Institute for Public Health, a nonprofit research center in Toronto, said depleted uranium fires create an aerosol - a fine mist of radioactive particles - that can travel for miles.
"If it does fall to the ground, it can easily go back into the air," said Bertell, an expert on radiation and health. "That's probably the major pathway of exposure for the greatest number of Gulf War soldiers. It would be a miracle if nobody breathed it."
She said exposure may cause cancers, and may also damage marrow if it lodges in bone.
Bertell, an epidemiologist, said its non-cancerous effects - anemia, reproductive problems and an inability to fight infections and tumors - already may be afflicting veterans.
The Pentagon does not plan to provide special screening to soldiers who climbed on contaminated Iraqi equipment or who were stationed downwind from fires.
If Army Regulation 40-5 had been enforced in the gulf, medics would have collected urine samples, nasal swipes and respirator filters from soldiers, and shipped them to an Army lab in Maryland. They would have called the Army Surgeon General in Washington, D.C., to report shrapnel injuries.
Those were the instructions outlined in an Oct. 14, 1993, memorandum to the commander of the American troops in Somalia from Army headquarters.
Col. Eric Daxon, the Army's nuclear science officer, said the instructions reflect lessons learned in the gulf.
Medical screenings
The memo said the Army should do medical screenings on soldiers who inhaled smoke from a depleted uranium fire, worked in a contaminated environment, or were in a vehicle or structure hit with the ammunition.
Daxon said the Army's first priority in the Persian Gulf was saving the lives and limbs of injured soldiers.
"I wouldn't want anything to slow that (emergency medical care) down at all," Daxon said. "Kids dying and kids losing legs - that's not what we're about."
Daxon said the Army didn't plan to do medical testing for depleted uranium exposure during the Gulf War.
"Part of the problem was, we didn't expect to shoot ourselves," Daxon said, referring to friendly-fire incidents.
But a study published before the war said the soldiers at highest risk for exposure were ground troops returning to the battlefield after the ammunition had been fired.
The 1990 study, by an Army contractor, said health hazards linked to exposure - kidney problems and cancer - were manageable only with proper "industrial hygiene controls and monitoring, field practice . . . and medical surveillance."
Wheat, who was healthy when the war began, fell ill a few months after. He suffers from periodic weight loss, severe abdominal, joint and body pain, fatigue, respiratory problems, migraines and a tumor in his shoulder.
He said the Albuquerque VA Hospital's diagnosis for his Gulf War ailments is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Cherry said no medical screenings have been done on soldiers deployed to the gulf since the war.
"There simply is no need unless the ammunition is fired," he said.
But Swords to Plowshares' Fahey worries that U.S. soldiers are living and training in contaminated areas. In 1997, training exercises took place in Kuwait at the site of a major Gulf War battle.
"The military decided to leave the area intact to provide a realistic training environment - disregarding the hazards that remain from the use of depleted uranium," Fahey said.
High radioactivity level
The Pentagon's Rostker said 1994 tests of damaged Iraqi tanks in a Kuwaiti storage yard showed high levels of radioactivity at the site where the rounds pierced the armor - but not on the rest of the tank or in the surrounding soil.
Rostker said tests also were done on oil, water and sand throughout Kuwait, and nothing above background levels of radioactivity was found.
"Because of the recent deployment in the gulf, we've asked them to redo the tests - just to make sure," Rostker said. "The best thing about Dan (Fahey) is that he's forcing us to go back and make sure of our facts. And that's good.
"At this point, the concerns he's expressed are not supported by the evidence, but we're looking again." <
This article appeared on page A - of the Examiner
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/e/a/1998/06/21/NEWS5465.dtl#ixzz0uzVoYeZG
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