Pentagon stance on DU a moving target

In January 1998, Rostker reported that "failure" to alert troops to DU hazards "may have resulted in thousands of unnecessary exposures," but said those exposures "had not produced any medically detectable effects."

Angry veterans say that DU could be a reason that an estimated 1 in 7 of them report a set of symptoms known as Gulf War Syndrome, and have pushed their case on Capitol Hill. They estimate that hundreds of thousands of troops were exposed to DU during the fighting or on post-battle tours of the front line. Climbing on destroyed Iraqi tanks was a favorite activity, along with collecting war souvenirs. Among other sources, the veterans point to a 1990 report commissioned by the US Army that links DU to cancer and also makes clear that "there is no dose so low that the probability of effect is zero." They also remember Pentagon reluctance to divulge health hazards in the Vietnam War.

"This [DU] is the Agent Orange of the 1990s - absolutely," says Doug Rokke, a former Army health physicist who was part of the DU assessment team in the Gulf War, and DU project director for the training package.

Underscoring the official inconsistencies, Sen. Russell Feingold (D) of Wisconsin said in September that the Pentagon's "assertion that no Gulf War veterans could be ill from exposure to DU ... contradicts numerous pre- and postwar reports, some from the US Army itself."

As much politics as science

In a sign of the Pentagon's own confusion, Rostker told a White House oversight panel last November that he was "misguided" to issue so strong a statement - that ruled out DU as a cause of Gulf War Syndrome - in an August report. "I stand corrected," he stated.

The problem seems as political as it is scientific: "Misinformation disseminated by both the Iraqi government and the US Department of Defense has made analysis of DU impacts difficult," notes Dan Fahey, Gulf War veteran and author of an extensive DU report for veterans' groups published last year.

Protection guidelines for handling DU are as difficult to establish as a single speed limit for every American road, says Ron Kathren, director of the US Transuranium and Uranium Registries in Richland, Wash. But NRC guidelines "are in fact adequate" for DU, he says, and "if they are 'overkill,' that's OK, too. I'd rather err on the side of safety."

Col. Eric Daxon, a senior Pentagon radiation expert with the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute, said in an interview that the military needs to come up with its own "acceptable risks" of DU, compared to the other threats of combat.

Protecting soldiers from DU can also put them at risk during battle, he said. Gas masks and suits can overheat a soldier and impair vision. The goal today is to keep exposures "as low as reasonably achievable," he adds.

"Reducing the total risk ... of getting shot, of getting wounded, of getting long-term cancers" is the new aim, he says. "We are really trying to balance all of those things."

As the Pentagon now weighs the use of DU munitions in NATO's war against Yugoslavia, the debate about the risks of DU is certain to escalate.

"I think we have been inconsistent," says the Pentagon's Rostker in the interview. "We published a standard ... that is inconsistent with the hazards of DU."

Disillusioned

As those arguments continue, Panzera has had several operations and health problems that he attributes to his DU exposure. Worried about taking contamination home before he left the Gulf, Panzera cut holes in his uniform and exchanged it for a new one. He left his soldier's boots "in the middle of the desert."

"I guess they are waiting until half of us are dead before they give in," he says, echoing the view of many US veterans whose patriotism has long since given way to cynicism. "My volunteering days are over."

IN YESTERDAY'S MONITOR

Tracking the origin and use of depleted-uranium bullets

*Questions about DU in Kosovo

*A rare report from Iraq's radioactive battlefield

*Widening debate over DU's effect on humans

*Iraqi claims of DU-related illnesses

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