Depleted Uranium Bombs Still Pose Danger in Kosovo

by Gustavo Capdevila

The experts collected depleted uranium munitions used during the conflict that registered radioactivity levels slightly higher than normal in the specific locations studied.

Depleted uranium (DU) is only slightly radioactive, but some scientists maintain that the dust particles produced when the ammunition hits a solid target can be inhaled or ingested, and can lead to cancer in humans.

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) sent a team of scientists to Kosovo "to determine if there are health or environmental risks now or in the future due to the use of depleted uranium during the conflict."

The experts' final conclusions are expected to be available in February 2001, once the laboratory analyses are completed.

The team's preliminary report, however, counsels that "precautions be taken when dealing with penetrators and sabots (which contain DU) found at the identified sites and also in other locations where these ammunitions might be present."

The UNEP team inspected 13 sites where NATO forces attacked using such weapons during the war launched against Yugoslavia.

The UN agency's investigations began in May 1999 while NATO air attacks were still occurring against targets located in Kosovo and in Serbian territories.

But the first studies were made even more difficult by the fact that NATO would not confirm for the scientists that it was indeed using DU ammunition.

Even so, in its first report, presented in October 1999, UNEP scientists recommended that, once the use of such ammunition was verified, access to the attacked areas should be restricted.

NATO took five months to respond to the UN's request for information, and finally acknowledged in March of this year that its A-10 Warthog aircraft had used munitions with depleted uranium in approximately 100 attacks over Kosovo territory.

The Warthog airplanes are equipped with GAU-8/A cannons capable of firing 4,200 rounds of 30-millimeter DU shells per minute.

The same weapons were used against Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War, and later in the NATO bombings against Bosnia.

Depleted uranium is the by-product of the process of enriching natural uranium for use as nuclear fuel or in nuclear weapons.

The same uranium utilized in munitions is also widely used in civilian industry, primarily for stabilizers in airplanes and boats.

In fact, Dutch scientists reported that the crash involving an aircraft of the Israeli El Al airline on Oct 4, 1992, southeast of Amsterdam, spread DU throughout the area, endangering the health of some 250,000 people.

The UNEP research team, led by Finland's former minister of Environment and Development Cooperation, Pekka Haavisto, is financed by donations from several governments, with Switzerland as the principal contributor.