Mirrored, with permission, from the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear
Responsibility web site, where the original exists at
http://www.ccnr.org/bertell_book.html
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Gulf War Syndrome, Depleted Uranium
and the Dangers of Low-Level Radiation
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Desert Storm veterans along with the people of Iraq and Kuwait were
victims of one of the latest military experiments on human beings.
I believe that the ignorance was culpable and criminal.
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by Dr. Rosalie Bertell
[ Biographical Notes ]
Introduction:
I first heard about the military using depleted uranium for
bullets from the Native Americans for a Clean Environment (NACE)
in Gore, Oklahoma. Kerr Magee was operating a factory there, and
in a liquid waste spill a young man, about twenty-one years old,
was sprayed with the mixture and died. Many members of the public
were also exposed, and were taken to the University in Oklahoma
City for medical examination and feces analysis. It seems that the
liquid waste contained primarily uranium and other heavy metals.
Local people had found this factory to be very polluting. When I
visited the town to see what was happening and to decide whether
or not I could help, they showed me rust marks scattered over the
surface of their automobiles where the toxic corrosive spray
released from the factory routinely had impacted on the paint.
People complained of burning throats and eyes, some with even more
serious complaints, but little systematic information which would
show that the factory was the source of their problem.
I met a young boy who showed me a frog he had caught--the frog had
nine legs. It was in a bottle of formaldehyde. I wanted to take it
for some tissue and bone analysis but it was his prize possession
and he would not part with it.
I learned that the Kerr Magee plant had been disposing of its
waste by deep-well injection in this rural, primarily farming
area. The people, becoming alarmed at this practice which
threatened the water table, got a court injunction to stop it. In
an action, which seemed to the local farmers to be a retaliation,
Kerr Magee had applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to
call their waste an "experimental fertilizer" and just spread it
over the top of the land. The stories were quite strong evidence
that this so-called fertilizer was sometimes just released into
the local river, or released in one place on the factory property,
with no pretense even to spread it.
The young boy had found his nine-legged frog on the hill which
served as the "experimental plot." Hunters had found a rabbit with
two hearts, and the local taxidermist told me that he had tried to
mount two deer heads and the fur came off in his hands in clumps.
He had never seen anything like it in his whole career.
As local people became sick and started to complain, Kerr Magee
bought them out, and took over their land. The Native people, who
were determined to preserve their land, formed a Coalition of
White and Natives Concerned, and began the long legal fight with
the company. They learned about environmental assessment hearings,
licensing hearings, etc. and began to seriously participate. They
also undertook a human health survey of all families -- there were
about four hundred of them -- living within four miles of the
factory. Every family was included in the survey, which was very
comprehensive and carefully administered.
The International Institute of Concern for Public Health agreed to
analyze this data for the citizens. The outstanding illnesses in
the area were respiratory and kidney problems. There were
significantly more persons with respiratory illnesses down wind of
the plant, and significantly more with kidney problems down stream
of the plant.
We intended to do a clinical follow-up of this survey, and
designed the study with the cooperation of the Occupational Health
and Respiratory Units at the University Medical School of New
Jersey. We were not able to obtain funding for this study.
Nevertheless, with the health survey and a great deal of local
perseverance, Kerr Magee moved out. A second multinational tried
to take over the factory--I think it was General Dynamics--but it
failed.
I learned many things about the uranium bullets in the process of
this research:
* They are incendiary, that is after piercing the object they
can burst into flame.
* They are fragmentary, they disintigrate into small fragments
inside the body, and cannot be removed.
* They are more dense than lead, and can pierce a bullet- proof
vest, or a light armored car or tank.
* Because the "enemy" might also use them, the military made
uranium armor as a protection.
* They were cheap, because the depleted uranium was a waste
product of the nuclear-bomb program.
* They were radioactive, which meant that even handling them
was risky, but no one seemed to be worrying about this!
Research into Gulf War Syndrome
Six years after the Gulf War there is still deep controversy over
the causes of the severe health problems observed in the veterans.
Reluctantly, the U.S. government has been slowly releasing data on
possible Iraqi chemical exposures of the veterans, but many
physicians, some of whom have reported that their jobs are being
threatened, have said that this information does not explain the
variety of symptoms observed.
Shortly after the Gulf War, at the request of Staff Sargeant Carol
Picou, San Antonio, Texas, who was herself a victim, Patricia
Axelrod undertook research into the possible causes of this
illness.
The research was jointly sponsored by the U.S. National Institutes
of Health, Office of Women's Health. It was submitted to the
Department of Health and Human Services on May 10, 1993, and was
labeled: for internal distribution only. The research was intended
to be a guide to further research into the problem, so its
limitation to internal distribution did not make sense.
Our journal, International Perspectives in Public Health,
published the document in full in 1994.
At the time, the U.S. Department of Defence was treating this
illness as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and advising
military doctors to treat it with muscle relaxants and sleeping
pills, while ordering a mental illness assessment. Most of the
information in Ms. Axelrod's Guide to Gulf War Sickness comes from
interviews with Dr. Thomas Callender, a toxicologist; Dr. Barry
Wilson, of Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratories; and
Commissioner Rudy Arredondo, Maryland's Commission on Black and
Minority Health. Ms. Axelrod also interviewed many veterans and
reviewed the journal articles and reports available in the public
press. Information on leishmaniases was provided by the World
Health Organization.
Potential Causes of Gulf War Syndrome
In this complex situation, any or all of the following factors may
have interacted to bring about specific symptoms in veterans.
Obviously, the combinations of factors differ with individuals,
hence it is likely that there is not one single explanation of the
whole spectrum of symptoms. However, the following main categories
are candidates for causal relationships with illnesses reported by
veterans:
* Administration of three vaccines intended as protection
against nerve and biological warfare agents. These were:
1. Pyridostigmine, normally prescribed for myasthenia
gravis and known to have serious side effects,
especially when the person taking it is exposed to heat.
It is also known that exposure to pesticides and
insecticides (Baygon, Diazinon and Sevin) should be
avoided when taking pyridostigmine because they can
accentuate its toxicity. Some women who took this drug
during pregnancy and have breast-fed infants have seen
side effects in their child.
2. Botulinum Pentavalent, an unproven vaccine intended to
counteract botulism. It is unlicensed in the United
States.
3. Anthrax, to protect against the disease anthrax. This
was apparently selectively administered to troops during
the war, and women receiving it were warned not to have
children for three or four years.
* Depleted uranium was used for the first time in this war. It
was incorporated into tank armor, missile and aircraft
counterweights and navigational devices, and in tank,
anti-aircraft and anti-personnel artillery. The scientific
information on this deadly chemical has been reported in
"Radium Osteitis With Osteogenic Sarcoma: The Chronology and
Natural History of Fatal Cases" by Dr. William D. Sharpe,
Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, Vol. 47, No. 9
(September 1971). There was no excuse for this human
experimentation because the effects of this exposure were
known.
* Smoke and chemical pollutants released by the continuous oil-
well fires. Levels of soot, carbon monoxide and ozone have
been studied by an Environmental Protection Agency Task
Force. The National Toxics Campaign, Boston, Massachusetts,
found five different toxic hydrocarbon products in the smoke
(1,4-dichlorobenzine, 1,2-dichlorobenzene, diethyl phthalate,
dimethyl phthalate and naphthalene), any one of which could
induce serious health effects.
* Old World leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease transmitted by
the bite of many species of sand fly indigenous to the
region. Non-indigenous people who enter an infected area are
known to be more seriously affected by this parasite than the
inhabitants. If left undiagnosed, and therefore untreated, it
can be fatal. Diagnosis requires bone and spleen biopsy, and
the disease can have a three-year incubation period without
causing symptoms. It can be transmitted by blood transfusion,
and transmitted by a woman to her unborn child. Leishmaniasis
was reported as widespread in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. This
disease is thought to be responsible for the Pentagon ban,
November 1991, against blood donations from Gulf War
veterans. This ban was lifted, for unknown reasons, on
January 11, 1993.
* Pesticides and insecticides were used extensively throughout
the war to protect against pestilence. It is known that large
quantities of DDT, malathion, fenitrorthion, propuxur,
deltamethrin and permethrin were used. They are all toxic
nerve agents, and many are suspected carcinogens and
mutagens.
* Destruction by allies of Iraqi chemical, nerve and biological
warfare weapons resulting in widespread distribution of these
toxins in the environment. This problem has now been, at
least in part, documented by the U.S. Department of Defense.
They are focusing on this potential cause as if it were the
only candidate cause.
* The electromagnetic environment which permeated the
battlefield during the war. Veterans were exposed to a broad
spectrum of electromagnetic radiation created by electricity
generated to support the high-tech instruments, thousands of
radios and radar devices in use. This intense electromagnetic
field causes both thermal and non-thermal effects, and
potentially interacts with the other hazardous exposures and
stresses of the battlefield. Electromagnetic radiation can
alter the production of hormones (neurotransmitters),
interact with cell membranes, increase calcium ion flow,
stimulate protein kinase in lymphocytes, suppress the immune
system, affect melatonin production required to control the
"body clock," and cause changes in the blood-brain barrier.
The Hazards of Low Level Radiation
In the past few years the information available on the health
effects of exposure to low levels of radiation has increased. We
are no longer dependent on the commercial or military nuclear
researchers who since 1950 have claimed that studies of the
effects of low-level radiation are impossible to undertake. The
new information is unsettling because it proves the critics of the
industry to have been correct as to its serious potential to
damage living tissue.
There have also been significant new releases of findings from the
atomic bomb research in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the self-acclaimed
"classical research" of radiation health effects. I will list
these findings toward the end of this article, along with studies
from the nuclear industry.
In reviewing these research papers one is struck by the high-dose
response when the radiation is delivered slowly, with low total
dose. The conventional wisdom has claimed that at low
dose/slow-dose rate the body is well able to repair most of the
harm caused by the radiation. Some nuclear apologists go so far as
to claim such exposures are "beneficial."
Because the nuclear industry has always maintained that the
effects of low-dose radiation exposure are so small that it is
impossible to study them, they proposed extrapolating the effects
from those observed at high dose, using a straight line to zero
(zero dose, zero effect), together with "correction factors" for
low dose/slow-dose rate.
The effect of this "correction" is to reduce the fatal cancer
estimates calculated by D.L. Preston, then Director of the
Radiation Effects Research Foundation at Hiroshima, using the new
dosimetry, from seventeen fatalities per million people per rad
exposure, to five fatalities per million people per rad exposure.
The corresponding estimates based on actually observed rates for
nuclear workers is between ten and thirty fatalities per million
per rad. Obviously, for the adult healthy male, the dose-response
estimate should be about twenty for fatal cancers per million per
rad.
However, although we can make a strong case for increasing the
"official" estimates of harm by a factor of four, this fails to
deal with non-fatal cancers, depressed immune systems, localized
tissue damage (especially the respiratory, digestive and urinary
tracts), damage to skin, and reproductive problems. Radiation can
cause brain lesions, damage to the stem cells which produce the
blood and, when the radiactive material is carried in a heavy
metal (uranium) it can be stored in bone, irradiating body organs
and nerves within its radius.
A Book by Dr. E.B. Burlakova
Detailed studies of dose-response at the low dose/slow-dose rate
level:
Dr. E. B. Burlakova has provided me with a copy of the book, of
which she is editor: Consequences of the Chernobyl Catastrophe:
Human Health. In one Chapter of this book, Dr. Burlakova and
fourteen other scientists publish their findings on animal and
human studies of the health effects of low dose/slow- dose rate,
exposure to ionizing radiation. They examined carefully the
following biological phenomena under ionizing radiation exposure
situations:
* alkaline elution of DNA of lymphocytes and liver
* neutral elution and adsorption of spleen DNA on
nitrocellulose filters
* restriction of spleen DNA by EcoRI endonuclease
* structural characteristics (using the ESR spin probe
technique) of nuclear, mitochondrial, synaptical, erythrocyte
and leukocyte membranes
* activity and isoforms of aldolase and lactate hydrogenase
enzymes
* activity of acetycholine esterase, superoxide dismutase, and
glutathione peroxidase
* the rate of formation of superoxide anion radicals
* the composition and antioxidizing activity of lipids of the
above mentioned membranes
* the sensitivity of cells, membranes, DNA, and organisms to
the action of additional damaging factors.
"For all of the parameters a bimodal dose-effect dependence was
discovered, i.e. the effect increased at low doses, reached its
[low-dose] maximum, and then decreased (in some cases, the sign of
the effect changed to the opposite, or "benefit" effect) and
increased again as the dose was increased" (Burlakova, page 118).
Dr. Burlakova has speculated that at the lowest experimental doses
used in this research, the repair mechanism of the cells was not
triggered. It became activated at the point of the low- dose
maximum, providing a "benefit" until it was overwhelmed and the
damage began again to increase with dose. This may well be the
case.
However, the unexpected effects of low dose/slow-dose rate
exposure to ionizing radiation can also be attributed to
biological mechanisms, other than the direct DNA damage hypothesis
usually used by radiation physicists. These secondary mechanisms
are specific to the low-/slow-dose conditions. Three such
secondary mechanism have been observed by scientists: the Petkau
effect, monocyte depletion, and deformed red blood cells.
* The Petkau effect: discovered by Abram Petkau at the Atomic
Energy of Canada Ltd. Whiteshell Nuclear Research
Establishment, Manitoba, Canada in 1972 (Ref.1). Dr. Petkau
discovered that at 26 rads per minute (fast-dose rate) it
required a total dose of 3,500 rads to destroy a cell
membrane. However, at 0.001 rad per minute (slow dose rate),
it required only 0.7 rad to destroy the cell membrane. The
mechanism at the slow-dose rate is the production of free
radicals of oxygen (O2 with a negative electrical charge) by
the ionizing effect of the radiation.
The sparsely distributed free radicals generated at the
slow-dose rate have a better probability of reaching and
reacting with the cell wall than do the densely crowded free
radicals produced by fast-dose rates. These latter recombine
quickly. Moreover, the slight electrical charge of the cell
membrane attracts the free radicals in the early stages of
the reaction (low total dose). Computer calculations have
shown that the attraction weakens with greater concentrations
of free radicals. The traditional radiation biologist has
tested only high-dose reactions, and looked for direct damage
to the membrane by the radiation.
* Monocyte depletion: Nuclear fission produces radionuclides
which tend to be stored by humans and animals in the bone
tissue. In particular, strontium-90, plutonium and the
transuranics have this property. Stored in bone, near the
stem cells which produce the white blood cells, these
radionuclides deliver a chronic low/slow dose of radiation
which can interfere with normal blood- cell production. A few
less neutrophils or lymphocytes (the white blood cells which
are most numerous, and are usually "counted" by the
radiophysicist) are not noticeable. In the normal adult,
there are about 7,780 white cells per microlitre of blood. Of
these, about 4,300 are neutrophils and 2,710 are lymphocytes.
Only 500 are monocytes.
If, for example, stem cells in the bone marrow are destroyed
so as to reduce total white blood count by 400 cells per
microlitre due to the slow irradiation by radionuclides
stored in the bone, this would represent a depletion of only
five percent in total white cells, an insignificant amount.
If all of the depletion was of neutrophils, this would mean a
reduction of only 9.3 percent, still leaving the blood count
well in the normal range. The lymphocytes would also be still
in the normal range, even though they were depleted by 400
cells per microlitre, or 14.8 percent. However, there would
be a dramatic depletion of the monocytes by 80 percent.
Therefore, at low doses of radiation, it is more important to
observe the monocytes, than to wait for an effect on the
lymphocytes or neutrophils (as is now usually done). The
effects of serious reduction in monocytes are:
o Iron deficient anemia, since it is the monocytes which
recycle about 37-40 percent of the iron in the red blood
cells when they die;
o Depressed cellular immune system, since the monocyte
secretes the substance which activates the lymphocyte
immune system. [2]
* Deformed red-blood cells: Dr. Les Simpson, of New Zealand,
has identified deformed red-blood cells, as observed under an
electron microscope, as causing symptoms ranging from severe
fatigue to brain dysfunction leading to short-term memory
loss. He has identified such cells in elevated number in
chronic fatigue patients, and speculated that because of
their bloated or swollen shape, they are obstructed from
easily passing into the tiny capillaries, thus depriving
muscles and the brain of adequate oxygen and nutrients. The
chronic fatigue syndrome has been observed both at Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, called bura bura disease, and at Chernobyl. [3]
In the official approach to radiobiology, only direct damage to
DNA has been recognized as "of concern," and only high
dose/fast-dose rate experiments or observations have been accepted
for use in estimating the dose-response rate. As was noted, it is
the "common wisdom" that effects of low doses/slow- dose rates
cannot be studied, but must be extrapolated from the officially
accepted high dose/fast-dose rate studies. This approach is
rejected by the work of Dr. Burlakova, and the other research
noted below.
Basing one's theory on claims that is impossible to study the
phenomenon is certainly a peculiar way to do science! This myth
has now been clearly shown to have been rash and criminally
negligent.
Unfortunately, the Desert Storm veterans were victims of one of
the latest military experiments on human beings. The people of
Iraq and Kuwait were also the victims of this misguided
experiment. I believe that the ignorance was culpable and
criminal.
Recent Reports on Low-Level Radiation
I would like to bring your attention to the following significant
new reports on the effects of low-level radiation:
* Health Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident, Results of the
IPHECA Pilot Projects and Related National Programs,
Scientific Report, World Health Organization, Geneva 1996.
* Consequences of the Chernobyl Catastrophe: Human Health, E.B.
Burlakova, ed. Co-published by the Center for Russian
Environmental Policy and the Scientific Council on
Radiobiology Russian Academy of Science, ISBN 5-88587-019-5,
Moscow 1996.
* Volume 137, Supplement, Radiation Research 1994, which
published for the first time the dose-response data on cancer
incidence rate observed in the atomic bomb survivors of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Prior to this publication, only
cancer death data was reported.
* Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation V (BEIR V), U.S.
National Academy of Sciences, Washington 1990. This provides
new radiation risk estimates based on the newly assigned
doses of radiation in this atomic bomb survivor study.
Also available now are the long term follow-up of workers in the
nuclear industry. This industry has now been operating more than
fifty years in the United States and about fifty years in the
United Kingdom. These include:
* "Inconsistencies and Open Questions Regarding Low-Dose Health
Effects of Ionizing Radiation", by R. Nussbaum and W.
Kohnlein. Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 102, No. 8,
August 1994.
* RERF Technical Report TR9-87, by D.L. Preston and D.A.
Pierce, Hiroshima 1987.
* "The Effects of Changes in Dosimetry on Cancer Mortality Risk
Estimates in Atomic Bomb Survivors" Radiation Research, Vol.
114, 1988.
* "Mortality and Occupational Exposure to Irradiation: First
Analysis of the National Registry for Radiation Workers" by
G.M. Kendall. British Medical Journal, Vol. 304, 1992.
* "Mortality Among Workers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory" by
S. Wing. Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol.
265, 1991.
* "Reanalysis of the Hanford Data, 1944-1986 Deaths" by G.W.
Kneale and A. Stewart. American Journal of Industrial
Medicine, Volume 23, 1993.
References:
1. The Petkau Effect, Revised Edition, 1990, by Ralph Graeub,
Translated from German by Phil Hill, and Published by Four
Walls Eight Windows, New York, 1994. ISBN: 1-56858-019-3.
2. Bertell, R. "Internal Bone Seeking Radionuclides and Monocyte
Counts", International Perspectives in Public Health, Vol. 9,
pp 21-26, 1993
3. Les Simpson has published several papers in the New Zealand
Medical Journal, and wrote a Chapter in the Medical Textbook
on Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (MI), edited by Dr. Byron Hyde.
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