DU press conference

[Cathy Hinds <mtp@igc.org>]

EMBARGOED until January 16, 1996

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 16, 1996

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Dolly Lymburner, Military Toxics Project: (207) 743-2541; Dan
Fahey, Swords to Plowshares: (415) 247-8767 x 318; Charles Sheehan
Miles, National Gulf War Resource Center: (202) 547-8541; Nikki
Bas, Military Toxics Project: (415) 974-6774

CITIZENS GROUP MAKES PUBLIC PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED INFORMATION ON
URANIUM WEAPONS

RADIOACTIVE WASTE USED BY U.S. MILITARY AS "CONVENTIONAL"
WEAPONRY CONTAMINATES PERSIAN GULF, THREATENS BOSNIA, IS LINKED TO
GULF WAR SYNDROME IN VETERANS

NATIONAL PRESS CONFERENCE: Tuesday, January 16, 1:30 pm, War
Memorial Building, Room 213, 401 Van Ness at McAllister, San
Francisco, CA.

Speakers include: Depleted Uranium Citizens' Network members
Grace Bukowski (also with the Rural Alliance for Military
Accountability) and Dan Fahey (also with Swords to Plowshares), as
well as Dr. Howard Urnovitz, PhD (an independent researcher on
Gulf War Syndrome) and Debbie Judd (a Desert Storm nurse).

On the fifth anniversary of the start of the Persian Gulf War, the
Military Toxics Project's Depleted Uranium Citizens' Network is
releasing a report on depleted uranium (DU*)---the deadly
ingredient of U. S. armor-piercing bullets and tank armor---that
the Army commissioned but refuses to release, along with the
network's own critique and rebuttal to the report, titled
Radioactive Battlefields of the 1990s: The U.S. Army's Use of
Depleted Uranium and Its Consequences for Human Health and the
Environment. The unreleased report by the Army Environmental
Policy Institute (AEPI) acknowledges that DU, which is considered
nuclear waste in all other circumstances, is now standard
equipment in the U.S. Army, and the report also admits there are
no technologies to mitigate its deadly radioactive and chemical
effects on the human body, or to clean up contaminated sites. Yet
it sanctions the Army's continuing use of this deadly material.

Depleted uranium weaponry is already widely suspected of being a
major factor in "Gulf War Syndrome," the cluster of illnesses and
birth defects affecting U.S. veterans of that conflict and their
children. More than 350 tons of DU particles and shrapnel were
left on the battlefields of the Gulf War, turning it into a
radioactive wasteland Kuwait is unprepared to clean up. DU
contamination in the region has been linked to the pandemic of
childhood diseases in Iraq. Meanwhile, DU weaponry---both the
armor-piercing bullets and the armored tanks---are part of the
U.S. arsenal in Bosnia, and DU weaponry has already been used at
least once in that conflict. As in the Gulf War, troops appear not
to have been warned they may be exposed to radioactive and
chemically toxic material. DU Network member Dan Fahey comments,
"This report confirms what many veterans already know: that the
army is willing to sacrifice their longterm health to meet
short-term battlefield goals."

Depleted uranium weaponry, largely through U.S. arms sales, is
spreading around the world. The AEPI report discloses that "the
United Kingdom, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Thailand,
Israel, France and others are developing or already have
DU-containing weapons systems." Says Grace Bukowski, an expert on
military toxics and a member of the DU Network, "Depleted uranium
proliferation threatens to change the nature of war worldwide. As
the Gulf War showed, there will no longer be clearcut
survivors---those who left the battlefield unscathed can spend the
rest of their lives waiting for cancers and other radiogenic
diseases to appear, or waiting for birth defects to show up in the
next generation."

More than 50 U.S. facilities are already part of DU weapons
production and testing, many of them are irremediably
contaminated. The AEPI report on DU makes it clear that DU could
have dire consequences for the domestic environment, for
civilians, for soldiers, and for any site in which DU is used in
war. The Military Toxics Project's Depleted Uranium Citizens'
Network's response to the report calls for a halt to depleted
uranium use and proliferation.

The Military Toxics Project is a national coalition of grassroots
community groups, veterans, active military, environmental justice
networks and labor---all working together toward preventative
solutions to Department of Defense pollution. The Depleted Uranium
Citizens' Network is made up of over 30 members representing
veterans, radiation survivors, and communities and workers near DU
production and testing sites.

--30--

* Naturally existing uranium refined from ore is made up largely
of U-238, a relatively stable isotope of the element, from which
the highly fissionable isotope U-235 is extracted for nuclear
weapons and power uses. After the U-235 is partially extracted,
the remainder of the material is misleadingly called depleted
uranium. It is still radioactive and chemically toxic.

Photographs of the Gulf War can be obtained from the World Wide
Web at http://www.gulfwar.org/photos/photos.html