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Pentagon: Peacekeepers Face No Health Risk from Depleted Uranium Weaponry
The US Defense Department Thursday claimed that there is no health hazard to US or allied peacekeepers in the Balkans from remnants of US weapons containing depleted uranium.
"We have not found any link between illnesses and exposure to depleted uranium," said Defense Department spokesman Kenneth Bacon.
"We're pretty confident of what we've said, which is we have found no direct link," Bacon asserted.
The Pentagon has been investigating the issue since the 1991 Gulf War, when such weapons were used in combat for the first time.
In several European countries, questions are being raised about whether depleted uranium exposure may pose a cancer risk.
On Thursday, a spokesman for the European Union said the 15-nation group would conduct an inquiry.
Some people in Europe have raised the possibility that exposure to depleted uranium could cause cancers such as leukemia.
Uranium is best known in its enriched form, which is used for nuclear power plant fuel and in nuclear weapons. A byproduct of the enrichment process is depleted uranium which, as its name implies, is depleted of much of its radioactivity. Because depleted uranium is extremely dense, it is an unusually effective penetrator of conventional tank armor.
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