When the top brass from the Pentagon's Gulf War Illnesses Office took their seats to testify before President Clinton's oversight board in Washington last November, Paul Sullivan expected no surprises.

But Sullivan, who heads a group that fights for medical care for sick veterans, was astonished at what he saw.

Nearly eight years after the war, the Pentagon unveiled a map of the Gulf War battlefield, giving veterans what they consider the strongest evidence yet that hundreds of thousands of soldiers have been exposed to radioactive and toxic debris.

It showed the sites where Army tanks and Air Force jets fired more than 300 tons of "depleted uranium" ammunition at Iraqi troops during the four-day ground war in 1991.

The map has reignited a debate between veterans and the Pentagon about how many American soldiers may have inhaled or ingested depleted uranium, or absorbed it into their bodies through wounds.

"The map shows that almost every combat unit goes through contaminated areas twice," said Sullivan, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center, a coalition of veterans groups based in Washington. He said that soldiers traveled on contaminated roads and may have camped on contaminated land for up to two months.

"It doesn't mean soldiers are going to fall ill, but it means they should be aware this took place," Sullivan said. "They should be concerned about medical findings that will come out as a result of new research."

Veterans and the Pentagon are far apart in their estimates of exposure to depleted uranium, a radioactive metal prized by the military for what it calls the ability to blast through armor "like a hot knife through butter."

Under pressure from veterans groups campaigning for medical care, the Pentagon several times has increased its estimate.

In 1993, the Army said 35 soldiers — all victims of "friendly fire" — came in contact.

In 1995, the Army boosted the number to 50.

In 1997, the Army said 112 soldiers had been exposed: friendly fire survivors, soldiers who prepared contaminated U.S. tanks for shipment home, and soldiers injured at an explosion at Camp Doha in Kuwait.

In 1998, the Pentagon said "thousands" may have been exposed, including soldiers who had climbed on destroyed Iraqi tanks after the war on battlefield tours. And the Pentagon boosted its estimate of friendly fire survivors to 113, up from 50.

400,000 exposed
Last March, the National Gulf War Resource Center said 400,000 soldiers may have come in contact with the hazardous dust and debris, based on extrapolations of troop surveys conducted after the war.

Using the map, the group now estimates that more than 200,000 soldiers may have been exposed.

"It is our understanding that a majority of the 338,000 Army soldiers and 98,000 Marines sent to the gulf went into Iraq and Kuwait," Sullivan said. "For us to conclude that only half of those 436,000 people were exposed to depleted uranium is a conservative estimate."

The map represents the first time the Pentagon has released information on where the ammunition was used, but Sullivan contends the picture is incomplete, and therefore may underestimate the number exposed.

The map doesn't show the 3rd Armored, 82nd Airborne and 101st Airborne divisions, and doesn't list support troops that entered combat zones, he said.

It also fails to show:
The site of the 1991 explosion at the Army ammunition depot at Camp Doha, Kuwait, in which stores of ammunition and tanks loaded with depleted uranium rounds were destroyed.

Where depleted uranium was fired by British troops, the only other soldiers in the gulf to use the ammunition.

Test-firing ranges in Saudi Arabia, where troops fired the ammunition before the war.

Lt. Col. Dian Lawhon, a spokeswoman in the Pentagon's Gulf War Illnesses Office, acknowledged the map is incomplete.

"It's not at all representative of the entire picture by any stretch of the imagination. We recognize that's a problem with this map," she said.

She said the Pentagon does not plan to release a comprehensive version of the map, which was created for the two-day public hearing of President Clinton's oversight board.

Lawhon said thousands of soldiers may have been exposed to depleted uranium in the Gulf War, but few received doses that could be considered harmful.

Claims of minimal risk
Most contaminated dust from a depleted uranium explosion remains inside its target, and the rest lands nearby, she said, concluding that except for soldiers whose tanks were hit by "friendly fire," exposure risk is minimal. she said.

Lawhon said uranium is part of the natural environment.

"The human body is accustomed to having uranium in it," she said. "We process uranium through our body all the time."

But in a 1995 report to Congress, the Army Environmental Policy Institute said depleted uranium has the potential to generate "significant medical consequences" if it enters the body.

Radiation expert Rosalie Bertell said most trace metals perform a function in the human body, but not uranium.

"We use iron. We use zinc. But uranium is purely a contaminant," said Bertell, president of the International Institute of Concern for Public Health, a nonprofit research center in Canada. "The Pentagon uses the word 'natural' as if everything natural is harmless. Arsenic is natural and it's not harmless."

Bertell also challenged the Pentagon's contention that residue from explosions stays nearby.

Fine mist of radioactivity
She said the metal "aerosolizes" when it explodes, creating a fine mist of radioactive particles that can be picked up by the wind and travel for miles. Soldiers and tanks kicking up dust as they move through an area can resuspend particles that had fallen to the ground, she said.

In its report, the Army said as much as 70 percent of a depleted uranium penetrator — the ammunition's solid metal core — can be aerosolized when it strikes a tank.

Bertell said the particles are easily inhaled and ingested.

Since the Pentagon failed to conduct medical screenings of soldiers exposed after the war, as required by Army regulations, no one knows the doses they received.

The Pentagon map showed the sites where Americans fired the ammunition at Iraqi tanks, armored personnel carriers and bunkers.

It illustrates where 150 Air Force attack jets shot depleted uranium ammunition at Iraqi armor and artillery positions, the paths U.S. troops took as they plowed through the potentially contaminated parts of the desert in pursuit of enemy targets, and where the Pentagon said 1,955 Abrams tanks fired "significant quantities" of the ammunition.

"The first thing that went through my mind was: This shows widespread contamination," said Sullivan, who served as a cavalry scout in the 1991 war. "The second was: How long have they had this map and not told us about it?"

First use of depleted uranium
Americans used depleted uranium ammunition in combat for the first time during the Gulf War, but U.S. soldiers were not warned that inhaling, ingesting or absorbing it could cause cancer, or respiratory, kidney and skin disorders.

"The Pentagon has had this information since 1991," Sullivan said. "It could have been used much earlier by veterans who are sick and the doctors who are looking into their illnesses."

Asked to comment on the debate, former U.S. Sen. Warren Rudman, who is from New Hampshire and chairs the presidential oversight board, said the dispute will take more study to resolve.

"I have no idea if the number was three or 300,000," Rudman said. "We haven't gotten to the point where we've made that determination."

Clinton created the seven-member board in 1997 to scrutinize the Pentagon's investigation into the causes of Gulf War illnesses after hearing a chorus of congressional critics of the military's efforts.

The oversight board also is looking into chemical and biological hazards. Since the war ended, more than 90,000 veterans — one out of seven who served — have reported an array of puzzling symptoms and debilitating ailments to doctors at Pentagon and VA clinics.

Pentagon claims challenged
At the November hearing, oversight board member and retired Rear Adm. Alan Steinman challenged the conclusion of a 1998 Pentagon report that said depleted uranium exposures were not the cause of undiagnosed Gulf War illnesses.

"While this may yet prove to be true, I think that conclusion was premature, and worse than that I think making that type of strong statement damaged your credibility," he told Bernard Rostker, head of the Pentagon's Gulf War Illnesses Office.

To the surprise of veterans who had bitterly criticized the Pentagon's report, Rostker agreed.

"In retrospect, it probably was ill-advised to have made such a strong statement and we stand corrected," Rostker said.

The Pentagon has downplayed the health risks of combat exposure to depleted uranium, contradicting the findings of reports prepared before the war.

A study by an Army contractor in 1990 said soldiers entering the battlefield after the ammunition had been fired probably would face the greatest health hazards.

"It is not our intention to overstate this issue given other combat risks, nor to imply that the health of soldiers will definitely be compromised," the report said.

"We are simply highlighting the potential for levels of exposure to military personnel during combat that would be unacceptable during peacetime conditions."

In its 1995 report, the Army said scientists disagreed about whether the metal's chemical toxicity or its radioactivity posed the greater health hazard.

Like lead, depleted uranium is a heavy metal.

Cheap and plentiful
As a waste product of enriching uranium for use in nuclear power plants and weapons, the metal is cheap and plentiful.

Its half-life is 4.5 billion years, meaning that half of the radioactive substance disintegrates in that period.

In recent years, doctors in Iraq have expressed concern that depleted uranium contamination in southern Iraq may be contributing to an alarming increase in cancer cases, especially among children, and congenital birth defects.

The Pentagon said the map was designed to show that dust and debris created by depleted uranium explosions posed "little exposure hazard" to civilians in Iraq and Kuwait, since most ammunition was fired in sparsely populated areas.

The map also shows 22 sites where the Army tested Kuwaiti soil and concluded that "there is no measurable depleted uranium contamination of concern yet found in Kuwait."

See the Map at http://www.globaldialog.com/~kornkven/DUMap.html

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