UN finds uranium toxins from NATO arms in Serbia

[Guest guest]

UN finds uranium toxins from NATO arms in Serbia

By Waddington

GENEVA, Mar 27 (Reuters) - United Nations scientists said on Wednesday that

they found widespread traces of depleted uranium from NATO munitions at five

sites in Serbia and Montenegro but the level of contamination posed no

immediate health threat.

Nevertheless, they warned authorities to take precautions, particularly

before allowing development projects, such as house building, on the sites

because of the risk of stirring up potentially toxic soil and dust.

" There is no health risk at the moment but we do not know if there could be

one if you make major soil removals, " team leader Pekka Haavisto told a news

conference.

The team, organised by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), went

to six areas in the two republics that once formed part of Yugoslavia and

found " widespread but low-level contamination " by depleted uranium (DU) in

five of the areas.

Depleted uranium was used to harden the tips of tank-busting shells fired by

NATO during its mid-1990s Bosnia action and again during the air war to

drive Serbian forces out of Kosovo.

" The study concludes that the DU sites studied do not present immediate

radioactive or toxic risks for the environment or human health, " UNEP said

in a statement, adding that the findings were in line with a similar report

last year on Kosovo.

The two reports were ordered after a number of soldiers who served in NATO

forces in Kosovo and Bosnia contracted leukaemia, stirring fears that

exposure to depleted uranium may have been the cause.

The link has been consistently denied by the World Health Organisation

(WHO), which says levels of depleted uranium in the munitions were not high

enough to cause cancer.

But lower degrees of exposure have been tied to other health problems,

including kidney disease.

Although it was not directly part of the study, UNEP noted in the report

that the WHO had also found no evidence to link depleted uranium to

chromosome changes reported by Montenegro in six people who carried out

de-contamination work at its site.

Haavisto said that there were 11 sites in Serbia where NATO was known or

believed to have fired DU-coated munitions and the team chose the five most

representative. There was only one such site in Montenegro.

A site is an area of some 100 square metres (yards) around the spot where

depleted uranium munitions struck a target.

Traces of depleted uranium were found in soil samples and in the air, but

there was no sign of any contamination of the water supplies, UNEP said.

The lack of any trace in the water could be due to the fact that uranium in

the soil had not yet permeated deep enough to reach the water table, and

there was a need for vigilance, Haavisto said at a news conference to

present the findings.

Haavisto said that drinking water should be tested once a year, adding that

the team had been surprised at finding depleted uranium in air samples more

than two years after the end of the Yugoslav conflict.

Although the concentration was very low--and the traces had probably been

kicked up in part by the excavation work of the team--the fact that they

were present at all pointed to the need for caution if building work were

undertaken.

" Based on these findings, the authorities should carefully plan how

DU-targeted sites are used in the future, " he said.

Copyright © 2002 Reuters Limited.