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Defence

About Defence

Depleted Uranium and Health

There is no reliable scientific or medical evidence to link DU with the ill health of either Gulf or Balkans veterans or people living in these regions. Many independent reports have been produced and researchers continue to consider the battlefield effects of using DU munitions. These reports include work by the Royal Society, the European Commission, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Health Organisation (WHO). None of these organisations has found a connection between DU exposure and illness, and none has found widespread DU contamination sufficient to impact the health of the general population or deployed personnel.

Serving Personnel

The MOD issues specific safety instructions to all personnel who may come into contact with DU in operational situations and the safety instructions issued during both Gulf conflicts are publicly available. Radiation dose meters are issued to those who spend time in tanks loaded with DU munitions.

MOD’s biological monitoring policy is that all military personnel and civilians on recent operations, such as Op Telic, and any future operations involving use of DU are offered a test for total uranium in the urine. A test for uranium isotopes, which determines whether the uranium is depleted, is offered if the initial test for the total uranium gives anomalous results. If personnel are known to have been exposed to DU or there is high probability that they have been so exposed, the isotope test is offered straight away. So far over 350 individuals have been tested, and of those only a small number have been found to be excreting DU in their urine. These are personnel who were involved in blue-on-blue incidents and have embedded shrapnel.

Veterans

The MOD accepts that some veterans of the 1990-1991 Gulf conflict have become ill and that many believe that this ill health is unusual and related to their Gulf experience. Over 3,400 veterans from the 1990/91 Gulf Conflict have now been seen by the Gulf Veterans’ Medical Assessment Programme (GVMAP). Physicians at the GVMAP assess all those attending for signs of ill-health that could be attributed to DU exposure, but no such evidence has been found to date.

On 26 September 2001, MOD set up the independent Depleted Uranium Oversight Board (DUOB), to develop a retrospective testing programme for DU in the urine of veterans of the 1990/91 Gulf Conflict and the Balkans operations. The testing programme was launched in September 2004 and the closing date for applications was 31 January 2006. A total of 464 individuals were tested in the main programme and none was found to be excreting depleted uranium. The final report of the DUOB to the Undersecretary of State for Defence was made publicly available in March 2007 and can be accessed from this page. The Board has now been disbanded.

Local Civilians

There is no reliable scientific or medical evidence to link DU with the ill health of people living in regions were DU has been used. Media reports of DU-induced cancers and birth defects in Iraq have not been substantiated with credible scientific evidence. Many other factors need to be considered as possible causes, for example, some scientists have blamed the former Iraqi Government's use of chemical weapons on its own citizens. Furthermore, there is no evidence that illnesses of the type reported are uniquely associated with or indeed consistent with exposure to DU. Of course, the Government would consider carefully any reliable medical or scientific data that may emerge concerning the incidence of ill health in Iraq.