-
- Ray Bristow used to run marathons for
charity. His last was the 1990 London marathon.
-
- Then he went off to the Gulf, as a medical
theatre technician. When he came home to Hull, things were different, he
told Costing the Earth.
-
- DU was used during the Gulf War"I
gradually noticed that every time I went out for a run my distance got
shorter and shorter, my recovery time longer and longer.
-
- "Now, on my good days, I get around
quite adequately with a walking stick, so long as it's short distances.
Any further, and I need to be pushed in a wheelchair."
-
- Ray Bristow says he is open-minded about
the cause of his illness. But he was tested - in Canada - for depleted
uranium (DU), used in tank-busting rounds by US and British forces in the
Gulf.
-
- "I remained in Saudi Arabia throughout
the war. I never once went into Iraq or Kuwait, where these munitions were
used.
-
- "But the tests showed, in layman's
terms, that I have been exposed to over 100 times an individual's safe
annual exposure to depleted uranium."
-
- DU poisoning fears
-
- Doug Henderson: Doubts over poisoningThe
Armed Forces Minister, Doug Henderson, says only a small number of British
Gulf veterans believe DU has made them ill.
-
- His door is open to scientists and doctors,
he says. But he says he has no evidence that the dust left after a DU
round has exploded can travel very far from the vehicle it has hit.
-
- And he believes you would have to absorb
unfeasibly large amounts of the dust to suffer any harm.
-
- Yet a Canadian epidemiologist, Dr Rosalie
Bertell, told the programme that DU had been detected 42km from its source
in a factory accident in New York state.
-
- Doug Henderson believes there is no case
for a systematic programme to test UK service personnel for DU poisoning.
-
- Gulf veterans hit
-
- But an adviser to the Gulf Veterans'
Association, Professor Malcolm Hooper of Sunderland University, says nobody
has looked coherently at what British veterans are reporting.
-
- "We've got people saying: 'I've
got kidney problems, problems with urination'. We don't know the cause.
Some have got enlarged livers.
-
- US Gulf War veterans have reported DU-related
illnesses"But a big study of US veterans has found very severe damage
to the nervous system. The level of cancers is about 2.4 times higher.
-
- "And there've been massive birth
defects in some cases. In one unit, 67% of children born to US Gulf veterans
had severe illnesses or birth defects."
-
- The Pentagon says studies of the group
with the highest DU exposure show their levels are "still well below
occupational exposure limits".
-
- But it acknowledges that, of all the
US troops sent to the Gulf, it has tested just 36 for DU contamination.
-
- Ray Bristow says he is now "on death
row". The study which established his DU level found contamination
in about 40 people, British and US veterans, and a few Iraqis.
-
- It was conducted by Dr Hari Sharma, of
the University of Waterloo, Ontario. "Inhalation of DU occurs in 1991,
and we are looking at it after eight years", he says.
-
- "To find something after a lapse
of eight years was indeed a surprise."
-
- Dr Sharma says cancer in southern Iraq
is two or three times commoner than in 1991. Around Basra some cancers
are seven times as common.
-
- He says the World Health Organisation
regards the figures as "substantially correct".
-
- The Pentagon confirmed in early May that
US aircraft were firing depleted uranium rounds over Kosovo. __________
-
- Costing the Earth is broadcast on BBC
Radio Four at 2100 BST on 7 June.
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