Bosnia Deployments

Environmental Exposures:
Radiological Contamination - Depleted Uranium

Clinical Significance

Depleted uranium munitions were used by U.S. aircraft against Serbian tanks and other armored targets. Depleted uranium rounds hitting such targets may have created depleted uranium dusts and aerosols that could potentially be inhaled and ingested by people in or close to the struck target. Rounds missing their target and striking the soil instead, likely burried  themselves deep into the soil without creating dusts or aerosols. In areas where fighting took place, there may be depleted uranium fragments and particles in the soil and dust on pieces of battlefield equipment that were hit with depleted uranium munitions. The potential exposure to depleted uranium from U.S. munitions could also have occurred indirectly, as through an environmental route involving the passage of depleted uranium through the ground water, or transport by the wind from sites of depleted uranium-impacted targets (e.g., depleted uranium-damaged armored vehicles). However, the dissolution of buried depleted uranium rounds into the ground water is an extremely slow process resulting in measurable change that only occurs over decades.

Services members who would have been at the greatest risk of exposure would be those individuals handling depleted uranium fragments or residues at a target site without precautions taught in Depleted Uranium Awareness Training.   This training included the following points:

• As with all battlefield debris - do not touch or move the object. This protects you not only from depleted uranium, but also from unexploded ordnance.
• Notify authorities of the location of any debris.
• Exercise standard field hygiene, to include washing your hands and face.
• No additional protective measures are required for handling unfired depleted uranium munitions other than those required for all munitions.

Uranium is distributed naturally worldwide in soils and water. All of us take in and excrete minute amounts everyday simply by drinking water, eating vegetables, and inhaling dusts. The result is that over the course of our lifetimes, we all gradually accumulate minute amounts of natural uranium in our body tissues.

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