September 99

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

The Continuing War in Yugoslavia: Environmental Effects

Recently the national press has been reporting on the initial findings of the UN team, which is investigating the environmental destruction, wrecked by 79 days of bombing. The stories under reassuring headlines-such as from the New York Times, "Team Finds NATO Bombing Left Few Environmental Woes"-paint a much grimmer picture. The Times outlines many of the serious problems described in the following summary. We are afraid the spin is an effort to absolve NATO of responsibility for dealing with the many toxic soups created by the bombing. We urge people to contact their congress people and tell NATO to clean up its mess.

In the bombing of Yugoslavia, US Joint Chiefs of Staff have confirmed using depleted uranium for shell casings fired against Serbian forces by A-10 Warthog jets, and as a nose cone in Tomahawk missiles. One source notes that the UN Environmental Program expert's report from a visit to Yugoslavia the second half of May, 1999, includes reports of DU, "all of it very bad."

Depleted uranium, or DU, a radioactive heavy metal, is the waste left over when the isotope uranium-235 is extracted from naturally-occurring uranium to fuel nuclear power stations and build nuclear bombs. DU is roughly 60% as radioactive as naturally occurring uranium, and has a half life of 4.5 billion years. As a by-product of the nuclear industry, DU is cheap and plentiful. DU shells can pierce several inches of armor-plated steel on tanks due to the material's extremely high density.

The effects of DU on health is the topic of an on-going debate. First is a quote from the Rand Corporation: "The toxicological effects of natural uranium are identical to those of DU; while the radiological effects of DU are always less pronounced because DU is less radioactive than natural uranium. In general, heavy-metal toxicity is regarded as posing a more serious health risk than its radiation. When a DU penetrator strikes armor or burns, it produces uranium dusts or aerosol particles, which can be inhaled. Once internalized, a fraction of the particles dissolve and enter the bloodstream, where most uranium is excreted from the body through the kidneys. The body is very effective at eliminating ingested and inhaled natural uranium and....the low radioactivity per unit mass of natural and depleted uranium means that the mass of uranium needed for significant internal exposure is virtually impossible to obtain."

Second is a different view from the Chief of Nuclear Medicine at a facility for veterans: "Depleted Uranium enters the body via inhalation, ingestion, and absorption through open wounds or imbedded shrapnel. Uranium is water soluble and can be transported throughout the body. The alpha particle release by decay of the uranium atom gives up its large amount of energy in a distance no larger than a couple of microns. Causing breaks and ionization of molecules, it is capable of destroying proteins, enzymes, RNA, and damaging DNA in many different ways, including double strand breaks. This kind of damage in the reproductive organs can lead to genetic hazards which can be passed on from generation to generation. Soluble uranium compounds cause mainly chemical damage to the proximal convoluted tubules of the kidney. DU is incorporated into bone [marrow] where it can have hematopoietic effects [effects on the blood] as well as causing leukemia. In the lungs, DU damages the alveoli. Since DU can cross the placenta, it can create massive problems for the radiosensitive tissues of the fetus. Damage to the fetus may lead to somatic malformation including shortened limbs, damage to the central nervous system, cardiovascular, and muscular problems. Other effects associated with DU poisoning are: emotional and mental deterioration, fatigue, loss of bowel and bladder control, as well as numerous forms of cancer. Depleted Uranium also has physiological effects associated with its heavy metal properties. Although most of the ingested DU will be excreted through urine or feces shortly after exposure, a significant quantity of DU will remain in the body. Because of the chemical and radiological toxicity of DU, the small number of particles trapped in the lungs, kidneys, and bone greatly increase the risk of cancer and all other illnesses over time. These small amounts of DU left in the body are a constant source of low-level radiation that damages cell structure. DU will continue to plague the health of the people .who remain in the region for many decades."

On the first day of the NATO air strike, the municipality of Grocka was hit, but luckily the nuclear reactor there, containing a great stockpile of nuclear waste, was spared. The Director of Greenpeace in Greece has stated, "If there is one effect of the war that concerns all of Europe, it is the accidental bombing of Kozloduy," a nuclear plant 65 miles inside the Bulgarian border. At least five NATO missiles and one from Serbia have landed inside Bulgarian territory since the bombing campaign began, one falling 40 miles inside the Bulgarian border.

Scientists at a research institute in Yugoslavia say that ecological damage includes destruction of important vegetation types by fires in Serbia's unique canyons and gorges, disturbance of migration corridors of migratory birds through the Balkans at the height of the migration, crippling the reproductive cycles of amphibians through water pollution due to bombing of industrial complexes along waterways, destruction of reserves of biodiversity at Skadar Lake National Park, and in three other national parks. A heavy bomb creates temperatures of around 3000 degrees Celsius, destroys all flora and fauna and turns the lower layers of soil into a useless area that can take thousands of years to regenerate.

A list of NATO industrial air strike targets before June 5, 1999 includes 10 agricultural complexes and a fertilizer plant; 24 fuel, oil, chemical, or petrochemical industry or storage sites; 4 power stations and a coal mine; water supply lines; rail facilities; a port; 3 metal works; 2 pharmaceutical companies; a food storage facility and meat industry; and 51 factories producing machines, batteries, shock absorbers, fittings, construction materials, plastics, refrigerators, furniture and other household appliances, tobacco products, textiles, shoes, and printed material; and 3 merchandise depots or office complexes.

The following recent accounts give a sense of living in the aftermath of the bombing. "At precisely 1 a.m. April 18, NATO bombs and missiles rained in force on this Serbian city [of Pancevo.] Within seconds, they demolished a refinery, a fertilizer plant, and an American-built petrochemical complex that released a toxic cloud so dense and potentially lethal that its effects can be felt here even today-and will be, perhaps, for decades. The sun never shone here on the morning after, according to detailed municipal health department logs and video footage. A thick, grayish-white fog containing concentrations of carcinogenic vinyl chloride monomer that were 10,600 times above human-safety limits had settled over the city at dawn. Nearly three months after NATO's devastating attack on Pancevo-and almost a month after it dropped the last bomb of its air war on Yugoslavia-here's a glimpse of the enduring environmental and human nightmare the alliance left behind. Physicians in this city 10 miles northeast of the Yugoslav and Serbian capital, Belgrade, have privately recommended that all women who were in town that night avoid pregnancy for at least the next two years. Women who were less than nine weeks pregnant in mid-April were advised to obtain abortions, and doctors say most have complied. The ground in and around Pancevo is saturated with ammonia, mercury, naphtha, acids, dioxins, and other toxins that leaked and burned out of the factories that night....

"Farm workers, plunging their fingers into the earth, say they come away with rashes that burn and blister. Those who eat the river fish and vegetables or drink the tap water, which trickles out of faucets because of the damage to the purification plant, come down with diarrhea, vomiting, and stomach cramps. There are twice as many miscarriages as there were during the comparable period last year, doctors here [in Pancevo] say. The air strikes unleashed tons of chemicals into the air and water. An estimated 1500 tons of vinyl chloride, the building block of a type of plastic, 3000 times higher than permitted levels, burned into the air or poured into the soil and river, said municipal officials in Pancevo, which is controlled by opposition parties hostile to President Slobodan Miloseic. Huge quantities of other noxious chemicals burned or gushed out of storage tanks, said town officials and Yugoslav scientists. Those chemicals included an estimated 15,000 tons of ammonia, used to make fertilizer; 800 tons of hydrochloric acid, and 250 tons of liquid chlorine used for several industrial products, vast quantities of dioxin, a component of Agent Orange and other defoliants (more accurately, a byproduct of these chemicals), and 100 tons of mercury, the officials said. By dawn after the night of the attack, dozens of people were hospitalized gasping for air, struggling to see, and unable to digest food, witnesses said."

Villages in Kosovo and town centers across Yugoslavia have suffered great damage from the fighting. More than 1400 civilians have reportedly been killed in Yugoslavia by the air strikes. There are no complete figures for those killed in Kosovo or military casualties to date, but these numbers are expected to be higher by an order of magnitude. The combination of shortages of basic supplies of water, food, and power throughout Yugoslavia with the destruction of transport and heating infrastructure and toxic pollution could lead to serious health problems, especially in the coming winter

Mikhail Gorbachev, the former President of the Soviet Union and winner of the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize, said on April 28, 1999: "The massive destruction of oil refineries, petrochemical plants, chemical and fertilizer factories, pharmaceutical plants and other environmentally hazardous enterprises puts both the population and natural environment in the Balkans under clear threat....One of the most dangerous consequences is the pollution of underground waters."

Philip Weller, of the World Wide Fund for Nature, said on May 10, 1999: "The humanitarian issues are first and foremost in our minds. However, only immediate measures to stop the downstream flow of pollution will prevent an ecological catastrophe from following the humanitarian one." WWF went on to note that the pollution caused by the bombing puts the Danube and Black Sea at risk, and poses threats to drinking water, fish and other water life.

On April 21, a spokesperson for Britain's Ministry of Defence told George Monbiot of the Guardian that the bombers were "keeping the risks of pollution to a minimum."

George Monbiot of the Guardian (UK), said on April 22, 1999: "This, in environmental terms at least, is perhaps the dirtiest war the West has even fought. NATO's scorched earth policy, which seeks to destroy Milosevics's armed capacity by destroying everything else, places the Alliance firmly on the wrong side of the Geneva Convention. For a war which targets chemical factories and oil installations, which deploys radioactive weapons in towns and cities, is a war against everyone: civilians as well as combatants, the unborn as well as the living. As such, it can never be a just one."

Vuk Bojovic, Director of the Belgrade Zoo, wrote on May 30, 1999: "The noise starts around half a hour before the bombs fall as the animals in the Belgrade Zoo pick up the sound of approaching planes and missiles. It's one of the strangest and most disturbing concerts you can hear anywhere....The Zoo has been hard hit by NATO's air strikes, particularly when the alliance attacked Belgrade's power system, and indirectly the water supply. I had 1000 eggs of rare and endangered species incubating, some of them ready to hatch in a couple of days. They were all ruined....Many birds abandoned their nests, leaving eggs to grow cold....Even a snake aborted some 40 fetuses, apparently reacting to the heavy vibration shaking the ground as missiles hit targets nearby....The worst night the Zoo can remember was when NATO hit an army headquarters only 600 meters away, with a huge detonation. The next day we found that some of the animals had killed their young. A female tiger killed two of her four three-day-old cubs, and the other two were so badly injured we couldn't save them. She had been a terrific mother until then, raising several litters without any problems." According to Reuters, armed guards patrolling the zoo are not there to keep people from harming or stealing the animals but to shoot the animals if the zoo gets bombed and some of them try and break out.

Dr. Momir Komatina, author of 12 books and over 260 articles on subterranean waters, said, "The pollution of water resources in the wide area of NATO bombing is not damaging just for our country but for the Balkans and a part of South Europe as well, especially for the countries in the Black Sea area."

A NATO spokeswoman said that the environmental damage caused by the attack had been taken into consideration. "When targeting is done we take into account all possible collateral damage be it environmental, human or to the civilian infrastructure. Pancevo was considered to be a very, very, important refinery and strategic target."

Professor Mico Martinovic, a hydrologist, said the array of toxic chemicals released in the Pancevo region "is unique in world history."

"What was done against Pancevo was a crime against humanity," said Mikovic, Mayor of Pancevo. "I never thought NATO or the Americans would bomb the petrochemical plant. I thought they were more civilized." According to the log he maintained, NATO bombed the chemical complex at Pancevo on 23 days, hitting it with at least 56 missiles or bombs.

Dispatch from the BBC, 8/13/99: Aid workers and journalists working in Kosovo have been warned about coming into contact with depleted uranium, but refugees returning to the former war zone have been given no advice.