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Issue 10 - Spring / Summer 2005Page 77 |
Louisiana Becomes First State to Give DU Testing to Returning Vets! |
PRESS RELEASE – June 21, 2005
Louisiana became the first state in the nation to pass a bill to give the right to all servicemen and women returning from Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom for testing for depleted uranium contamination. Depleted uranium (DU), an extremely hazardous material, is a by-product of nuclear waste. Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco signed the law on June 16th. The bill, Act 69, was introduced in the Louisiana State House of Representatives by Rep. Juan LaFonta and co-sponsored by Rep. Jalila Jefferson-Bullock. The bill received unanimous bipartisan support. Advocates testifying for the bill were Army veterans Bob Smith of New Orleans and Ward Reilly of Baton Rouge.
The effective date of the bill is August 15, 2005 just in time for the Louisiana Brigade, due to return home in October with approximately 4,500 National Guardsmen.
The test will be a best practices health-screening test for exposure to DU and will include a bioassay procedure involving sensitive methods capable of detecting DU at low levels and the use of equipment with the capacity to discriminate between different radioisotopes in naturally occurring levels of uranium and the characteristic ratio and marker for DU. DU was used extensively by the military as a hardener for ammunition and tanks in massive amounts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Depleted Uranium contamination can cause leukemia, various other cancers, DNA breakdown, and an unusually high occurrence of severe birth defects in offspring of soldiers who have come into contact with it. Current mandatory testing by the Veterans Administration and the Department of Defense has been shown to be ineffective due to the lack of adequate testing procedures. All soldiers should be tested but very few have been.
Several other states are expected to follow Louisiana’s lead in this important bill to support their troops after they return home to protect the health of servicemen and their offspring. The VA and the DoD have been conducting ineffective testing. The Louisiana Brigade, with approximately 4,500 National Guardsmen, is expected to return home from Iraq between October and December, 2005.
More information about DU can be found at:
- • http://www.barremore.net/depleted-uranium-kills.html
- • http://www.newdemocracyrising.com
- • http://www.saveourwetlands.org/depleteduranium.htm
For the complete text of the bill see:
• http://www.newdemocracyrising.com/doc/dubill.pdf
Bob Smith, Chair Depleted Uranium Awareness Committee Louisiana Activist Network P.O. Box 480 Franklinton, Louisiana 70438 ph. (504) 581-1086* * *
One soldier, Sgt. Andre Jenkins who has just returned from serving time in Iraq had this to say:
"When you go to Iraq, you first land in Kuwait, get debriefed and then move north up to Iraq were you will spend one or two of the most miserable years in your life. I was stationed at Toledo, Iraq. That was an Iraqi air force base before the war. We were given a 20-minute block of info on DU. We were told to stay away from tanks that were blown up as well as spent shell casings. If you remember the massacre that happened on the highway of death in 1991 – where the military destroyed hundreds of Iraqi tanks and personnel – well all those tanks and vehicles are stored south of that air force base and all those vehicles were destroyed using conventional weapons with DU-tipped shells. Those vehicles are toxic but yet they had American soldiers moving about that landfill of tanks.
I know the army uses a lot of DU. The classes they gave us on DU says that the stuff is safe but to stay away from objects that were blown up by it. Besides a single class on DU, it was never brought up. It was never a concern on our minds.
How much contamination is there? I know at least every soldier in one way or another has become exposed to DU at some point. It’s impossible not to. I guess the issue with DU had to be swept under the rug, because it was never brought up for discussion. We had a lot of soldiers get sick, including myself. Nobody knew why."
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