Veterans Affairs Committee on Feb. 14th, 2013

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Yes.

[Dr. Pierre Morisset]

Well, we wouldn't have written it if we didn't believe it. But I'm not sure what your question is. Is it how strongly we feel about that conclusion?

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

It's whether there could be a negative health risk related to exposure to depleted uranium.

[Dr. Pierre Morisset]

Theoretically there could be because, as I said earlier, it does have the same toxicological risk as uranium, but it would have to be very, very high. I said that the only definitive proof we had about a very dramatic effect on the kidneys was from these accidents and these suicide attempts with uranium. So, sure it's possible. It's been demonstrated. The radiological risk is theoretical. It is plausible, but it has not been demonstrated.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

No, but what I was getting at, and you mentioned it earlier in your remarks, is that from what you know about the exposure of Canadian troops, let's say in Bosnia, that should not have affected their—

[Dr. Pierre Morisset]

Exactly. The exposure that they may have had would be too low to produce any of these effects.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Okay.

Mr. Chair, do I have any time left?

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Peter Stoffer]

Yes.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Then I would like to ask a question related to the device that—

[Dr. Pierre Morisset]

You want to get in on it, do you?

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

—my other colleague will be working on.

There is, of course, a device to measure the radiation. With a Geiger counter we can detect radiation. But if you were to try to measure their level of exposure, from a medical point of view, what would you be looking at? Would you test blood, urine, saliva, hair? What would you test?

[Dr. Pierre Morisset]

The most precise test would be somehow to have a sample of air deep in the lungs. That would be the most precise, because you can inhale some but it does not all go into the lungs. Some of it is brought up in the sputum and it goes into the gut and has no effect. But the actual dose, to be very precise, would be, and so on, the little probe that goes right down deep into the alveoli. That's the way you measure that.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Agreed, but what if you eat contaminated food?

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Peter Stoffer]

Mr. Lizon, you certainly wouldn't want to cut into the time of your colleague.

[Dr. Pierre Morisset]

I think he might get nervous about eating the food, so to allay your anxieties about being intoxicated by uranium in the food, it's present. You can detect it in the blood, but it's not at very high levels, so it does not affect the health.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Peter Stoffer]

Thank you, Mr. Lizon.

Mr. Zimmer, please.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you again for coming, especially all the veterans in the room, and thank you as well. Thank you for your service to our country; it's much appreciated.

It was mentioned earlier by my colleague across the way that we do care about our veterans' health. Regardless of what the cause is, we still care that they're unhealthy. The purpose of this study is to affirm that this may not be the reason for their lack of good health, but nevertheless, we still care about their health.

I want to ask you whether your research was in line with that of other studies worldwide or the U.S. studies. Was it consistent with those? I know in your summary, conclusions 4 and 5 are related to this. Sometimes we ask you to repeat the obvious, but it's not obvious to the people who are going to read this later on in our report. So we would like you just to state whether it was consistent with other studies on DU.

[Dr. Pierre Morisset]

The comments about the consistency with other studies in the conclusion were about the larger studies. When we talk about the larger studies, these were done by the Institute of Medicine, the National Research Council in the United States, and the Royal Society in Britain. Those were the three biggies, if you wish, the most authoritative, the most comprehensive.

We read them, obviously. We read some other articles, and some of the articles we read were the very same as those they had read. But those studies were done in 2001, 2004, and 2008. We looked at them, and we also looked at subsequent studies, and our conclusions concorded with those conclusions.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

They did.

[Dr. Pierre Morisset]

Yes. But that is not to say every study. We're talking about maybe 1,000 peer-reviewed studies on uranium. There are very few on depleted uranium because it's been fairly recent...well, very few. There are some, but mostly they're American studies.

The models I was talking about, the live-fire models, those were very good studies. We looked at them.

There was another study we looked at, a very recent one, from France. It did essentially the same. They went tour de région, and therefore looked at all of these studies on their workers and came to the same conclusion.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Okay.

This is for the people who are not going to read the entire report but just hear what we have to say today. Your report, the way I've broken it down, talks about two things really. It talks about exposure to DU, and it talks about the effects of exposure. For the conclusion, and to restate what you've already said many times, although there has been exposure, you think, in your estimation, and that's what's laid out in your report, that the exposure has not caused adverse health effects to our veterans. Is that correct?

[Dr. Pierre Morisset]

A slight correction: there may have been exposure.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

May have been exposure.

[Dr. Pierre Morisset]

It does not say there has been. In fact, from the scenarios I've outlined, it's unlikely that they've had significant exposure, if any, and I repeat, if any.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

If there even was a remote chance of exposure, the chance that the exposure would cause adverse health effects is—