Firstly, the people whom we measured in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Serbia were members of the public. We collected urine samples, and we had urine samples from everybody, from babies all the way up to senior citizens.
The amount of total uranium excreted by the people in the area was not too dissimilar from the levels found excreted by people in Ontario, Canada.
The next thing we found was that a small fraction, somewhere between 10% and 20%, of the uranium they excreted was from depleted uranium. Now, that wasn't present in the water supply, but the water supply was discontinuous at that time. At the time, I think in Bosnia there were about three tonnes of depleted uranium used as munitions fired by Warthog aircraft, and in Kosovo about 10 tonnes were used. When this happens a small amount of the uranium is vaporized and that would have gone into the atmosphere.
So the question is not whether people were exposed to DU but how much exposure they had to it and whether or not it was significant.
Our conclusions were that the amounts were insignificant. But we saw that signature and we wondered where they were getting it from, and it was probably because they were drinking from the rainwater running off their roofs. Also, they probably preserved a lot of vegetables and things like that, which were possibly subject to having materials deposited on them. They stored these vegetables over the winter and they would still have been eating them the next year, which would have tiny trace amounts of DU on them.
When uranium enters the body, about 80% to 90% of what gets into the blood is very rapidly excreted. So what we were measuring was that fraction of the uranium that was rapidly excreted following its entry into the blood.
We went back two years later and measured some of the same individuals. We actually found the same individuals in Kosovo we had measured two years previously. They provided us with some more samples then and when we measured them we could find no trace of depleted uranium. So we think this was a transitory, low-level exposure subsequent to the conflict.
It's interesting that of the British veterans who came back from the Gulf War, there was no real indication of any significant intake of depleted uranium by them. I think there were hundreds of people measured, again using this isotopic method. It rather bears out our suggestion that it was coming from food and rainwater and things like that because, quite clearly, that wasn't the source of food and water for the British army. Even though they're quite badly off sometimes, I don't think they resorted to using rainwater and locally stored foods for feeding the army.
So I think that's a reasonable suggestion.