Thank you.
First, I'd like to say that it's a pleasure and an honour to be here before this committee. Second, I'd like to thank you for the work you're doing for Canadian veterans. I think this committee speaks volumes for your interest in Canadian veterans. I'm not a combat veteran , but I was on active duty in the U.S. Army for 30 years, and I'm especially appreciative of the work that is being done for our combat veterans.
Before I begin, I need to make it clear that I'm here as an independent subject matter expert and not as a representative of my company or any other organization. The comments that follow express my views on the issues at hand. I'm a health physicist by training experience. I received my master's degree in nuclear engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and my doctorate in radiological hygiene from the University of Pittsburgh . My involvement with DU research started in 1992 with my assignment to the U.S. Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute, commonly known as AFRRI, first as a branch chief and then as the chair of the radiation biophysics department, and finally, as the team leader for the AFRRI DU research effort.
There were two significant outcomes of this assignment. The first was the initiation of the AFRRI animal model research program into the health effects of embedded DU fragments. The second was providing assistance in the development of the Baltimore depleted uranium follow-up program. The Baltimore program was initiated to provide long-term clinical follow-up for U.S. soldiers with retained DU fragments from U.S. friendly fire incidents during the first Gulf War.
In my follow-on assignment, I became the U.S. DOD's spokesman for the health physics aspects of depleted uranium exposure and the U.S. Army Surgeon General's consultant for depleted uranium. In this capacity, I was part of the initiation and execution of the DU capstone project. When I retired in 2003, I continued my work with the DU capstone project. In the interest of full disclosure, my current company, Battelle, conducted the capstone project.
I became involved in this effort for this committee when Dr. Morisset asked me to review the report on the Canadian experience with depleted uranium. Up front I would like to say that I concur with how the report was conducted, and I do concur with the conclusions of the report.
I'd like to spend a little time discussing a couple of aspects of each of the topics I've been talking about.
The initial review of the potential health effects of the use of DU in munitions was carried out by the U.S. DOD Joint Technical Coordinating Group for Munitions Effectiveness. In a report published in 1974, the group recommended a series of tests to estimate the amount of DU that could be inhaled or ingested subsequent to a variety of scenarios, including fires and tanks being struck by DU. These studies were initiated and culminated in the capstone depleted uranium project.
The overall objective of the capstone project was to estimate the health risks to personnel in each of the three levels of exposure. The first part of the project was the capstone test. The purpose of the capstone test was to measure the DU aerosol concentrations immediately after penetration by a DU munition. This was accomplished by a series of experiments that entailed firing DU munitions at U.S. armoured vehicles and then using a specially designed sampling array to collect the DU aerosols that were emitted shortly after penetration and at selected time periods after penetration.
The second part of the DU capstone project was the conduct of a health risk assessment for levels I through III. The capstone test data was exclusively used for a level I assessment. Level I exposure are those people who were in, on, or near a vehicle at the time the vehicle was penetrated by a munition, or those first responders who entered the vehicle immediately after to render first aid to the people inside the vehicle. Level II are personnel who, as a result of their job, routinely entered depleted uranium contaminated vehicles. Level III is basically everybody else. The level II and III risk assessments used a combination of capstone data and previously published data. The capstone health risk assessment concluded that DU exposures exceeding safety levels could occur for level I and level II, but would not for level III. Canadian exposures fall into level III.
The Baltimore VA DU monitoring program began its health surveillance of level I, and that's the highest exposed, U.S. veterans with embedded fragments in 1993, and repeated the monitoring every two years.
The results of this clinical monitoring have been reported in multiple peer-reviewed publications. The most recent journal article I am aware of is in a 2011 issue of the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health. The results reported in this paper are consistent with prior reports. Veterans with retained DU fragments are still excreting elevated levels of depleted uranium. No significant evidence of clinically important changes was observed in kidney or bone, the two principal target organs for DU. That was the conclusion of the 2011 report and all of the reports that I can remember since the study was started.
The results of the Baltimore surveillance efforts are relevant to the Canadian experience with DU because the aerosol exposures of these veterans were several orders of magnitude greater than level III exposures that occurred at Doha or in any of the other level III scenarios.
There are multiple U.S. and international reviews of the health effects of DU stemming from its use in combat. The findings and conclusions in the report I was asked to review are consistent with these reviews and my understanding of DU exposures.
In all cases the primary conclusions of these reports are consistent. With the exception of level I exposures, the people in, on, or near at the time the vehicle was struck, it is unlikely that exposures to DU during this conflict were high enough to generate adverse health effects. This is not the same as saying our veterans are not ill possibly due to their service to our nations. What it does mean is that in seeking a method to determine the source of the illness, DU is a highly unlikely candidate. I believe we can best help our veterans by focusing on other sources of illness that have a higher likelihood of leading to effective treatment.
Once again I would like to thank the committee for this invitation and for the work you are doing on behalf of your veterans.