Heavy metals, for instance, are known to harm the kidneys.However, when the US Centers for Disease Control and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry reviewed the evidence revealed by these studies, they concluded that “no significant differences in cancer [of the lungs] was found between workers who are occupationally exposed to uranium and control populations”.A committee of the US National Academy of Sciences and Institutes of Medicine have also reviewed the scientific literature and again concluded that there is no evidence to prove that uranium exposure in these workers has resulted in cancer, but neither have the studies been able to rule it out unequivocally.The difficulty of “disproving” a health risk with depleted uranium was also highlighted in a study by Steve Fetter, from University of Maryland, and Frank von Hippel, an eminent nuclear scientist at Princeton University in New Jersey. Their review of the scientific literature was one of the most extensive undertaken, and they looked at both exposure to soldiers and civilians living in the area were depleted uranium was used.”Due to the low radioactivity of DU (depleted uranium), radiological hazards to individuals would become significant in comparison to background radiation doses only in cases of prolonged contact, for example, when shards of a DU penetrator remain embedded in a soldiers body,” they wrote in a paper published in the journal Science and Global Security. “Although the radiation doses to virtually all civilians would be very low, the cumulative ‘population dose’ resulting from the dispersal of hundreds of tons of DU, as occurred during the Gulf War, could result in up to 10 cancer deaths.”"Our tentative conclusion is that concerns about the public health and environmental effects of DU are overblown. The risks appear to be very low to surrounding populations and to persons who were not in direct, unprotected contact with vehicles struck with DU munitions or areas heavily contaminated by burning DU munitions. DU contamination is unlikey to have any measurable effect on public health in Iraq or Yugoslavia,” they say.The ongoing study into the 60 American servicemen who were victims of friendly fire involving depleted uranium has also failed to identify a cancer risk, or any other illness not directly associated with being blown up by a deadly munition.

Yet these people, about a quarter of whom still have DU shards embedded in their bodies, are known to have been exposed to the highest doses imaginable. “Thus, the argument for uranium being the cause of leukaemia in peacekeeping forces is thin,” says Professor McDiarmid.This will hardly be of comfort to the many servicemen who became seriously ill after returning from the Gulf and the Balkans. Neither will it impress the low-level radiation campaigners who believe that particles of insoluble oxides created when DU burns become lodged in the lung, where they can emit dangerous alpha radiation to surrounding tissue or to the cells of the lymph glands. They have suggested that this could account for the half dozen cases of leukaemia in Italian soldiers, even though cancer specialists find it difficult to believe that these blood cancers could have arisen so soon after the apparent time of DU exposure in Kosovo.Professor McDiarmid is aware of the problems she and other scientific sceptics face: “You come off sounding as if you’re dismissing what has happened to these young people I am not.

I think I do have an open mind and I don’t want to miss something new that might be occurring but equally we cannot ignore what we already know.”As the British Government prepares to call in its own high-level committee of radiation advisers to look once again at the depleted uranium question, the first item on the agenda will be to pull together everything we have already learnt about this much-feared element.. With tears, hugs and a cheque for more than £200,000, Rosie Boycott finally left her job as editor-in-chief of the Daily and Sunday Express yesterday, after weeks of threatened showdowns with her new proprietor, Richard Desmond. With tears, hugs and a cheque for more than £200,000, Rosie Boycott finally left her job as editor-in-chief of the Daily and Sunday Express yesterday, after weeks of threatened showdowns with her new proprietor, Richard Desmond.
Mr Desmond, who also owns a stable of pornographic magazines, never achieved a working relationship with Ms Boycott, a feminist and the founder in 1971 of Spare Rib magazine. The two have barely spoken since Mr Desmond’s company, Northern & Shell, bought the titles from Lord Hollick last autumn for £125m.But the departures of Ms Boycott and her deputy, Chris Blackhurst, are less linked to ideological differences over the treatment of women, and more connected with Mr Desmond’s plans to make widespread editorial redundancies, in addition to cuts already made in advertising and marketing.Sources say Ms Boycott was given a pay-off of more than £200,000. Chris Williams, 49, the number three on the paper, was named editor, after a long meeting with Mr Desmond.