From: S&R [mailto:dornan.adpro@ns.sympatico.ca]
Sent: April-08-13 9:43 AM
To: Science Science; Wladyslaw Lizon; Sean.Casey.P9@parl.gc.ca; Peter Stoffer; Manon Perreault; Janick Lalonde; Erin OToole; Greg Kerr, Wilmot; Eve Adams; Bryan Hayes; Greg Kerr, Ottawa; Ben Lobb; Peter MacKay DND Minister; Steven Blaney; Steven Blaney; Bob Zimmer; Irene Mathyssen
Cc: Suzanne Tining; Sylvain Chicoine; Percy Downe Senator; Don Leonardo; David MacLeod; Charlie Cue; CathyV Private; J. Sherbanowski; Jeff Rose-Martland; Ken Burneau; Lorette S; Louise R; Mike Blais; Patrick Dornan; Reza Mehran; Sylvain Chartrand; Sue; Guy Parent VAC Ombudsman; Larry Broadfield; Patrick Dornan
Subject: Dr. Baverstock Opinion of VAC Report: Depleted Uranium and Canadian Veterans: A Review of Potential Exposure and Health Effects
Importance: High
I received the attached scientific opinion from Dr. Baverstock, Department of Environmental Science in Finland this morning. His statement is in regards to the attached report entitled: Depleted Uranium and Canadian Veterans: A Review of Potential Exposure and Health Effects. It was I who requested that he read the report and offer his expert opinion on it. Dr. Keith Baverstock can be reached by emailing keith.baverstock@uef.fi
Dr. Baverstock has more than 40 years professional experience of assessing the risks of exposure to ionising radiation as: a former employee of the UK Medical Research Council (1971 to 1991); an employee of the World Health Organisation (1991 to 2003); as a member of the UK Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (2003 to 2005); as Professor of
Health and Ionising Radiation in the Department of Environmental Science at the University of Eastern Finland (2006 to 2008).
It reads in part (attached in full):
• Persons in vicinities where DU munitions have been deployed (for example, the Gulf) are potentially exposed. Any person within the potentially exposed group who inhaled DU oxide dusts and acquired an internal burden of DU is actually exposed.
• It can be said with a high degree of confidence that any person inhaling DU dust will be actually exposed.
• DU dusts differ from other environmental forms of uranium in that they are partially soluble and thus, if inhaled become systemic.
• The Report…does not provide a basis for determining the validity of claims for compensation in the event of illnesses claimed by potentially exposed persons to be the consequence of exposure to DU.
• Environmental contamination by DU dust tends to be highly localised and unevenly distributed and, therefore, risk is unevenly distributed among the members of any epidemiological population. Please note: this is a fundamental limitation of epidemiology and applies regardless of how well any given study is conducted methodologically, i.e., “well run” or not.
• …studies on populations exposed to natural uranium contribute nothing to knowledge about the effects of DU because DU dust has a soluble component, whereas, natural uranium rarely does…
• …studies, such as the Canadian Persian Gulf Study, (and other similar veteran studies) where all personnel sent to the region, regardless of whether they might be actually exposed to DU, will only serve to disguise any DU related risk, since this risk will only apply to a fraction of the population and will therefore be “diluted out” by individuals not actually exposed…
• The Report, however, acknowledges the potentially harmful effects on human health of DU…but fails to acknowledge that the World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has designated all radioactive substances as confirmed human carcinogens.
• …DU, as a radioactive substance, is a confirmed human carcinogen and any actual exposure, no matter how small, must be assumed to carry a finite risk of cancer.
• …the US Veterans study conducted by McDiarmid and colleagues…is not…an epidemiological study. This study would indeed be relevant….were it not so statistically weak due to the small numbers of participants.
• “It is not credible to me that a committee of toxicologists would not realise the statistical limitations of the reports by McDiarmid et al., which in no way constitute reliable epidemiological results that can be taken to deny or confirm whether there are health effects arising as a result of a systemic DU burden. If it is indeed the case that there are elements of deliberate misrepresentation in this SCHER opinion then I believe they would constitute scientific misconduct.”
• There is extensive laboratory and animal experimental data that confirm that DU is genotoxic, that is, it damages the DNA of cells.
• The authoritative IARC report on the carcinogenetic effects of radiation…concludes that radiation is a potential carcinogen at any level of exposure…If any person has DU in their body (is actually exposed) the entailed risks are finite.
• Natural uranium is no substitute for the DU dusts in the context of health effects.
• …lack of evidence of effect is not proof of lack of effect. Most of the reports cited in The Report date back to, or are heavily based on, reports published around 2000 and before the evidence of the genotoxic effects of uranium were clear. I am not aware of any report that explicitly addresses the issue of genotoxicity.
• …an individual actually exposed to DU dusts will run a risk of contracting a disease that is directly attributable to that exposure: DU is a confirmed human carcinogen.
Rosanne Dornan
902-765-6541
