[Translation]
First of all, I would like to thank the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs for this invitation to come share with you my knowledge of depleted uranium. As a Canadian, as a member of the civil service and as a member of the team responsible for ensuring health services for the Canadian Forces, know that I take the well-being of the members of the Canadian Forces and its veterans seriously. As well, I would like to stress that, as a scientist, I am very much interested in the authenticity, accuracy and relevance of all scientific evidence submitted to me for study.
My academic life started at the University of Ottawa, where I obtained a bachelor of science, with a specialization in biology. During my post-graduate studies at the master and doctoral levels, I specialized in chemical and environmental toxicology, and more specifically on heavy metals, such as uranium. When I was doing my master’s degree at the University of Ottawa, I developed a probabilistic risk analysis method for determining the quantity of fish that can be consumed before reaching a level of heavy metals that would be considered harmful to human health. When doing my doctoral studies at the INRS, I studied analytical chemistry and the drinkability of water in order to quantify the extent of environmental contamination by heavy metals.
[English]
Following my graduate studies, I was hired by the Department of National Defence as an environmental toxicologist. I have now held the position of senior advisor in toxicology within the directorate of forces health protection of the Canadian Forces Health Services group for the last 10 years.
In this capacity I have the help of a multidisciplinary team, and we conduct environmental health risk assessment. The team includes industrial hygienists, physicians who specialize in occupational and environmental health, preventive medicine technicians, and members of the deployable health hazard assessment team. The expertise of this multidisciplinary team is further complemented by medical intelligence officers who monitor potential occupational and environmental hazards in the field.
Where Canadian Forces members deploy, the deployable health hazard assessment team also goes to take air, water, and soil samples that are analysed for the detection of a series of contaminants. Taking into account these results and assuming conservative exposure scenarios, we determine if soldiers are exposed to contaminants above levels that could affect their health.
These assessments are typically conservative, in that they assume worst-case scenario exposures to environmental contaminants. Using conservative assumptions reduces the likelihood of underestimating potential adverse health effects.
Through a memorandum of understanding with our allies, the environmental analyses conducted by the Canadian Forces are shared and compared with similar assessments carried out by our allies. In addition to receiving our allies' environmental assessments, we also monitor those carried out by credible international organizations, such as the United Nations Environment Programme, UNEP, and the World Health Organization. This sharing of information and review of the literature augments our environmental surveillance and provides us with the reassurance that we did not overlook potentially dangerous occupational and environmental issues.
Of all the environmental samples analysed to date, we have not found excessive environmental uranium levels in theatres of operation. Similar observations were made by our allies and with the UNEP's reports on the environmental and health threats of using depleted uranium munitions in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Serbia.
All three reports from the UNEP concluded that the use of depleted uranium munitions did not constitute a significant threat to either the environment or the local populations. The World Health Organization also concluded that depleted uranium is not a threat to the local population in countries where it has been used, and the biological monitoring of citizens living in the general proximity of depleted uranium munitions impaction sites is not necessary.
[Translation]
In addition to participating in these environmental assessments, I have been managing the Canadian Forces Voluntary Depleted Uranium Testing since 2005.
On February 7, 2000, the announced that the Canadian Forces would offer depleted uranium testing to any veteran or active member who asked for the assessment. This offer was made to address concerns from some soldiers deployed to areas where depleted uranium was used. An external accredited laboratory has conducted all uranium analyses for the Canadian Forces.
[English]
To date, more than 200 Canadian veterans of the Gulf War and of the Balkans peacekeeping operations took part in the voluntary depleted uranium testing. Total uranium levels were all found to be within the normal range, and the radioisotope analyses did not indicate significant depleted uranium exposure. The tests have found no evidence of increased uranium levels among Canadian Forces veterans of either the Gulf War or the Balkans peacekeeping missions. These results were published in a peer review journal, and a summary of the results are posted on the Canadian Forces Health Services website.
The results of the Canadian Forces depleted uranium testing indicate that Canadian Forces members were not exposed to high levels of depleted uranium, which is consistent with the results of our allies, including the United States, Belgium, France, and Germany. The only consistent reporting of positive depleted uranium testing is made in a cohort of U.S. Gulf War veterans who were victims of depleted uranium friendly fire during the Gulf War. Some of these veterans have in their bodies fragments of depleted uranium munitions and continue to excrete high uranium levels in their urine. Despite this degree of exposure, no clinically significant uranium-related health effects have been identified. No Canadian Forces members have been involved in depleted uranium friendly fire, so it follows that Canadian Forces members have not tested positive for depleted uranium.
The Veterans Affairs Scientific Advisory Committee invited me last year to present to them the results of the Canadian Forces voluntary depleted uranium testing. I was asked by the Scientific Advisory Committee to provide a short list of key references pertaining to potential environmental and health impacts of uranium. I was not, however, one of the external reviewers of the depleted uranium and veterans health report. Nonetheless, after having reviewed the report, I can say I concur with its key conclusions. I am also of the opinion that it is unlikely that Canadian Forces members have been exposed to levels of depleted uranium that could be harmful to their health.
[Translation]
Multiple expert medical and scientific panels have consistently concluded that depleted uranium does not pose a hazard to military personnel unless they are inside vehicles that are hit by depleted uranium munitions.
In summary, I would reiterate that it is unlikely that exposure to depleted uranium among members of the Canadian Forces would have been significant enough to cause health problems.
:
Certainly. Then you don't have it, but when you do get it, it offers a lot of background. It was a very in-depth conversation with Minister MacKay.
Our story is public, was public, and will always be public. There has been no redaction in any of the papers we've given you.
I'd like to begin here. Captain Terry Riordon: positive test for depleted uranium; Pascal Lacoste, positive test for uranium; Frank Stansbury, positive test for depleted uranium; Captain Terry Riordon, dead; Master Warrant Officer John Michael Peace, dead; Sergeant Larry Robertson, dead; Corporal Ken Burneau, non-Hodgkin lymphoma; Sergeant Larry Robertson, non-Hodgkin lymphoma; Master Warrant Officer Steve Dornan, non-Hodgkin lymphoma; and Corporal Dave Sherbanowski, Hodgkin lymphoma.
All of these men with lymphatic cancer were under the age of 40 when they were diagnosed with lymphoma. It's a very unusual age to be diagnosed, as the median age for being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma is 66. Are there more who we don't know about? We may never know, as Veterans Affairs Canada does not keep such records.
All of these men were either in the first Gulf War or Bosnia, or they served on Canadian ships where depleted uranium weaponry was proven to be used. Contrary to what Dr. Morisset said, that Canadians never used depleted uranium weaponry, it was used in testing—never in battle, but it was used in testing.
I have more names in my personal database. We've been doing this for 10 years; we know this stuff: more men and women who know they have been exposed to depleted uranium while serving in the Canadian military and are sick, dead, or dying.
There are some things I'd like you to think about. First, how does our government explain this? Surely this group cannot be considered a coincidence or, as Dr. Lalonde has suggested, a sporadic event. There are too many common factors for that. My second question is, how is it that my database of these men and women exists and no such database is available within Veterans Affairs Canada? To add to my last question, why are Canadian Forces members and veterans who self-report or are tested at their own expense not included in any database or Canadian cohort study, especially when the results are positive? Why doesn't Veterans Affairs Canada or our government pay for this DU testing at an external, non-governmental laboratory with mass spectrometry equipment sensitive enough to detect depleted uranium and isolate 238U, 235U, and 234U isotopes?
Lastly, how can such a report as this one we are here today discussing be written and not take into consideration those who have died, been diagnosed with cancer that is rare in young men, or have test results that state that they have been contaminated with depleted uranium? How can it be written without consideration of major animal studies or their results?
Had this been done, the argument presented to you in this report—and I quote from the report—that “It is unlikely that Canadian soldiers have been exposed to levels of depleted uranium which could be harmful to their health”, would be heard with much more skepticism.
As for this report, I personally feel it is imbalanced, incomplete, misleading, and lacking in objectivity. You're not getting the whole story. You're getting what they want you to hear. Soldiers are dead. Test results are positive and depleted uranium is very likely the culprit. We have met the benefit of doubt.
Our son is in the military and we need to know that he and his wife, who is also in the military, won't have to go through what we did.
I just want to speak to something Peter MacKay said about autopsies. We have prepared, when Steven does pass away, to have an autopsy, a bone marrow—
:
Yes, absolutely, and being the good former sergeant major, I'm going to do a little PowerPoint here as well.
One of the things I want to point out that was overlooked with regard to other soldiers who have had investigations with regard to this is that another soldier from the U.K., a Mr. Stuart Dyson, went before a court and a hearing. After he passed away, he was awarded a complete pension by the British, relative to depleted uranium. So apart from the Italians, there is another one, which is British.
To begin, I'm a veteran who is considered to be statistically insignificant. That's it, flat out. Rosanne and I are not doctors, but we've been doing this for 12 years now. We completed the database, which the subcommittee actually came to us for, and that database is 70 pages long. It is peer-reviewed scientific research on depleted uranium everywhere.
We see some of that in this report here, but it's not complete. It's cherry-picked, and that is a big problem. We know this subject. We believe this is not a balanced report, and I think some of your questions point that out. We also don't have a dog in this fight. I have a pension, so I'm not here to get anything out of this. My cancer will kill me: I have terminal cancer, late stage.
In regard to questions I asked of the scientific community, one was about the potential health effects of depleted uranium, and they answered it. It is potentially harmful, all right. We all accept that. The World Health Organization has come out and said that it is a confirmed class one known cancer to humans, by name, “depleted uranium”.
Here's my question to you people: how do you deal with me, the one-off, the guy who was actually in the vehicle, breathing in the depleted uranium? Because that's what I did. I was a weapons inspector. Were there huge numbers of Canadian Forces members exposed? Probably not, but there were individuals who were, individuals like me and like those whose names were read out to you. The problem is that Veterans Affairs looks for cause and effect, and if you can't prove cause, there is no effect. It's a yes or a no.
So where are we?
In August 2012, Health Canada: level of risk depends on exposure and solubility. When depleted uranium burns, there are two types of oxides from it, soluble and insoluble. Not only does the World Health Organization classify depleted uranium as a confirmed human carcinogen, but so do the NTP, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, and OSHA, which works very closely with the labour program. They all agree. It's in the MSDS, the material safety data sheet, for depleted uranium. It is a carcinogen—simple.
I will read for you from the Royal Society report, which was cited:
The greatest exposure to radiation resulting from inhaled DU particles will be to the lungs and associated lymph nodes, and an increased risk of lung cancer is considered to be the main radiation risk. Using worst-case assumptions the predicted radiation doses to the thoracic lymph nodes are about ten times higher than those to the lungs....
If you had that written in that report, that would give it some balance. It was one of the reports cited, but anything that leads to depleted uranium and cancer is not there.
The last one here, which is very interesting, actually, from September 2010, was done by the French. They decided to compare apples to apples: let's look at the workers in uranium and let's look at workers in uranium reprocessing facilities. What they found was something completely different, and it was the first time they found it. They found that the highest risk was observed around workers exposed to slowly soluble reprocessed depleted uranium or uranium oxide. This study is the first that differentiates between natural and reprocessed uranium, and there is an increased risk of lung and hematological malignancies. The cancers tend to increase with decreasing solubility of uranium compound and the nature to which you were exposed to it.
That is a huge change, because up until then it had always been that we didn't have enough studies on humans, so it was, “Let's look at uranium workers.” They were actually looking at uranium workers within a reprocessing facility. They looked at all of them over a long period and this was the conclusion they came to.
The VAC scientific committee said there is limited evidence of increased risk of cancer mortality. What does that mean? The context of government scientific committees conducting these has to follow the monograph. The World Health Organization International Agency for Research on Cancer, IARC, which is cited repeatedly through this document, actually lists what that means. What does “limited evidence of carcinogenicity” mean? There are four levels, from highest to lowest.
The first level, “sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity”, means you dropped somebody in a vat of plutonium and they've died. That is cause-effect.
The second level is that we know there's enough out there and a causal interpretation is considered by the work group to be credible, and that's reflected its first conclusion.
Three is “inadequate evidence”, and four is “evidence suggesting a lack of carcinogenicity”. Prior to this study, Veterans Affairs was of the opinion that we were at three or four, which was that DU is not harmful, with an asterisk after it, and at the bottom it said, “unless inhaled or ingested”, and that was it. That was what we waged a 10-year campaign against. It has now moved from a level four to a level two with this report. What it is saying is, yes, you can get cancer from this. That's what it says.
In the context of the Canada Pension Act, which is what we have to work with at Veterans Affairs, we have what's called presumptive causation under paragraph 21(3)(g), which deals with exactly what we're talking about here today. It's depleted uranium exposure that might reasonably have caused the disease or injury or the aggravation thereof. I noted that the mandate the Veterans Affairs scientific committee had left the last part off. All it looked at was cause. When you're doing a cause and effect, does depleted uranium cause cancer? It causes cancer about as much as smoking causes cancer. If you use the smoking analogy, if you took one puff on one cigarette, that would be the cause, and the effect would be cancer, but that's not what happens. The longer you're exposed, the more you're exposed, the higher the risk of developing cancer. That's what that deals with. This report dealt very little with risk.
Let's look at what the U.S. does. In the U.S., I would have a pension simply because I have cancer and I was in an area where depleted uranium was used. If I were a federal government employee working in any of the reprocessing facilities and developed cancer, and if had one of the 22 cancers the U.S. lists, I would be compensated and looked after. Because I'm a Canadian...we spend 10 years trying to prove this, only to be told, “It's not the absolute cause; therefore, you can't have a pension.” That's what we're faced with as veterans.
The U.S. has spent $8.3 billion to date on compensation for DU workers and veterans like myself. In our packet we actually provided the links to the U.S. veterans administration sites that clearly list depleted uranium by name as ionizing radiation, and veterans are entitled to a pension in the U.S. So why is Canada so different? What makes us so different?
I listened intently to the previous speaker tell how Canadians weren't exposed. Was there a big group not exposed? No, there wasn't. Was I? That's what the VRAB actually said. After 10 years of arguing, it actually admitted, “Yes, you were.” I was a weapons inspector inside vehicles at Han Pijesak and Hadzici, the two listed in the UNEP report, with areas that have 100 times the normal levels of uranium. That was 10 years after the fact. I was there months after. I was in the vehicles, full of the dust, doing weapons inspection, as the only Canadian there, which makes me basically insignificant. You can see from the picture that, yes, we didn't have any protective equipment, respirators, gloves, things that are required by the Canadian Forces and other agencies.
What does DU look like?
That is what it looks like on a lung. Do you see the stars? That's not normal. That's what individual particles of DU do to lungs. So make no mistake, it's not harmless. It is cancerous, and it is mutagenic, they've now discovered.
In this study—this was the French study, by the way, that was not referenced, and when you asked, it was not put forward—it says, “Hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals for mortality from lymphoid and hematopoietic tissue malignancies....” This is on humans, by the way. This isn't animals; this is humans.
Up until now, until this report, natural uranium was considered the same as depleted uranium. We now know that's not true. You see natural uranium on the left, reprocessed uranium on the right. “F”, “M”, and “S” is fast, moderate, and slow solubility. These two charts should be the same and they're not—dramatically not.