Alarm over NATO uranium deaths. The cancer deaths of six Italian soldiers who served with the NATO peacekeeping force in the Balkans raises concern about the use of depleted uranium weapons, valued for their armor-piercing capabilities, in that theater. A heavy metal almost twice the density of lead and only mildly radioactive in its native state, it turns on impact with a solid object into a burning vapor creating radioactive dust. US and British military officials have always denied the level of alarm about DU, which began with suspicions it was implicated in Gulf War Syndrome.

“We’ve always known
that it was a danger
only in absolutely
exceptional
circumstances like, for
example, picking up a
fragment with a hand
on which there was an
open wound, while in
normal circumstances it
isn’t dangerous at all.

But now we’re starting
to have a justified fear
that things aren’t that
simple,” worries Italian Prime Minister Giuliano Amato. BBC