Experts blame mystery Gulf War illness on chemical weapons released into air
▶ Study say defective gene makes some people susceptible to even small quantity of sarin nerve agent
Scientists at the University of Texas have linked “Gulf War syndrome”– a debilitating illness suffered by tens of thousands of British and American soldiers who served in the First Gulf War – to exposure to chemical weapons.
Operation Desert Storm liberated Kuwait from Iraqi occupation in 1991 and involved a US-led force of about 650,000 troops, including British, French, UAE, Saudi Arabian and Egyptian troops, in one of the largest military confrontations since the Second World War.
After the conflict, many veterans said they developed chronic muscle pain, problems with speech, memory loss and gastrointestinal problems, among often mysterious and undiagnosed symptoms.
A report by the US Institute of Medicine in 2013 said that as many as 30 per cent of First Gulf War veterans had experienced symptoms.
The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Centre said its research examining 1,000 US veterans of the conflict was “the most definitive” to date.
Researchers said the illnesses were probably caused by small quantities of sarin nerve gas, which was released into the atmosphere over Iraq when coalition forces bombed chemical weapons facilities.
Lead report author Dr Robert Haley said that even small amounts of the nerve agent released into the atmosphere
could cause illness, but people with a defective PON1 gene were more susceptible. When fully functional, the PON1 gene helps the body to process harmful chemicals.
The level military personnel might have been exposed to “was enough to make people ill if they were genetically predisposed
to illness from it”, Dr Haley told the BBC.
Previously, some experts had suggested the illness may have been caused by exposure to depleted uranium ammunition – which uses the extremely dense but highly toxic radioactive metal to penetrate tank armour. The metal is harmless when stored, but creates a toxic dust when used against armoured targets.
Coalition aircraft and tanks used about 300 tonnes of depleted uranium during the war and soldiers came into contact with Iraqi tanks that had been destroyed by the weapons.
But a study last year by the medical centre in Dallas, Texas,
found that soldiers exposed to depleted uranium dust did not have high enough concentrations in their body to cause serious illness.
Instead, a more serious health risk may have arisen during the war, as soldiers advanced on Iraqi military bases that had been heavily bombed.
Some of these sites were identified by UN inspectors in the months after the war as having stored chemical weapons.
While the UN authorised operations to liberate Kuwait after Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s invasion in August 1990, coalition forces also made an incursion into Iraq itself, to cut off Iraqi forces occupying Kuwait.
US, French and British forces advanced as far as the southern cities of Samawah and Nasiriyah – possibly putting them close to sites where chemicals may have been stored.
These included a military depot in Al Qurnah, north of the city of Basra, where a small number of degraded chemical weapon munitions were discovered by Danish forces in 2004.
The extent to which Iraqi civilians and soldiers may have suffered these symptoms is not well documented.
But a 1996 report by the Royal Canadian Institute for International Studies said there had been an “increased incidence of similar illnesses” in Iraq.
Many veterans developed chronic muscle pain, speech and memory loss issues and gastrointestinal problems