Guess what kids, there's a war on! Depleted Uranium anyone?

[Colleen Thomas]

Colleen Thomas is a curious entity.

There is hard evidence for the serious health effects of DU. I don't have them with me now, but be assured, they are well researched, and I will post them in this thread within 48 hours. I can't believe that any humane, decent person could be an aoplogist for the use of that material, in any context.

Colleen's reference to the relative safety to DU handlers is a totally spurious point that she well understands. I don't understand why she is maintaining a pro position, and arguing it, in light of her own knowledge and understanding of the facts. Just to re-iterate what she herself said - the stuff partially ignites and partially vapourises on impact. One gasp of the air and you have a lung-ful of residual toxin and radioactivity. This is not even comparable to the handling of pre-fabricated components in munitions assembly. It is literally thousands of times worse.

Likewise, with the post-explosion dust issue. Colleen, perhaps you could show your confidence in the safety of DU by letting a child of yours, or a relative's, crawl around in a DU dust contaminated area - licking fingers and thumbs, picking up objects and tasting them.

You clearly have a lot of knowledge that you are selectively filtering to arrive at your usual pro-military, pro-war stance.

I wish I could DU tip this post so that it would pierce your cold heart.

SL61

Like most zealots, you have to misrepresent things and produce an ad hominim attack to boot.

I did not once advocate continued use of Du if it is proven to be dangerous. My position is pretty firmly stated as being skeptical of claims of it's dangers. So far neither you, nor anyone else has provided even ancedotal evidence of this being the case.

According to what I have read, DU in aerosol is dangerous only to those in the confined space of a vehicle hit by a DU round. That's the stated opinion not only of the military, but of several independent or at least non military affiliated researchers. Telling me it condences, burns or vaporizes on impact isn't informing me of anything. Proving that aerosol presents a danger would. You haven't even attempted to do that.

Again, you go to the emotional appeal, conjuring images of a child playing with DU. It's an appeal with little or no practical application, unless you have some proof that the military is spreading the dust around playgrounds and people's homes?

I have a lot of knowledge. I am filtering it with an eye to making an informed decision. You, on the other hand, are making a decision based on your own biase and hate, ignoring what you don't like and fostering attacks upon me rather than trying to debate the issue. It's the escape of a coward and a cad.

I resent your characterization of me, based on nothing other than your own hate. I resent you trying to foster a position up on me I don't and haven't advocated. I especially resent you stepping into a debate that has been a civilized and civil exercise in discussion and trying to turn it into a witch burning.

 

[TheEarl]

Colly: As I understand it, the lack of evidence in Kosovo is mainly due to a lack of proper statistics before the war. Thereby, no-one can say what change there has been.

I cannot provide experimental evidence as no tests have been performed on a large scale and no reliable statistics survive from any war, but I still feel that it is not a weapon that should be used. Atomic power and radiation are a dangerous weapon to wield and no matter how safe and secure they're supposed to be, they're being hurled at high velocity into a battlefield in order to impact on things. I'm still dubious that no mist is created. There may be no evience, but I'm arguing the logic as I can see it.

The Earl

 

[rgraham666]

A quick point.

It may not be the radioactivity of the uranium that causes the problems. It might perhaps be the chemical properties instead.

I doubt breathing a dust of lead would do you much good. It's quite probably the same with DU.

SL61, that post of yours was quite offensive. You read far too much into Colleen's words and assumed she had a political stance and philosophy that she does not have.

I'm torn on the issue of the use of DU. If I was at the sharp end, i would want it available. It does make for highly effective weapons. As a human being though, I believe that it would be better not used until the long term effects are more fully understood. And that we clean up our battlefields after we're done playing on them.

I ain't half asking much am I. There are places in Vietnam and the Falklands where you can't walk due to unexploded ordnance and uncleared land mines.

 

[TheEarl]

Well Earl, I find the "war solution" broadly offensive.

When we talk about issues like this we are not fooling around. I am not fooling around when I express my loathing for CT's enthusiastic advocacy of the use of DU, and no, I did not misunderstand her post.

Also, when you talk about DU saving "our" soldiers, I hope you mean "your" soldiers. They do not fight for me. Murdering 100,000+ Iraqis was never my cause.

SL61

SL: So your distaste for war allows you to make personal comments about Colleen, who is ten times the debator you are?

And where do you get off saying 'your' soldiers. These are human beings, people with families and wives and children. Just because you don't agree with the job that they're being sent to do, you don't care if any of them die? That's what you've just said.

I'm not in favour of war and especially not the Iraq war. Yet I am having a reasoned debate rather than trying to turn it into a witchhunt as I believe that is the way to learn. Maybe you should try watching how Colly, myself and Dranoel behave so that you might learn how to learn yourself.

The Earl

 

[TheEarl]

A quick point.

It may not be the radioactivity of the uranium that causes the problems. It might perhaps be the chemical properties instead.

I doubt breathing a dust of lead would do you much good. It's quite probably the same with DU.

Interesting point. Anyone know what the chemical properties of uranium are (aside from radioactivity). I'm presuming it's toxic.

I think radiation owuld still be your first worry in that situation, but I'd be curious to see if there are chemical effects.

The Earl

 

[Colleen Thomas]

The Lancet is the British Medical Journal. To me these numbers are convincing. I agree that we should be giving our soldiers every advantage that is humane. But it looks like DU Shells are not humane. It appears that our own soldiers are suffering from the effects of the DU shell residue. Is there a number of DU induced cancers and deaths that we can balance against the number of soldiers saved because an enemy tank was exploded without injury to our men? At that balance point do we then say, 'beyond this we shouldn't be using these shells'?

Have we reached that point? It looks like respectable journalists and doctors think so.

Shang pointed out the Lancet is a medical Journal. He also said it's peer reviewed, which leads me to believe it has a sound basis. It's also one voice that says DU = bad. There are a lot of others that say DU isn't as dangerous as is being claimed.

Who has died of cancer that is comprehensively linked to DU? The question is germaine. A lot of people die of cancer. A certain percentage are going to be military or ex-military personelle. As well as Du what other carcinogens have they been exposed to? Is there a defineable link between exposure and illness? Have all other factors been eliminated?

These are questions anyone who isn't walking in with a preconcieved notion would like answered. Can you answer them? If so, please do. I suspect, you can't any more than I can. With a dearth of information and a divided sceintific community, it seems those of you making definitive statements are expousing a personal belief rather than a reality.

You are making a claim. It's up to you to support that claim as throughly as you can. If the claim cannot be substantiated in a way that would give the prudent man reason to accept your claims, then you can't really be that vexed if no one will act upon them, based only on your urgency and belief.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Colly: As I understand it, the lack of evidence in Kosovo is mainly due to a lack of proper statistics before the war. Thereby, no-one can say what change there has been.

I cannot provide experimental evidence as no tests have been performed on a large scale and no reliable statistics survive from any war, but I still feel that it is not a weapon that should be used. Atomic power and radiation are a dangerous weapon to wield and no matter how safe and secure they're supposed to be, they're being hurled at high velocity into a battlefield in order to impact on things. I'm still dubious that no mist is created. There may be no evience, but I'm arguing the logic as I can see it.

The Earl

I understand that Earl. Iraq is even less reliable in terms of extant medical reords and experts there to make determinations.

That said, if DU were as dangerous as the most extreme claim, cancers should be rife by now. I don't think that's the case.

It's far from concrete proof of the safety of DU, but it seems to me that it does make comparrisons to Chernobyl fantastic beyond belief?

 

[thebullet]

Here's another article about DU from Vanity Fair

Here's a quote from the below article:

Dr. Durakovic suspects the military of minimizing the health and environmental consequences of DU weapons, and suggests two reasons it may have for doing so: "to keep them off the list of war criminals, and to avoid paying compensation which could run into billions of dollars." To this might be added a third: depleted uranium, because of its unique armor-penetrating capabilities, has become a defining feature of American warfare, one whose loss would be intolerable to military planners.

Other conclusions that may be drawn from this article: the US military does not want to know the effects of depleted uranium. Medical Officers who have made reports to the upper brass about DU's long-term effects have been ordered to change their conclusions - or else.

There's more: In the 1st Gulf War (Desert Storm) - only 167 American deaths were reported - thus supporting Coleen's thesis. However, over 181,000 Gulf War veterans are receiving war-related disability pensions. Gulf War syndrome may be in part caused by Depleted Uranium.

Weapons of Self-Destruction
By David Rose
Vanity Fair
November 2004 Issue
Is Gulf War syndrome - possibly caused by Pentagon ammunition - taking its toll on GI's in Iraq? When he started to get sick, Staff Sergeant Raymond Ramos's first instinct was to fight. "I had joint pains, muscle aches, chronic fatigue, but I
tried to exercise it out," he says. "I was going for runs, working out. But I never got any better. The headaches were getting more frequent and sometimes
lasted all day. I was losing a lot of weight. My overall physical demeanor was bad."

A 20-year veteran of the New York National Guard, Ramos had been mobilized for active duty in Iraq in the spring of 2003. His unit, the 442nd Military Police company, arrived there on Easter, 10 days before President Bush's mission accomplished appearance on the USS. Abraham Lincoln. A tall, soft-spoken 40-year-old with four children, the youngest still an infant, Ramos was proud of his
physique. In civilian life, he was a New York City cop. "I worked on a street narcotics team. It was very busy, with lots of overtime-very demanding." Now,
rising unsteadily from his armchair in his thickly carpeted living room in Queens, New York, Ramos grimaces. "The shape I came back in, I cannot perform
at that level. I've lost 40 pounds. I'm frail."
At first, as his unit patrolled the cities of Najaf and al-Diwaniyya, Ramos stayed healthy. But in June 2003, as temperatures climbed above 110 degrees, his unit was moved to a makeshift base in an abandoned railroad depot in Samawah, where some fierce tank battles had taken place. "When we first got there, I
was a heat casualty, feeling very weak," Ramos says. He expected to recover quickly. Instead, he went rapidly downhill.
By the middle of August, when the 442nd was transferred to Babylon, Ramos says, the right side of his face and both of his hands were numb, and he had
lost most of the strength in his grip. His fatigue was worse and his headaches had become migraines, frequently so severe "that I just couldn't function."
His urine often containe d blood, and even when it didn't he would feel a painful burning sensation, which "wouldn't subside when I finished." His upper
body was covered by a rash that would open and weep when he scratched it. As he tells me this, he lifts his shirt to reveal a mass of pale, circular scars. He
was also having respiratory difficulties. Later, he would develop sleep apnea, a dangerous condition in which he would stop breathing during sleep.
Eventually, Ramos was medevaced to a military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany. Doctors there were baffled and sent him on to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. There, Ramos says, one neurologist suggested that his condition could have been caused by some long-forgotten head injury or might just be "signs of aging." At the end of September 2003, the staff at Walter Reed ordered him to report to Fort Dix, New Jersey, where, he says, a captain went through his record and told him, "I was clear to go back to Iraq. I got the impression they thought I was faking it." He was ordered to participate in a long-distance run. Halfway through, he collapsed. Finally, on July 31, 2004, after months of further examinations, Ramos was discharged with a medical disability and sent home.

Symptoms such as Ramos's had been seen before. In veterans of Operation Desert Storm, they came to be called Gulf War syndrome; among those posted to Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s, Balkans syndrome. He was not the only member of the 442nd to suffer them. Others had similar urinary problems, joint pains, fatigue, headaches, rashes, and sleep apnea. Today, some scientists believe that all these problems, together with others found in war-zone civilians, can be traced
to the widespread use of a uniquely deadly form of ammunition.

In the ongoing Iraq conflict, just as in the Gulf War of 1991 and in the Balkans, American and British forces have fired tens of thousands of shells and cannon rounds made of a toxic and radioactive material called depleted uranium, or DU Because DU is dense-approximately 1.7 times as dense as lead-and ignites upon impact, at a temperature of about 5,400 degrees, it can penetrate armor more effectively than any other material.
It's also remarkably cheap. The arms industry gets its DU for free from nuclear-fuel processors, which generate large quantities of it as a by-product of enriching uranium for reactor fuel. Such processors would otherwise have to dispose of it in protected, regulated sites. DU is "depleted" only in the sense that most of its fissile U-235 isotope has been removed. What's left-mainly U-238-is still
radioactive.
Three of the main weapons systems still being used in Iraq-the M-1 Abrams tank, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and the A-10 Warthog attack jet-use DU
ammunition. A 120-mm. tank round contains about nine pounds of solid DU When a DU "penetrator" strikes its target, up to 70 percent of the shell's mass is flung
into the air in a shower of uranium-oxide fragments and dust, some in the form of aerosolized particles less than a millionth of a meter in diameter. When
inhaled, such particles lodge in the lungs and bathe the surrounding tissue with alpha radiation, known to be highly dangerous internally, and smaller amounts of
beta and gamma radiation.

Even before Desert Storm, the Pentagon knew that DU was potentially hazardous. Before last year's Iraq invasion, it issued strict regulations designed to
protect civilians, troops, and the environment after the use of DU But the Pentagon insists that there is little chance that these veterans' illnesses are
caused by DU
The US suffered only 167 fatal combat casualties in the first Gulf War. Since then, veterans have claimed pensions and health-care benefits at a record
rate. The Veterans Administration reported this year that it was paying service-related disability pensions to 181,996 Gulf War veterans-almost a third of the
total still living. Of these, 3,248 were being compensated for "undiagnosed illnesses." The Pentagon's spokesman, Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, deputy
director of its Deployment Health section, says that Gulf War veterans are no less healthy than soldiers who were stationed elsewhere.
Those returning from Operation Iraqi Freedom are also beginning to report illnesses in significant numbers. In July 2004, the V.A. disclosed that 27,571
of them-16.4 percent of the total-had sought health care. Of that group, 8,134 suffered muscular and skeletal ailments; 3,505 had respiratory problems; and
5,674 had "symptoms, signs and ill-defined conditions." An additional 153 had developed cancers. The V.A. claims that such figures are "typical of
young, active, healthcare-seeking populations," but does not offer figures for comparison.
There is also evidence of a large rise in birth defects and unprecedented cancer rates among civilians following the first Gulf War in the Basra region of southern Iraq, where the heaviest fighting took place. Dr. Kilpatrick says, "I think it's very important to try to understand what are the causes of that high rate of cancer and birth defects. There has to be a good look at that, but if you go to the M. D. Anderson hospital, in Houston, Texas, you're going to find a very high rate of cancer. That's because people from all over the country with cancer go there, because it's one of the premier care centers. Basra was the only major hospital in southern Iraq. Are the people there with these different problems people who lived their entire lives in Basra, or are they people who've come to Basra for care?" It is possible, he says, that some other environmental factor is responsible for the illnesses, such as Saddam's chemical weapons or poor nutrition. "I don't think anything should be taken off the table."
In October 2004, an early draft of a study by the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses, a scientific panel run by the V.A., was leaked to The New York Times. According to the Times, the panel had concluded that there was a "probable link" between veterans' illnesses and exposure to neurotoxins, including a drug given to troops in 1991 to protect them from nerve gas, and nerve gas itself, which was released when US-led forces destroyed an
Iraqi arms depot. Asked why there was no mention of DU in the report, Dr. Lea Steele, the panel's scientific director, says that her group plans to address it in a
later report: "We've only just begun work on this topic. We are certainly not ruling it out."
DU's critics, meanwhile, say it's entirely possible that both neurotoxins and DU are responsible for the widespread sickness among veterans.
Members of the 442nd have vivid memories of being exposed to DU Sergeant Hector Vega, a youthful-looking 48-year-old who in civilian life works in a building opposite Manhattan's Guggenheim Museum, says he now struggles with chest pains, heart palpitations, headaches, urinary problems, body tremors, and breathlessness-none of which he'd ever experienced before going to Iraq. He recalls the unit's base there: "There were burnt-out Iraqi tanks on flatbed
trucks 100 yards from where we slept. It looked like our barracks had also been hit, with black soot on the walls. It was open to the elements, and dust was coming in all the time. When the wind blew, we were eating it, breathing it. It was everywhere." (The Department of Defense, or D.O.D., says that a team of specialists is conducting an occupational and environmental health survey in the area.)
Dr. Asaf Durakovic, 64, is a retired US Army colonel and the former head of nuclear medicine at a veterans' hospital in Wilmington, Delaware. Dr. Durakovic reports finding DU in the urine of 18 out of 30 Desert Storm veterans, sometimes up to a decade after they were exposed, and in his view DU fragments
are both a significant cause of Gulf War syndrome and a hazard to civilians for an indefinite period of time. He says that when he began to voice these fears
inside the military he was first warned, then fired: he now operates from Toronto, Canada, at the independent Uranium Medical Research Centre.
In December 2003, Dr. Durakovic analyzed the urine of nine members of the 442nd. With funds supplied by the New York Daily News, which first published the
results, Durakovic sent the samples to a laboratory in Germany that has some of the world's most advanced mass-spectrometry equipment. He concluded that Ramos, Vega, Sergeant Agustin Matos, and Corporal Anthony Yonnone were "internally contaminated by depleted uranium (DU) as a result of exposure through [the] respiratory pathway."
The Pentagon contests these findings. Dr. Kilpatrick says that, when the D.O.D. conducted its own tests, "our results [did] not mirror the results of Dr. Durakovic." "Background" sources, such as water, soil, and therefore food, frequently contain some uranium. The Pentagon insists that the 442nd
soldiers' urinary uranium is "within normal dietary ranges," and that "it was not possible to distinguish DU from the background levels of natural uranium." The
Pentagon says it has tested about 1,000 vets from the current conflict and found DU contamination in only five. Its critics insist this is because its equipment
is too insensitive and its testing methods are hopelessly flawed.
At a briefing before the Iraq invasion in March 2003, Dr. Kilpatrick tried to reassure reporters about DU by citing the cases of about 20 Desert Storm vets
who had DU shrapnel in their bodies. "We have not seen any untoward medical consequences in these individuals," he said. "There has been no cancer of
bone or lungs, where you would expect them." It appears that he misspoke on that occasion: one of these veterans had already had an arm amputated for an osteosarcoma, or bone tumor, at the site where the shrapnel entered. Dr. Kilpatrick confirms that the veteran was treated by the V.A. in Baltimore, but says his condition may not have been linked with the shrapnel: "Osteosarcomas are fairly common." Studies have shown that DU can begin to move through the body
and concentrate in the lymph nodes, and another of the vets with shrapnel has a form of lymphatic cancer. But this, Dr. Kilpatrick says, has "no known cause." He
concedes that research has not proved the negative, that DU doesn't cause cancer. But, he says, "science doesn't in 2004 show that DU causes any cancer."
It does, however, show that it may. Pentagon-sponsored studies at the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute, in Bethesda, Maryland, have found that, when DU was embedded in animals, several genes associated with human tumors
underwent "aberrant activation," and oncoproteins of the type found in cancer patients turned up in their blood. The animals' urine was "mutagenic," meaning
that it could cause cells to mutate. Another institute project found that DU could damage the immune system by hastening the death of white blood cells and
impairing their ability to attack bacteria.
In June 2004 the US General Accounting Office (G.A.O.) issued a report to Congress that was highly critical of government research into Gulf War syndrome
and veterans' cancer rates. The report said that the studies on which federal agencies were basing their claim that Gulf War veterans were no sicker than the
veterans of other wars "may not be reliable" and had "inherent limitations," with big data gaps and methodological flaws. Because cancers can take years
to develop, the G.A.O. stated, "it may be too early" to draw any conclusions. Dr. Kilpatrick dismisses this report, saying it was "just the opinion of a group of individuals."
Yet another Pentagon-funded study suggested that DU might have effects on unborn children. After finding that pregnant rats transmitted DU to their
offspring through the placenta, the study concluded: "Fetal exposure to uranium during critical prenatal development may adversely impact the future behavioral
and neurological development of offspring." In September 2004, the New York Daily News reported that Gerard Darren Matthew, who had served in Iraq with the
719th Transportation Company, which is based in Harlem, had tested positive for DU after suffering migraines, fatigue, and a burning sensation when urinating. Following his return, his wife became pregnant, and their daughter, Victoria Claudette, was born missing three fingers.
Ultimately, critics say, the Pentagon underestimates the dangers of DU because it measures them in the wrong way: by calculating the average amount of DU radiation produced throughout the body. When we meet, Dr. Kilpatrick gives me a report the Department of Defense issued in 2000. It concludes that even vets with the highest exposures from embedded shrapnel could expect over 50 years to receive a dose of just five rem, "which is the annual limit for [nuclear industry] workers." The dose for those who inhaled dust from burned-out tanks would be
"far below the annual guideline (0.1 rem) for members of the public."
But to measure the effect of DU as a whole-body radiation dose is meaningless, Asaf Durakovic says, because the dose from DU is intensely concentrated in
the cells around a mote of dust. The alpha particles DU emits-high-energy clumps of protons and neutrons-are harmless outside the body, because they cannot pass through skin. Inside tissue, however, they wreak a havoc analogous to that of a penetrating shell against an enemy tank, bombarding cell nuclei, breaking chains of DNA, damaging fragile genes. Marcelo Valdes, a physicist and computer scientist who is president of Dr. Durakovic's research institute, says the cells around a DU particle 2.5 microns in diameter will receive a maximum annual radiation dose of 16 rads. If every pocket of tissue in the body were to absorb that amount of radiation, the total level would reach seven trillion rads-millions of times the lethal dosage.
In the potentially thousands of hot spots inside the lungs of a person exposed to DU dust, the same cells will be irradiated again and again, until their ability to repair themselves is lost. In 1991, Durakovic found DU in the urine of 14 veterans who had returned from the Gulf with headaches, muscle and skeletal pain, fatigue, trembling, and kidney problems. "Immediately I understood from their
symptoms and their histories that they could have been exposed to radiation," he says. Within three years, two were dead from lung cancer: "One was 33, the other
42. Both were nonsmokers, in previously excellent health."
DU, he says, steadily migrates to the bones. There it irradiates the marrow, where stem cells, the progenitors of all the other cells the body manufactures in order to renew itself, are produced. "Stem cells are very vulnerable," Durakovic says.
"Bombarded with alpha particles, their DNA will fall apart, potentially affecting every organ. If malfunctioning stem cells become new liver cells, then the liver will malfunction. If stem cells are damaged, they may form defective tissue."
If DU is as dangerous as its critics allege, it can kill even without causing cancer. At her home in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, Susan Riordon recalls the
return of her husband, Terry, from the Gulf in 1991. Terry, a security captain, served in intelligence during the war: his service record refers to his
setting up a "safe haven" in the Iraqi "theatre." Possibly, Susan speculates, this led him behind enemy lines and exposed him to DU during the long aerial
bombing campaign that preceded the 1991 invasion. In any event, "when he came home, he didn't really come home," she says.
At first, Terry merely had the usual headaches, body pain, oozing rash, and other symptoms. But later he began to suffer from another symptom which afflicts
some of those exposed to DU: burning semen. "If he leaked a little lubrication from his penis, it would feel like sunburn on your skin. If you got to the
point where you did have intercourse, you were up and out of that bed so fast-it actually causes vaginal blisters that burst and bleed." Terry's medical records support her description. In England, Malcolm Hooper, professor emeritus of medicinal chemistry at the University of Sunderland, is aware of 4,000 such
cases. He hypothesizes that the presence of DU may be associated with the transformation of semen into a caustic alkali.
"It hurt [Terry] too. He said it was like forcing it through barbed wire," Riordon says. "It seemed to burn through condoms; if he got any on his thighs or
his testicles, he was in hell." In a last, desperate attempt to save their sex life, says Riordon, "I used to fill condoms with frozen peas and insert them [after sex] with a lubricant." That, she says, made her pain just about bearable. Perhaps inevitably, he became impotent. "And that was like our last little intimacy gone."

By late 1995, Terry was seriously deteriorating. Susan shows me her journal-she titled it "The Twilight Zone"-and his medical record. It makes harrowing reading. He lost his fine motor control to the point where he could not button his shirt or zip his fly. While walking, he would fall without warning. At night, he shook so violently that the bed would move across the floor. He became unpredictably violent: one terrible day in 1997 he attacked their 16-year-old son and started choking him. By the time armed police arrived to pull him off, the boy's bottom lip had turned blue. After such rages, he would fall into a deep sleep for as long as 24 hours, and awake with no memory of what had happened. That year, Terry and Susan stopped sleeping in the same bedroom. Then "he began to barricade himself in his room for days, surviving on granola bars and cartons of juice."
As he went downhill, Terry was assessed as completely disabled, but there was no diagnosis as to why. His records contain references to "somatization
disorder," post-traumatic stress, and depression. In 1995 the army doctors even suggested that he had become ill only after reading of Gulf War syndrome.
Through 1998 and 1999, he began to lose all cognitive functions and was sometimes lucid for just a few hours each week.

Even after he died, on April 29, 1999, Terry's Canadian doctors remained unable to explain his illness. "This patient has a history [of] 'Gulf War
Syndrome' with multiple motor, sensory and emotional problems," the autopsy report by pathologist Dr. B. Jollymore, of Yarmouth, begins. "During extensive investigation, no definitive diagnosis has been determined.... Essentially it appears that this gentleman remains an enigma in death as he was in life."
Not long before Terry's death, Susan Riordon had learned of Asaf Durakovic, and of the possibility that her husband absorbed DU His urine-test results-showing a high DU concentration eight years after he was presumably exposed-came through on Monday, April 26: "Tuesday he was reasonably cognitive, and was able to tell me that he wanted his body and organs to go to Dr. Durakovic," she remembers. "He knew it was too late to help him, but he made me promise that his body could help the international community. On the Wednesday, I completed the purchase of this house. On Thursday, he was dead.

"It was a very strange death. He was very peaceful. I've always felt that Asaf allowed Terry to go: knowing he was DU-positive meant he wasn't crazy
anymore. Those last days he was calm. He wasn't putting the phone in the microwave; he had no more mood swings."
After Riordon's death, Dr. Durakovic and his colleagues found accumulations of DU in his bones and lungs.
Dr. Durakovic suspects the military of minimizing the health and environmental consequences of DU weapons, and suggests two reasons it may have for doing so: "to keep them off the list of war criminals, and to avoid paying compensation which could run into billions of dollars." To this might be added a third:
depleted uranium, because of its unique armor-penetrating capabilities, has become a defining feature of American warfare, one whose loss would be intolerable to military planners.
In 1991, the US used DU weapons to kill thousands of Iraqis in tanks and armored vehicles on the "highway of death" from Kuwait to Basra. The one-sided
victory ushered in a new era of "lethality overmatch"-the ability to strike an enemy with virtual impunity. A Pentagon pamphlet from 2003 states that a central objective of the American military is to "generate dominant lethality overmatch across the full spectrum of operations," and no weapon is better suited to achieving that goal than DU
The value of depleted uranium was spelled out more simply in a Pentagon briefing by Colonel James Naughton of the army's Materiel Command in March 2003, just before the Iraq invasion: "What we want to be able to do is strike the target from farther away than we can be hit back.... We don't want to fight even.
Nobody goes into a war and wants to be even with the enemy. We want to be ahead, and DU gives us that advantage."
If the Pentagon is right about the risks of DU, such statements should not be controversial. If it is wrong, says retired army colonel Dr. Andras Korenyi-Both, who headed one of the main field hospitals during Desert Storm and later conducted some of the first research into Gulf War syndrome, the position is less clear-cut. "You'd have to deal with the question of whether it's better not to use DU and have more of your soldiers die in battle or to use DU and lose very few in the field-but have them get sick and die when they get home."
One desert morning in the early spring of 1991, while sitting in his office at the Eskan Village military compound near Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Lieutenant Doug Rokke was shown a memorandum. Rokke, a health physicist and training specialist, was a reservist and had recently been ordered to join the
Third US Army's depleted-uranium-assessment team, assigned to clean up and move American vehicles hit by friendly fire during Operation Desert Storm. The memo, dated March 1, came from a senior military officer at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, in New Mexico.
During the Gulf War, it said, "DU penetrators were very effective against Iraqi armor." However, "there has been and continues to be a concern regarding the
impact of DU on the environment. Therefore, if no one makes a case for the effectiveness of DU on the battlefield, DU rounds may become politically
unacceptable and thus, be deleted from the arsenal.... I believe we should keep this sensitive issue at mind when after-action reports are written."
Rokke says: "I interpreted the memo to mean: we want this stuff-don't write anything that might make it difficult for us to use it again."
Rokke's assignment was dangerous and unpleasant. The vehicles were coated with uranium-oxide soot, and dust lay in the sand outside. He wore a mask, but it
didn't help. "We could taste it and smell it," he says of the DU "It tasted very strong-and unmistakable." Years later, he says, he was found to be excreting
uranium at 5,000 times the normal level. Now 55, he pants during ordinary conversation and says he still gets a rash like the one Raymond Ramos of the 442nd suffers from. In addition, Rokke has joint pains, muscle aches, and cataracts.
In 1994, Rokke became director of a Pentagon project designed to learn more about DU contamination and to develop training that would minimize its risks.
"I'm a warrior, and warriors want to fulfill their mission," Rokke says. "I went into this wanting to make it work, to work out how to use DU safely, and to show other soldiers how to do so and how to clean it up. This was not science out of a book, but science done by blowing the shit out of tanks and seeing what
happens. And as we did this work, slowly it dawned on me that we were screwed. You can't do this safely in combat conditions. You can't decontaminate the environment or your own troops."
Rokke and his colleagues conducted a series of experiments at the US Department of Energy's Nevada nuclear-test site. They set fire to a Bradley loaded with DU rounds and fired DU shells at old Soviet tanks. At his remote, ramshackle farmhouse amid the rural flatlands of central Illinois, Rokke shows me videos of his tests. Most spectacular are those shot at night, which depict the fiery streak of the DU round, already burning before impact, followed by the red cascade of the debris cloud. "Everything we hit we destroyed," he says. "I tell you, these things are just ... fantastic."
The papers Rokke wrote describing his findings are more sobering. He recorded levels of contamination that were 15 times the army's permissible levels in tanks hit by DU, and up to 4.5 times such levels in clothing exposed to DU
The good news was that it was possible, using a special Department of Energy vacuum cleaner designed for sucking up radioactive waste, to reduce
contamination from vehicles and equipment to near official limits, and to "mask" the intense radiation around holes left by DU projectiles by sealing them
with layers of foam caulking, paint, or cardboard. (Such work, Rokke wrote, would naturally have to be carried out by teams in full radiological-protection
suits and respirators.)
When it came to clothes, however, DU particles "became imbedded in the clothing and could not be removed with brushing or other abrasive methods."
Rokke found that even after he tried to decontaminate them the clothes were still registering between two and three times the limit. "This may pose a significant logistics impact," Rokke wrote, with some understatement.
The elaborate procedures required to decontaminate equipment, meanwhile, would be almost impossible to implement in combat. "On a real battlefield, it's not like there's any control," Rokke says. "It's chaos. Maybe it's night. Who's going to come along and isolate contaminated enemy tanks? You've got a pile of rubble and mess and you're still coming under fire. The idea that you're going to come out in radiological suits and vacuum up a building or a smashed T-72 [tank]-it's ridiculous."
Large amounts of black DU-oxide dust were readily
visible within 50 meters of a tank hit by penetrators
and within 100 meters of the DU-packed Bradley that
was set on fire. But less obvious amounts were easily
detected at much greater distances. Worse, such dust
could be "re-suspended" in the atmosphere "upon
contact, if wind blew, or during movement." For
American troops, that meant that "respiratory and skin protection is warranted during all phases of recovery." For civilians, even ones at considerable distances, it meant they might be exposed to windblown DU far into the future.
After Rokke completed the project, he was
appointed head of the lab at Fort McClellan where it
had been based. He resigned the staff physicist post
he'd held for 19 years at the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign and moved south with his family.
Early in 1996, after he began to voice the conclusions
he was drawing about the future viability of DU
weapons, he was fired. "Then I remembered the Los
Alamos memo," he says. "They'd wanted 'proponency' for
DU weapons, and I was giving them the opposite." I ask
Dr. Kilpatrick, the D.O.D. spokesman on DU, about
Rokke's test firings. His reply: "One, he never did
that. He was in Nevada as an observer. He was not part
of that program at all. At that time he was working in education at an army school, and his assignment was to develop educational materials for troops." Rokke, he says, may have spent a few days observing the tests but did not organize them.
Documents from Rokke's service record tell a
different story. His appraisal from December 1, 1995,
written by Dr. Ed Battle, then chief of the radiation laboratories at Fort McClellan, describes Rokke's mission as follows: to "plan, coordinate, supervise and implement the US Army ... depleted uranium training development project." He continued: "Captain Rokke has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to function well above his current rank and is as effective as any I have known." He had directly participated in "extremely crucial tests at the Nevada Atomic Test Site," and his achievements had been "absolutely phenomenal."
Rokke was awarded two medals for his work. The
citation for one commended him for "meritorious
service while assigned as the depleted uranium project
leader. Your outstanding achievements have prepared
our soldiers for hazards and will have a vast payoff
in the health, safety, and protection of all
soldiers."
Rokke's work in Nevada helped persuade the
military that DU weapons had to be dealt with
carefully. On September 16, 2002, General Eric
Shinseki, the US Army chief of staff, signed Army
Regulation 700-48, which sets forth strict rules for
handling items, including destroyed or disabled enemy
targets, that have been hit and contaminated by DU
"During peacetime or as soon as operational risk
permits," it states, local commanders must "identify, segregate, isolate, secure, and label all RCE [radiologically contaminated equipment]. Procedures to minimize the spread of radioactivity will be implemented as soon as possible." Under pre-existing regulations, damaged vehicles should be moved to a collection point or maintenance facility, and "covered and wrapped with canvas or plastic tarp to prevent spread of contaminants," with loose items placed in double plastic bags. Soldiers who carry out such tasks should wear protective equipment.
The burned-out tanks behind the 442nd's barracks
in Samawah may not have been the only DU-contaminated
pieces of equipment to be left where they lay. In the
fall of 2003, Tedd Weyman, a colleague of Dr.
Durakovic's, spent 16 days in Iraq, taking samples and observing the response of coalition forces to General Shinseki's directive. "When tanks shot up by DU munitions were removed, I saw no precautions being taken at all," he says. "Ordinary soldiers with no protection just came along and used chains to load them onto flatbeds, towing them away just as they might your car if it broke down on the highway. They took them to bases with British and American troops and left them in the open." Time after time, Weyman recorded high levels of contamination-so high that on his return to Canada he was found to have 4.5 times the normal level of uranium in his own urine.
A Pentagon memo, signed on May 30, 2003, by Dr.
William Winkenwerder, an assistant defense secretary,
says that any American personnel "who were in, on, or
near combat vehicles at the time they were struck by
DU rounds," or who entered such vehicles or fought
fires involving DU munitions, should be assessed for
possible exposure and receive appropriate health care.
This category could be said to include any soldier who
fought in, or cleaned up after, battles with Iraqi
armor.
Still, the Pentagon insists that the risks remain acceptably small. "There isn't any recognized disease from exposure to natural or depleted uranium," Dr. Kilpatrick says. He tells me that America will mount a thorough cleanup in Iraq, disposing of any DU fragments and burying damaged vehicles in unpopulated locations, but that, for the time being, such an operation is impossible. "We really can't begin any environmental assessment or cleanup while there's ongoing combat." Nevertheless, he says, there's no cause for concern. "I think we can be very confident that what is in the environment does not create a hazard for those living in the environment and working in it."
As this article was going to press, the Pentagon
published the findings of a new study that, according
to Dr. Kilpatrick, shows DU to be a "lethal but safe
weapons system."
In his Pentagon briefing in March 2003, Dr.
Kilpatrick said that even if DU weapons did generate
toxic dust, it would not spread. "It falls to the
ground very quickly-usually within about a 50-meter
range," he said. "It's heavy. It's 1.7 times as heavy
as lead. So even if it's a small dust particle ... it
stays on the ground." Evidence that this is not the
case comes from somewhere much closer than Iraq-an
abandoned DU-weapons factory in Colonie, New York, a
few miles from Albany, the state capital.
In 1958, a corporation called National Lead began
making depleted-uranium products at a plant on Central
Avenue, surrounded by houses and an Amtrak line. In
1979, just as the plant was increasing its production
of DU ammunition to meet a new Pentagon contract, a whistle-blower from inside the plant told the county health department that N.L. was releasing large amounts of DU oxide into the environment.
Over the next two years, he and other workers
testified before both the New York State Assembly and
a local residents' campaign group. They painted a
picture of reckless neglect. DU chips and shavings
were simply incinerated, and the resulting oxide dust
passed into the atmosphere through the chimneys. "I
used to do a lot of burning," William Luther told the governor's task force in 1982. "They told me to do it at night so the black smoke wouldn't be seen." Later, many of the workers were found to have inhaled huge doses into their lungs, and some developed cancers and other illnesses at relatively young ages.
In January 1980 the state forced N.L. to agree to
limit its radioactive emissions to 500 microcuries per
year. The following month, the state shut the plant
down. In January alone, the DU-chip burner had
released 2,000 microcuries. An official environmental
survey produced horrifying results. Soil in the
gardens of homes near the plant was emitting radiation
at up to 300 times the normal background level for
upstate New York. Inside the 11-acre factory site,
readings were up to five times higher.
The federal government has been spending tax
dollars to clean up the Colonie site for the past 19
years, under a program called fusrap-the Formerly
Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program. Today, all
that is left of the Colonie plant are enormous piles
of earth, constantly moistened with hoses and secured
by giant tarpaulins to prevent dispersal, and a few
deep pits. In its autumn 2004 bulletin to residents,
the fusrap team disclosed that it had so far removed
125,242 tons of contaminated soil from the area, all
of which have been buried at radioactive-waste sites
in Utah and Idaho. In some places, the excavations are
more than 10 feet deep. fusrap had also discovered contamination in the neighboring Patroon Creek, where children used to play, and in the reservoir it feeds, and had treated 23.5 million gallons of contaminated water. The cost so far has been about $155 million, and the earliest forecast for the work's completion is 2008.
Years before fusrap began to dig, there were data
to suggest that DU particles-and those emitted at
Colonie are approximately the same size as those
produced by weapons-can travel much farther than 50
meters. In 1979, nuclear physicist Len Dietz was
working at a lab operated by General Electric in
Schenectady, 10 miles west of Colonie. "We had air
filters all around our perimeter fence," he recalls.
"One day our radiological manager told me we had a
problem: one of the filters was showing abnormally
high alpha radiation. Much to our surprise, we found
DU in it. There could only be one source: the N.L.
plant." Dietz had other filters checked both in
Schenectady and at other G.E. sites. The three that
were farthest away were in West Milton, 26 miles
northwest, and upwind, of Colonie. All the filters
contained pure Colonie DU "Effectively," says Dietz,
"the particles' range is unlimited."
In August 2003, the federal Agency for Toxic
Substances and Disease Registry published a short
report on Colonie. On the one hand, it declared that
the pollution produced when the plant was operating
could have increased the risks of kidney disease and
lung cancer. Because the source of the danger had shut
down, however, there was now "no apparent public
health hazard." Thus there was no need to conduct a
full epidemiological study of those who had lived near
and worked at the factory-the one way to produce hard scientific data on what the health consequences of measurable DU contamination actually are.
The people of Colonie have been trying to collect
health data of their own. Sharon Herr, 45, lived near
the plant for nine years. She used to work 60 hours a
week at two jobs-as a clerk in the state government
and as a real-estate agent. Now she too is sick, and
suffers symptoms which sound like a textbook case of
Gulf War syndrome: "Fourteen years ago, I lost my grip
to the point where I can't turn keys. I'm stiff, with
bad joint and muscle pain, which has got progressively
worse. I can't go upstairs without getting out of
breath. I get fatigue so intense there are days I just
can't do much. And I fall down-I'll be out walking and
suddenly I fall." Together with her friend Anne Rabe,
49, a campaigner against N.L. since the 1980s, she has
sent questionnaires to as many of the people who lived
on the streets close to the plant as possible. So far,
they have almost 400 replies.
Among those who responded were people with rare
cancers or cancers that appeared at an unusually young
age, and families whose children had birth defects.
There were 17 cases of kidney problems, 15 of lung
cancer, and 11 of leukemia. There were also five
thyroid cancers and 16 examples of other thyroid
problems-all conditions associated with radiation.
Other people described symptoms similar to Herr's.
Altogether, 174 of those in the sample had been
diagnosed with one kind of cancer or another. American
women have about a 33 percent chance of getting cancer
in their lifetimes, mostly after the age of 60. (For
men, it's nearly 50 percent.) Some of the Colonie
cancer victims are two decades younger. "We have what
look like possible suspicious clusters," says Rabe. "A
health study here is a perfect opportunity to see how
harmful this stuff really is."
On June 14, 2004, the army's Physical Evaluation
Board, the body that decides whether a soldier should
get sickness pay, convened to evaluate the case of
Raymond Ramos of the 442nd Military Police company. It
followed the Pentagon's approach, not Dr. Durakovic's.
The board examined his Walter Reed medical-file
summary, which describes his symptoms in detail,
suggests that they may have been caused by serving in
Iraq, and accepts that "achieving a cure is not a
realistic treatment objective." But the summary
mentions no physical reason for them at all, let alone
depleted uranium.
Like many veterans of the first Gulf War, Ramos
was told by the board that his disability had been
caused primarily by post-traumatic stress. It did not
derive "from injury or disease received in the line of
duty as a direct result of armed conflict." Instead,
his record says, he got "scared in the midst of a
riot" and was "emotionally upset by reports of battle casualties." Although he was too sick to go back to work as a narcotics cop, he would get a disability benefit fixed at $1,197 a month, just 30 percent of his basic military pay.
On the day we meet, in September 2004, his
symptoms are hardly alleviated. "I'm in lots of pain
in my joints. I'm constantly fatigued-I can fall
asleep at the drop of a dime. My wife tells me things
and I just forget. It's not fair to my family."
For the time being, the case against DU appears to
remain unproved. But if Asaf Durakovic, Doug Rokke,
and their many allies around the world are right, and
the Pentagon wrong, the costs-human, legal, and
financial-will be incalculable. They may also be
widespread. In October, the regional health authority
of Sardinia, Italy, began hearings to investigate
illnesses suffered by people who live near a US firing
range there that tests DU weapons.
In 2002 the United Nations Sub-Commission on the
Promotion and Protection of Human Rights declared that
depleted uranium was a weapon of mass destruction, and
its use a breach of international law. But the
difference between DU and the W.M.D. that formed the
rationale for the Iraqi invasion is that depleted
uranium may have a boomerang effect, afflicting the
soldiers of the army that fires it as well as the
enemy victims of "lethality overmatch."
The four members of the 442nd who tested positive
all say they have met soldiers from other units during
their medical treatment who complain of similar
ailments, and fear that they too may have been
exposed. "It's bad enough being sent out there knowing
you could be killed in combat," Raymond Ramos says.
"But people are at risk of bringing something back
that might kill them slowly. That's not right."

David Rose is a Vanity Fair contributing editor.
His book Guantánamo: The War on Human Rights is an
in-depth investigation of the atrocities taking place
at the Cuban prison.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Hey Shang. Perhaps we are discussing different magazines? I though the Lancet was a media guide put out by Reporter's Without Borders?

Colly - I tried googling "The Lancet," checking up on the "Reporters Without Borders" home page and using their search feature, and googling "reporters without borders lancet" to see if I could make a connection. I couldn't find anything connecting the two, although I might have missed something. The references to "The Lancet" that I was able to find all referred to it as the British medical journal with which I am familiar. I also recognize what looks like their numbering system from the citation; there aren't a lot of journal that go into the 9000's in their issues. I'm pretty sure that it is the British medical journal that they are citing. I think this significant because they are essentially gold-standard research: a peer-reviewed scientific journal. [EDITED: Sorry, Colly. I was typing this as you posted your above generous comments in reference to The Lancet. Wasn't trying to beat a dead horse; I much prefer flogging of live ones.]

I'm rather with you on the Daily Mirror, or at least on newspaper journalism in general. However, let me make this argument - that was essentially a "color" quotation, a very brief piece of a longer argument and not any essential part of the case against DU rounds, but rather an attempt to make the reader look carefully at what facts were there. Some of those facts are coming from reputable sources.

It may or may not be a decision best left to the military. I tend to believe as long as there is a tactical option that saves men's lives, you will have a hard time discarding it. And in this case, it's a proven life saver.

No arguments on the latter half of that; just observing that that is why I think that these decisions are better made at other levels. It's extremely difficult to make a short-term tactical solution available and ask people not to use it, whatever the long-term consequences. Hence the only real way for it not to be used is for it not to be made available as an option.

We did decide not to use posion gas. It's effects were horrid and documented beyond dispute. There isn't any documentation I have seen that shows Du produces the effects that would warrant it's banning it. If someone has evidence that is that strong, I would like to see it.

I'll go back to my earlier comment on standards of evidence. If this was a wild and bizarre claim - for example, that experimental government brain-wave surveillance was making veterans insane - then I would need some amazingly compelling evidence, because the assertion is very unusual. However, this assertion is not unusual or even unlikely: that regularly inhaling radioactive particulates might result in long-term damage to individual health. I think that the evidence we have, given the reasonableness of the claim, at the very least warrants extreme caution and a serious cutback in usage until we know what it is that we are doing.

What I don't believe in, is taking a weapon away from our troops that is so efficient without compelling evidence we are doing a greater good. that evidence is lacking. While I see the possible dangers and I agree we should not be a party to damaging the enviornment any more than we already do, I don't see the proofs that that is the case.

I think I see why we are at odds on this. Let me try enunciating it, not to convince anyone either way, but to see if I've got it right. I think you're hesitant to see the recall of DU because the recall will endanger human lives and it's not proven that the use is harmful. I would prefer to see restrictions because I believe that the use endangers human lives and that it's not proven that it's safe. Here's the balance I see: you've really got the burden of proof on your side. That is, you can prove that not using DU rounds really will endanger soldiers' lives in a practical fashion. I haven't got the same level of proof; I've got rising rates of birth defects and cancers and some strong evidence that in laboratory conditions inhaled DU dust *can* cause severe health problems, but it's harder to prove that they are actually doing so in this case.

Given that difference, here's what sways me. While acknowledging that we don't have proof absolute, there are two additional things on my mind.

(1) Proof absolute for long-term effects is almost impossible to get in the short term, by the definition of "long-term effects." This doesn't mean that they don't happen, or even that they cannot be proven. What is means is that (meaning no offense) there is actually a level of unreasonableness to demanding absolute proof of long-term effects before halting an action. The nature of long-term effects themselves means that you won't have absolute, total proof until it's too late to save a great many people affected by the results. As an example, I will offer US tobacco companies, which for years insisted that there was no clear link between tobacco use and health problems. So long as the long-term effects hadn't had enough years of study to thoroughly, completely prove that, they could claim to be "right" in some ways. However, I think most reasonable people in possession of the information they had would have come to the conclusion that the writing was on the wall. I'll argue that that looks like the case with DU as well.

(2) While we wait for proof absolute, we must weight this question: do we continue while waiting for proof, or do we suspend the action while waiting for proof? That is, yes, DU is not utterly and completely proven long-term dangerous. On the other hand, I think you'll concede that it is is no way proven safe either. I would argue that morally, that doesn't automatically place "keep using it" as the default position. If there is doubt about whether something is safe or not, we have to weight short term gains vs. long term losses. While I would not wish to see any person die without reason, I think that we have to extend that logic to others - the Iraqis - as well as to ourselves. That we see the short-term losses more obviously, because we can count them and because they are our men, should not lead us to discount the potential for long-term losses. While recongizing that the long-term losses are, fairly, "potential" - unproven - they are also massive. And, going back to the question of the burden of evidence, they are not ridiculously beyond the realm of reason. The reasoning suggesting that DU might be dangerous is not inherently far-fetched, and the evidence of existing birth defects and cancers is sobering. Thus I would argue in the absence of definitive evidence, this might be a "stop using until fully investigated" situation.

Just my horsey ramblings.

Shanglan

(PS - Why do you think it is, Colly, that we each have both conservative and liberal elements to our approaches to life, and yet we never seem to match up on any issue? Can't be the heart. That's working just fine.)

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Let's remember that DU is less radioactive than what's found in nature.

Natural Uranium is a mixture of mainly two isotopes: U-235 (>99%) and U-238 (~0.7%). Both are radioactive, but the radioactivity given off by U-235 is a more dangerous (higher energy) than what's given off by U-238. Depleted Uranium has only about 40% the U-235 that you find in naturally occurring uranium, and so is less dangerous in that regard.

Of course, when turned into bullets, the amount of both isotopes is much more concentrated than what's found in nature, unless you're working in a uranium mine.

There are three types of radiation:

--alpha particles are actually helium atom nuclei. They're big and massive, but rather slow and so don't have much penetrating power. Dead skin cells are sufficient to protect us against most alpha particles. Of course, if an alpha-emitter gets into your body, you can be in big trouble, because its shooting alpha right into your tissues.

--Beta particles are high energy electrons. They have better penetrating power than alpha, but can be stopped by reasonable shielding (tinfoil, etc)

--Gamma rays are not particles but are high energy electromagnetic radiation, kind of like x-rays. They can penetrate all sorts of stuff, but because they do, they tend not to interact that well with matter. They go right through it.

As long as it remains outside the body, uranium's not that bad. It emits relatively low-energy alpha particles that can be stopped by dead skin or a paper coverall. It also emits gamma rays, but you'd have to work around it for a pretty long time to run a significant risk. These are not high-energy gamma.

If uranium gets inside the body though, its radioactivity poses increased risks of lung cancer and bone cancer. That's where all the concern is, over inhaled uranium dust.

Truth is, Uranium is probably more dangerous as a chemical toxin, like lead and other heavy metals. It can cause damage the kidneys and liver through its toxicity, which has nothing to do with its being radioactive.

Radioactivity and health is a complicated subject, because the health effects depend not only on the type of radiation, but on its energy (which is different for every radioactive isotope) and the radioactivity of the daughter products produced during decay, and the kind of tissue exposed. There are also many different units used to express radiactivity. Some meaure energy, some measure intensity, and both of these are different than units used to measure actual tissue damage due to radioactivity (measured in units called "sieverts" or "rads") If you want to try and wade through this stuff, check out this "child's primer" site:

http://www.bartleby.com/64/C004/037.html

The point is, be very careful when reading health claims concerning radiation. It's possibel to muddy the waters so well with choice of units and what's being measured that you can prove almost anything, good or bad.

People working in radiological medicine understand that no one who lives on earth can escape natural background radiation. It might be scary when you hear that the government considers an exposure to 100 microsieverts a year to be safe, but that's the way the game is played. They trade off risk against benefit.

As for inhalation, people who live in the American Southwest already inhale significant amounts of uranium and daughter products every day. People with enclosed basements in the northeast inhale radioative radon every day. How much you have to inhale before there's an adverse health risk is a very, very tough question to answer. It's not like we can say, "so many sieverts of exposure = cancer".

As to the contention that the half life of Uranium is 4.5 million years or whatever, that's true. But that's true of naturally occuring uranium as well, which is already all over the place, so he's just trying to scare you. There's a law of physics that says that the more dangerous (higher energy) an isotope's radiation, the shorter the half life and the more quickly it decays. The ones that stick around the longest are the safest, radiologically speaking.

Incidently, for those just terrified of nuclear energy, it's now generally accepted that there was a natural occuring runaway nuclear reaction that occurred in Oklo, Gabon (Africa) a couple billion years ago, when enough naturally occurring uranium came together under the right conditions of pressure and temperature (and with water present) to set off a chain reaction like those used in reactors today. The thing ran for a couple million years, glowing like a sonofabitch and putting out all sorts of radiation. Luckily the by-products--including plutonium, of which we're so frightened today--were safely contained in the surrounding rock and have been for all this time:

http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/factsheets/doeymp0010.shtml

 

[BlackShanglan]

Fascinating contributions, Dr. M. Thanks for posting them. They are a great contribution to the argument, and do make me ponder my own statements re: how inherently "reasonable" are claims for the dangers of inhaling DU dust, and what standard of evidence is needed?

 

[neonlyte]

Fascinating contributions, Dr. M. Thanks for posting them. They are a great contribution to the argument, and do make me ponder my own statements re: how inherently "reasonable" are claims for the dangers of inhaling DU dust, and what standard of evidence is needed?

RR posted a link early to a UN evaluation - it takes some reading, scientific evidence, statistical analysis etc. The long and short is:
- avoid targeted vehicles
- don't be too close to an explosion
other than that, the risk does not appear to be significant, however more research is required on the toxic chemical component of the risk.

Handling DU weapons appears to my reading to be less of a risk than standing under the open sky.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Handling DU weapons appears to my reading to be less of a risk than standing under the open sky.

On that, I think I tend to agree, or at least to say that I've seen nothing that looks disturbing. It's this question of the fine particle dust that looks more troubling.

Another tough call, though. On the one hand, fine dust can be dispersed relatively easily, possibly contaminating large areas. On the other hand, does that really just mean that it's quickly reduced to concentrations that wouldn't be harmful?

Any research on how much of this stuff needs to be inhaled to generate effects, or is that in the "long-term" bin?

Shanglan

 

[neonlyte]

Any research on how much of this stuff needs to be inhaled to generate effects, or is that in the "long-term" bin?
Shanglan

Entering the body is when the problem starts. Dust in the air or on the ground represents lower risk, it is the inhaling of particles that is the significant danger, primarliy bone and kidney cancers. There are different effects from soluable and insoluable particles with different speeds of transmission (through the body) and effect.

Anyone poking around in a wrecked vehicle taken out by DU would in all likelyhood inhale dust, but (according to the study) wearing a DU bracelet for one year increases the risk of skin cancer by 1%.

Of course you can interpret statistics many ways, the RR link is a UN convened committee report and should not be lightly dismissed.

 

[TheEarl]

RR posted a link early to a UN evaluation - it takes some reading, scientific evidence, statistical analysis etc. The long and short is:
- avoid targeted vehicles
- don't be too close to an explosion
other than that, the risk does not appear to be significant, however more research is required on the toxic chemical component of the risk.

However, the issue is that with the wind in the right direction, there's a lot of scope for 'too close' to an explosion.

Interesting text by Dr M. Interested to hear the answer to Shang's q.

The Earl

 

[TheEarl]

On that, I think I tend to agree, or at least to say that I've seen nothing that looks disturbing. It's this question of the fine particle dust that looks more troubling.

Another tough call, though. On the one hand, fine dust can be dispersed relatively easily, possibly contaminating large areas. On the other hand, does that really just mean that it's quickly reduced to concentrations that wouldn't be harmful?

Any research on how much of this stuff needs to be inhaled to generate effects, or is that in the "long-term" bin?

Shanglan

Even one particle in the wrong place can cause cancer. However the wrong places are still undetermined even by the Institute of Cancer Research.

The Earl

 

[neonlyte]

However, the issue is that with the wind in the right direction, there's a lot of scope for 'too close' to an explosion.

Interesting text by Dr M. Interested to hear the answer to Shang's q.

The Earl

Earl,
Agreed. the likelyhood is no one (other than the combatants) is likely to be too close to a tank being shelled. The report claims - and I'm not sure I entirely agree with this - that uranium within a combat zone is approximately 1.0Tonnes/kmsq compared with normal background radiation of 2.0Tonnes/kmsq. I don't believe this accounts for either the dust effect on impact (obviously higher density locally) or the toxic chemical component also present in the dust cloud.

As I said above - statistics...

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Colly - I tried googling "The Lancet," checking up on the "Reporters Without Borders" home page and using their search feature, and googling "reporters without borders lancet" to see if I could make a connection. I couldn't find anything connecting the two, although I might have missed something. The references to "The Lancet" that I was able to find all referred to it as the British medical journal with which I am familiar. I also recognize what looks like their numbering system from the citation; there aren't a lot of journal that go into the 9000's in their issues. I'm pretty sure that it is the British medical journal that they are citing. I think this significant because they are essentially gold-standard research: a peer-reviewed scientific journal. [EDITED: Sorry, Colly. I was typing this as you posted your above generous comments in reference to The Lancet. Wasn't trying to beat a dead horse; I much prefer flogging of live ones.]

I'm rather with you on the Daily Mirror, or at least on newspaper journalism in general. However, let me make this argument - that was essentially a "color" quotation, a very brief piece of a longer argument and not any essential part of the case against DU rounds, but rather an attempt to make the reader look carefully at what facts were there. Some of those facts are coming from reputable sources.



No arguments on the latter half of that; just observing that that is why I think that these decisions are better made at other levels. It's extremely difficult to make a short-term tactical solution available and ask people not to use it, whatever the long-term consequences. Hence the only real way for it not to be used is for it not to be made available as an option.



I'll go back to my earlier comment on standards of evidence. If this was a wild and bizarre claim - for example, that experimental government brain-wave surveillance was making veterans insane - then I would need some amazingly compelling evidence, because the assertion is very unusual. However, this assertion is not unusual or even unlikely: that regularly inhaling radioactive particulates might result in long-term damage to individual health. I think that the evidence we have, given the reasonableness of the claim, at the very least warrants extreme caution and a serious cutback in usage until we know what it is that we are doing.



I think I see why we are at odds on this. Let me try enunciating it, not to convince anyone either way, but to see if I've got it right. I think you're hesitant to see the recall of DU because the recall will endanger human lives and it's not proven that the use is harmful. I would prefer to see restrictions because I believe that the use endangers human lives and that it's not proven that it's safe. Here's the balance I see: you've really got the burden of proof on your side. That is, you can prove that not using DU rounds really will endanger soldiers' lives in a practical fashion. I haven't got the same level of proof; I've got rising rates of birth defects and cancers and some strong evidence that in laboratory conditions inhaled DU dust *can* cause severe health problems, but it's harder to prove that they are actually doing so in this case.

Given that difference, here's what sways me. While acknowledging that we don't have proof absolute, there are two additional things on my mind.

(1) Proof absolute for long-term effects is almost impossible to get in the short term, by the definition of "long-term effects." This doesn't mean that they don't happen, or even that they cannot be proven. What is means is that (meaning no offense) there is actually a level of unreasonableness to demanding absolute proof of long-term effects before halting an action. The nature of long-term effects themselves means that you won't have absolute, total proof until it's too late to save a great many people affected by the results. As an example, I will offer US tobacco companies, which for years insisted that there was no clear link between tobacco use and health problems. So long as the long-term effects hadn't had enough years of study to thoroughly, completely prove that, they could claim to be "right" in some ways. However, I think most reasonable people in possession of the information they had would have come to the conclusion that the writing was on the wall. I'll argue that that looks like the case with DU as well.

(2) While we wait for proof absolute, we must weight this question: do we continue while waiting for proof, or do we suspend the action while waiting for proof? That is, yes, DU is not utterly and completely proven long-term dangerous. On the other hand, I think you'll concede that it is is no way proven safe either. I would argue that morally, that doesn't automatically place "keep using it" as the default position. If there is doubt about whether something is safe or not, we have to weight short term gains vs. long term losses. While I would not wish to see any person die without reason, I think that we have to extend that logic to others - the Iraqis - as well as to ourselves. That we see the short-term losses more obviously, because we can count them and because they are our men, should not lead us to discount the potential for long-term losses. While recongizing that the long-term losses are, fairly, "potential" - unproven - they are also massive. And, going back to the question of the burden of evidence, they are not ridiculously beyond the realm of reason. The reasoning suggesting that DU might be dangerous is not inherently far-fetched, and the evidence of existing birth defects and cancers is sobering. Thus I would argue in the absence of definitive evidence, this might be a "stop using until fully investigated" situation.

Just my horsey ramblings.

Shanglan

(PS - Why do you think it is, Colly, that we each have both conservative and liberal elements to our approaches to life, and yet we never seem to match up on any issue? Can't be the heart. That's working just fine.)

LOL. WE don't match up often, but in truth, we are rarely diametrically opposed either. The truth is, neither of us assumes an extreme position on most things and we both reserve the right to modify our positions as facts warrant. Often, we actually hold relatively similar positions, but we disagree in the minutae.

On the need to prove, the claim is exceptional. Perhaps not in it's believeability, but it is in its consequences. You are talking about taking an extremely effective weapon out of the hands of our military. I need to see proof,not claims that it's possible or even probable it has dangers. I need to know the dangers, the incidence of illness, the sceintific support for the claim. Uranium is toxic. It's also radioactive. It's also one hell of an effective tank killer. I don't disagree that we should exercise prudence in using it, but I don't think these people are pushing for prudence. They seem, by their inflamatory rhetoric, that they are pushing for a ban based on claims they haven't substantiated. That smacks of hysterics, not prudence. In the heat of a battle, I just can't see where you can tell the men at the point of conflict they can't use DU rounds because they might be dangerous.

Quote:

(1) Proof absolute for long-term effects is almost impossible to get in the short term, by the definition of "long-term effects." This doesn't mean that they don't happen, or even that they cannot be proven. What is means is that (meaning no offense) there is actually a level of unreasonableness to demanding absolute proof of long-term effects before halting an action. The nature of long-term effects themselves means that you won't have absolute, total proof until it's too late to save a great many people affected by the results. As an example, I will offer US tobacco companies, which for years insisted that there was no clear link between tobacco use and health problems. So long as the long-term effects hadn't had enough years of study to thoroughly, completely prove that, they could claim to be "right" in some ways. However, I think most reasonable people in possession of the information they had would have come to the conclusion that the writing was on the wall. I'll argue that that looks like the case with DU as well.

Fair enough. In the case of tobacco, there were long term effects. There was also a very influential and later throughly discredited study on second hand smoke. A study that was fueled by people with an agenda and who let their fears and prejudices over rule their ethics. Now, in Kosovo, enough time has elapsed that we should be able to determine something, if it's as deadly as some say. You can support either side with the info you wish to present, but when you view it all as a whole, it seems there isn't enough to make a consensus.

Quote:
(2) While we wait for proof absolute, we must weight this question: do we continue while waiting for proof, or do we suspend the action while waiting for proof? That is, yes, DU is not utterly and completely proven long-term dangerous. On the other hand, I think you'll concede that it is is no way proven safe either. I would argue that morally, that doesn't automatically place "keep using it" as the default position. If there is doubt about whether something is safe or not, we have to weight short term gains vs. long term losses. While I would not wish to see any person die without reason, I think that we have to extend that logic to others - the Iraqis - as well as to ourselves. That we see the short-term losses more obviously, because we can count them and because they are our men, should not lead us to discount the potential for long-term losses. While recongizing that the long-term losses are, fairly, "potential" - unproven - they are also massive. And, going back to the question of the burden of evidence, they are not ridiculously beyond the realm of reason. The reasoning suggesting that DU might be dangerous is not inherently far-fetched, and the evidence of existing birth defects and cancers is sobering. Thus I would argue in the absence of definitive evidence, this might be a "stop using until fully investigated" situation.

What evidence of birth defects are we addressing? I'm not trying to belabor the point, but Iraqi doctors noting a rise is hardly scientific. Has anyone done a census or has WHO or the UN or some reliable body done all the foot work?Unless I am way off base (and I admit I may be), everything I have seen from Iraq would lead one to believe they aren't in a position to give reliable reports on deaths. Are these reports scientific fact or are they opinion dresssed up with a few questionaires? If there are reports from scientific bodies that are making a direct link between DU and birth defects or cancer, I'd like to see them. That would go a long way to changeing my opinion. If the reports are unsubstaniated or flimsy approximations of Scientific investigative methods masquradeing as fact, they are likely to convince me the opposite is true.

I have only one real problem with your stop using it until we are sure idea. You noted long term effects take a long time to be fully investigated. How many service men's lives will we sacrifice in the name of being sure it is safe? If the answer is greater than none, then I have to say it's not a situation where you can simply ban it till you are sure without consequence. In the balance of my own mental scales, a dead GI in the name of being sure isn't acceptable.

It's one thing to say sacrifice is neccessary. It's another thing to pick a tank crew and tell them "you are going to get hit with an anti tank round, one we could have prevented being fired, in the name of being sure that 40 years down the road we don't discover that you might have died of cancer if we had killed the tank before you got into it's range."

Obviously, you aren't singling out a particular crew, but your solution does put all crews at added risk. Risk they are incurring in the name of being sure thier weapons have no long term effects. I just can't concicence sending these men into harms way, obstensively for the good of us all and depriving them of such an effective weapon unless we are dead sure it represents an ongoing danger to all.

 

[Guest]

On that, I think I tend to agree, or at least to say that I've seen nothing that looks disturbing. It's this question of the fine particle dust that looks more troubling.

Another tough call, though. On the one hand, fine dust can be dispersed relatively easily, possibly contaminating large areas. On the other hand, does that really just mean that it's quickly reduced to concentrations that wouldn't be harmful?

Any research on how much of this stuff needs to be inhaled to generate effects, or is that in the "long-term" bin?

Shanglan

There is one other thing you need to remember about uranium, it is a heavy metal. Heavier by far than even lead. It is not going to be stirred up by a simple breeze and it will sttle in a matter of seconds.

The initial blast may disperse a small amount of dust but it will not travel far. This isn't like fallout that can be wind bourne for hundreds of miles. Yhe dust will fall to the ground quickly and is not likely to be stirred up again in large quantities. The first rain will likely wash it deeper into the sand and then it is going to be even less a problem.

This whole thing sounds to me like more propoganda to turn the US military into a band of ogres with no regard for the welfare of anyone. These are the types of rumors that are spread by people who feel they MUST have a cause to speak out on, otherwise they have no voice and will be "nobody". The facts mean nothing to them. All that matters is that people hear them and believe what they are told.

Makes me ashamed to be associated with them as a human.

 

[TheEarl]

There is one other thing you need to remember about uranium, it is a heavy metal. Heavier by far than even lead. It is not going to be stirred up by a simple breeze and it will sttle in a matter of seconds.

The initial blast may disperse a small amount of dust but it will not travel far. This isn't like fallout that can be wind bourne for hundreds of miles. Yhe dust will fall to the ground quickly and is not likely to be stirred up again in large quantities. The first rain will likely wash it deeper into the sand and then it is going to be even less a problem.

This whole thing sounds to me like more propoganda to turn the US military into a band of ogres with no regard for the welfare of anyone. These are the types of rumors that are spread by people who feel they MUST have a cause to speak out on, otherwise they have no voice and will be "nobody". The facts mean nothing to them. All that matters is that people hear them and believe what they are told.

Makes me ashamed to be associated with them as a human.

Uranium may be a heavy metal, but in dust form, it's extremely light. We're not talking dust you can see. We're talking about a fine mist that's impreceptable to the human eye andthat will float on the winds.

The Earl

 

[BlackShanglan]

On the need to prove, the claim is exceptional. Perhaps not in it's believeability, but it is in its consequences. You are talking about taking an extremely effective weapon out of the hands of our military.

Here, Colly, I must disagree with you. I believe that you are treating "claim" and "results" as the same thing, when they are not. That is, I'm saying that the "claim" - that fine particle depleted uranium dust might cause long-term health problems - is a reasonable claim that requires a lower standard of evidence than more wild claims - "tin foil hats prevent aliens from reading your mind." In terms of how reasonable the claim itself is, it's pretty reasonable in that it is fairly consistant of what we know about how radiation and heavy metals affect the body. If I then also have a sudden spike in birth defects and cancer rates, it's not unreasonable to think that the uranium dust might have something to do with it. It is, essentially, less unreasonable to suspect fine particle depleted uranium dust as a source of problems than, say, to suspect alien space rays of similar effects. For this reason, I need less evidence before I am willing to consider that the uranium might be the source of the problems, because the claim that inhaling radioactive uranium dust might cause severe health problems is inherently more reasonable and more in sync with what we know about the world then the alien space rays claim.

What you're discussing is not the claim - the assertion itself - but the results of an action predicated on the claim. You're saying that you require more evidence not based on the likelihood of the claim being true, but on the potential effects of believing the claim, true or not. I do agree that when there are potentially severe results to an action, it behooves us to consider how we act and to gather all of the best information available. However, the severity of the results has nothing to do with the likelihood of the claim being true. The claim "depleted uranium dust will cause long-term and sever health problems in the combat areas and amongst non-combatants" is not an unreasonable claim simply because it would result in very awkward moral and military consequences. It's just as likely and good a claim whatever the results. My point here is that in terms of the claim's situation within what we know of medicine and radiation as well as heavy-metal poisoning, the claim itself is inherently reasonable. It doesn't ask us to make wild leaps of faith or to embrace theories of causation or effect that don't currently exist. Therefore, whether we like the results of believing the claim or not, it is significant that there is some evidence to support it, given both that long-term effects are impossible to prove at this time and that what we see now is consistant both with this theory and with what we know about how the materials and systems involved work.

I think it's fair to recognize that in this case, absolutely ironclad evidence - either for or against the safety of using DU rounds - may be years off, and that in the absence of ironclad evidence it's not unreasonable to consider what we have, given that the claim is not outrageous. That a thing has not been proved beyond a shadow of any possible doubt in double-blind multi-year studies does not mean that it does not exist. While we should not jump at shadows, I don't think it's reasonable to demand that the Holy Grail of research must be presented in a case where it's clearly not possible. Yes, we're looking at probabilities - but most of life is built on probabilities and not on ironclad certainties.

What evidence of birth defects are we addressing? I'm not trying to belabor the point, but Iraqi doctors noting a rise is hardly scientific.

Why?

It's one thing to say sacrifice is neccessary. It's another thing to pick a tank crew and tell them "you are going to get hit with an anti tank round, one we could have prevented being fired, in the name of being sure that 40 years down the road we don't discover that you might have died of cancer if we had killed the tank before you got into it's range."

Colly, you know I'm going to have to call you on this. This is a simple pathos example that does not address the question of determining whether DU should be suspended. One might make just as compelling a pathos example of having you line up a village of Iraqis and count them off to tell them which will die of lung cancer, which of liver cancer, which mothers will have deformed and helpless children, which will miscarry, etc. Yes, the truth is that whatever way one makes this decision, people may die as a result. There is no simple solution to it, and I don't pretend that there is. However, much as I value the lives of our soldiers, I do not and cannot value them as inherently higher than those of innocent civilians caught in the combat area and possibly living with its effects for a very long time. While I recognize that politically it would be popular, I do not believe it morally just to save one soldier from our country by condemning half a dozen civilians to suffering and death afterwards. When the potential is a problem of that nature, and when the nature of the claim itself - purely the general reasonableness of the claim weighed with the evidence available - raises the serious possibility that it is correct, I can't see that it is right to continue without regard to that.

I just can't concicence sending these men into harms way, obstensively for the good of us all and depriving them of such an effective weapon unless we are dead sure it represents an ongoing danger to all.

I think my answer here is as above - that there is little in life that is a dead certainty, and that I don't feel it enough to say "we're not positive that there is harm, so we will proceed without change." While acknowledging that there is certainly a difference between suggestive evidence and absolute certainty, there is also a difference between suggestive evidence and a total lack of empirical or rational support. I'll offer the contention that it's not reasonable to treat the latter two situations as the same thing, especially not when the repercussions could be massive. I understand your concerns that this could be used as fodder in anti-Iraq approaches, but that doesn't make the basic facts any less sobering or suggestive of a need for swift and thoughtful action on the topic. Yes, that should include careful and ideally non-partisan, non-interested-party studies on the effects of the long-term presence of wind-dispersed DU dust in combat areas, and Kosovo certainly looks like a logical place to start. But there should also be caution on the part of our military and our society, and some restraint given that we can't really prove the opposite assertion (there is no harm from DU weapons) either. Yes, that may handicap our activities. But that is the price of doing what is ethically right. At times, it is far from the most pragmatic thing.

Shanglan

 

[sun_lover_61]

Interesting point. Anyone know what the chemical properties of uranium are (aside from radioactivity). I'm presuming it's toxic.

I think radiation owuld still be your first worry in that situation, but I'd be curious to see if there are chemical effects.

The Earl

Earl, while you are all criticising me for my manner of debate it is clear that you do not read my posts too carefully - except to take offense.

I explained the matter of toxicity/radioactivity of DU in the second post of the thread, in clear lay persons terms.

DU is HUGELY toxic - and this is a bigger issue than its radioactivity. U-238 has a half-life of 4.5 billion years (a long time), meaning it is a low intensity source of radiation.

But the effects of toxicity and radioactivity have been found to "couple". Try my earlier post (#2 in the thread). I am out of words.

SL61

ps My last word on this - i am not against military men as such. They are guys doing a job. I merely said they do not fight for me - they were my precise words.

 

[TheEarl]

Earl, while you are all criticising me for my manner of debate it is clear that you do not read my posts too carefully - except to take offense.

I explained the matter of toxicity/radioactivity of DU in the second post of the thread, in clear lay persons terms.

DU is HUGELY toxic - and this is a bigger issue than its radioactivity. U-238 has a half-life of 4.5 billion years (a long time), meaning it is a low intensity source of radiation.

But the effects of toxicity and radioactivity have been found to "couple". Try my earlier post (#2 in the thread). I am out of words.

SL61

ps My last word on this - i am not against military men as such. They are guys doing a job. I merely said they do not fight for me - they were my precise words.

No, actually what you said was "one gasp of the air and you have a lung-ful of residual toxin and radioactivity." That's not telling me anything. That's telling me that you believe it to be dangerous and adding a little bit of hyperbole on top.

I asked whether there were any chemical effects. I was expecting that any answer would involve details and references, rather than just saying "It's toxic because I say so."

If you're going to join in a very well reasoned and argued debate, then you should argue with an intent to learn and to teach others, rather than to keep repeating an opinion without providing details.

The Earl

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Uranium may be a heavy metal, but in dust form, it's extremely light. We're not talking dust you can see. We're talking about a fine mist that's impreceptable to the human eye andthat will float on the winds.

The Earl

It would seem to me that worrying about the toxicity of inhaled DU fumes from munitions is on a par with worrying about inhaled lead fumes from conventional weapons. Compared to the other hazards of the battlefield, this is just not very significant. We generally don't worry about clouds of lead dust hanging over battlefields. I don't see any reason why uranium should be much different.

As far as toxins go, I would be much happier on a field strewn with DU than living under the shadow of a burning oil well, which puts out chemicals that are known to be many more times more carcinogenic than heavy metals. Hell, I'd even take the DU over having to drink a glassful of water drawn from the Euphrates River every day.

Radioactivity is frightening to most of us, and with good reason. It's pretty scary to be around something deadly that you can't feel or taste or see. But when I worked at Argonne National Laboratory we dealt with it every day without incident. I don't know whether the army is lying or covering things up about the hazards of DU, but I kind of doubt it. I would imagine they've done a pretty thorough cost-benefit analysis of the issue

Meanwhile there are plenty of other things we're doing that are far worse, in my opinion. The US is still the largest manufacturer and exporter of land mines in the world, long-lived, cruel and insidious devices which kill and maim a hell of a lot more people than those who die from any sort of radiation or heavy-metal poisoning, and a weapon that's especially lethal to children. As far as I know, the Home of the Brave is the last nation on earth refusing to sign an international ban on the manufacture and use of land mines. We've polluted far more land with our mines than we have with radioactivity.

 

[cantdog]

Is there a credible source, that provides documented proof that DU is dangerous? We are of course talking about the dust from use, since handling it in the form of munitions is shown to be relatively safe.

In the above article, starting off with accusations of crimes against humanity raises red flags. When you quote the daily mirror, my bullshit-o-meter goes off the scales. And then the Lancet? Ok, my credulity has just been streched past the breaking point.

This dosen't read like science, it reads like sensationalist journalism and far left attack, without substanitive proof of claims or doumentary support.

The use of Du is not banned by any international treaty I know of. Claiming it violates international laws on the use of Chemical weapons is, IMHO, spurious. It isn't a chemical weapon in the context of international treaty. If you want to make that jump Napalm is a chemical weapon, bombs, whose explosive compnents are chemicals, are chemical weapons, as are bullets, since the propellant comes from a chemical reaction. If you want to carry it out that far, we need to go back to fighting with sword and lance.

Again, I am not trying to justify it's use. I will say, that people outside the US. attempting to villify and or have banned weapons that give the US military an advantage is predictable. Given the GW shows no restraint in use of our military, it might even be reguarded as inevitable.

DU constitutes a major advantage on the battlefield. Anyone who wishes to see its use curtailed will have to provide exceedingly strong evidence of the dangers and there will have to be a significant amount of public pressure before the military will simply toss aside the most effective and cost effective aeriel tank killing weapon in the arsenal.

Articles in the Mirror are unlikely to convince anyone who isn't already convinced. An article in a respectable scientific publication, one that requires verifiable proofs of assertion would be much more likely to impress.

Colleen, the Lancet is the UK's JAMA. It's a medical journal. Why do you raise your disvbelief level at a medical journal?