that even gas masks don't do shit to protect against depleted uranium oxide dust from expended munitions? I'll bet not.
Depleted uranium is nasty stuff. Think about this as you read news reports of the current massive aerial bombing campaign the U.S. is waging around Samarra, north of Baghdad. You might have thought "insurgents" would be the only casualties before you read "Depleted Uranium For Dummies." But you're not a "dummie" anymore.
Our men and women of the New York State National Guard have just spent six months taking radioactive showers and washing small open wounds in a depleted uranium broth. They've eaten over 500 meals with food, plates and silverware washed with hot water, in two senses of the word. Thanks to George Bush Sr. and Dick Cheney's decision to use depleted uranium munitions in 1991, the Tigris river, the Bible's Edenic river of life, has become a modern river of death. And our brothers and sisters are drinking the forbidden water, with knowing it—despite informational videotapes produced for them by Major Doug Rokke and his team. The tapes, pamphlets, and bulletin board posters are mandatory, but how many of our men and woman serving in radioactive areas have seen them?
Our troops inhale depleted uranium with every single breath. Radioactive particles the size of a virus cannot be filtered outside a laboratory. Even the 800,000 gas masks provided Gulf War troops were useless because the charcoal filters became inert within days. The only protection is airtight MOPP suits connected to oxygen tanks.
No place in Iraq is free from radioactive contamination, including today's supposedly "safe" Green Zone in Baghdad where top military officers, civilian occupation authorities, international journalists, and the Iraqi government leaders live and work.
http://www.countercurrents.org/hall230306.htmThe use of depleted uranium in munitions and weaponry is likely to come under intense scrutiny now that new research that found that uranium can bind to human DNA. The finding will likely have far-reaching implications for returned soldiers, civilians living in what were once war-zones and people who might live near uranium mines or processing facilities.
Uranium - when manifested as a radioactive metal - has profound and debilitating effects on human DNA. These radioactive effects have been well understood for decades, but there has been considerable debate and little agreement concerning the possible health risks associated with low-grade uranium ore (yellowcake) and depleted uranium.
Now however, Northern Arizona University biochemist Diane Stearns has established that when cells are exposed to uranium, the uranium binds to DNA and the cells acquire mutations, triggering a whole slew of protein replication errors, some of which can lead to various cancers. Stearns' research, published in the journals Mutagenesis and Molecular Carcinogenesis, confirms what many have suspected for some time - that uranium can damage DNA as a heavy metal, independently of its radioactive properties. "Essentially, if you get a heavy metal stuck on DNA, you can get a mutation," Stearns explained. While other heavy metals are known to bind to DNA, Stearns and her team were the first to identify this characteristic with uranium.
http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20060307010324data_trunc_sys.shtml, a presentation by Thomas Fasy MD PhD, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, New York
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