The horror of Depleted Uranium is not limited to Iraq

[indigobusiness]

DEMOCRACY BETRAYED

The horror of Depleted Uranium is not limited to Iraq – it may well
be at our doorsteps. The information which some governments
are concealing is presented here.

By James Denver


Remixed Propaganda Poster
by Micah Wright
www.micahwright.com

'I’m horrified. The people out there – the Iraqis, the media and the troops – risk the most appalling ill health. And the radiation from depleted uranium can travel literally anywhere. It’s going to destroy the lives of thousands of children, all over the world. We all know how far radiation can travel. Radiation from Chernobyl reached Wales and in Britain you sometimes get red dust from the Sahara on your car.’

The speaker is not some alarmist doom-sayer. He is Dr Chris Busby, the British radiation expert, Fellow of the University of Liverpool in the Faculty of Medicine and UK representative on the European Committee on Radiation Risk, talking about the best kept secret of this war: the fact that, by illegally using hundreds of tons of depleted uranium (DU) against Iraq, Britain and America have gravely endangered not only the Iraqis but the whole world. For these weapons have released deadly, carcinogenic and mutagenic, radioactive particles in such abundance that – whipped up by sandstorms and carried on trade winds – there is no corner of the globe they cannot penetrate – including Britain. For the wind has no boundaries and time is on their side: the radioactivity persists for over 4,500,000,000 years and can cause cancer, leukaemia, brain damage, kidney failure, and extreme birth defects – killing millions of every age for centuries to come. A crime against humanity which may, in the eyes of historians, rank with the worst atrocities of all time.

These weapons have released deadly, carcinogenic and mutagenic, radioactive particles in such abundance that there is no corner of the globe they cannot penetrate – including Britain.

Yet, officially, no crime has been committed. For this story is a dirty story in which the facts have been concealed from those who needed them most. It is also a story we need to know if the people of Iraq are to get the medical care they desperately need, and if our troops, returning from Iraq, are not to suffer as terribly as the veterans of other conflicts in which depleted uranium was used.

A dirty Tyson

‘Depleted’ uranium is in many ways a misnomer. For ‘depleted’ sounds weak. The only weak thing about depleted uranium is its price. It is dirt cheap, toxic, waste from nuclear power plants and bomb production. However, uranium is one of earth’s heaviest elements and DU packs a Tyson’s punch, smashing through tanks, buildings and bunkers with equal ease, spontaneously catching fire as it does so, and burning people alive. ‘Crispy critters’ is what US servicemen call those unfortunate enough to be close. And, when John Pilger encountered children killed at a greater distance he wrote: ‘The children’s skin had folded back, like parchment, revealing veins and burnt flesh that seeped blood, while the eyes, intact, stared straight ahead. I vomited.’ (Daily Mirror)

http://www.caduceus.info/articles/denver.htm

[proudbluestater]

1. Vanity Fair Dec. 2004 did an extensive article on DU.

Quite revealing and interesting. Like every other hazard our troops are exposed to thanks to their government decisions, the government denies people are becoming sick from DU.

[theresistance]

2. One of the real weapons of mass destruction

that Iraq has endured over the past 14 years...

[Oversea Visitor]

3. Seriously some studies need to be done

on the migration of this nano size DU particles. We breath in this particles and we are a done case.

[OneBlueSky]

4. if this isn't a crime against humanity, what is? . . .

BushCo MUST be held accountable for what may turn out to be one of the most heinous crimes against humanity and against nature ever committed . . . the world's scientists should come together and issue a scathing denunciation of these people and demand their prosecution as war criminals . . .

[NickB79]

5. For anyone with any idea of basic physics and radiation

Tell me what is wrong with this statment:

"For the wind has no boundaries and time is on their side: the radioactivity persists for over 4,500,000,000 years – killing millions of every age for centuries to come."

[NNadir]

6. The "killing" and persistance parts are what is wrong with the statement.

It is absurd to worry about the radiotoxicity of isolated (especially "depleted") Uranium; it borders on scientific illiteracy to do so. Chemical toxicity is of some concern though, although the chemical toxicity of uranium is much lower than the chemical toxicity of common elements like lead and mercury.

There are over three billion tons of uranium in the ocean alone. Uranium is a significant part of my soils here in New Jersey. Actually uranium is a rather common element in earth's crust, about as common as tin. It has been used over the centuries to make beautiful pottery glazes and is found in most older churches in the stained glass. Most large plane crashes, including those at the WTC, have distributed depleted uranium widely, since uranium is used as ballast in many aircraft. (The alternative is the far more toxic element lead.)

One of the largest sources for the wide atmospheric distribution of Uranium in the environment are coal fired powerplants, not tank shells. Uranium rains down continuously on people whenever they live near coal fired plants, particularly those fueled by Wyoming coals. http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

Also, the statement that uranium "persists" for 4,500,000,000 years is wrong. It will persist much longer than that if not fissioned. 4,500,000,000 is the half-life, not the lifetime. This means only one half of the Uranium now existing will be gone around the time the sun moves into a red giant phase and fries the earth. There is four times as much Thorium as there is uranium. Thorium, which was widely used in the gas mantles for camp lanterns and other gas stoves, is also radioactive. It's half life is 14,000,000,000 years, meaning that one half of it will not have decayed in the entire history of the earth.

The only way to eliminate uranium and thorium is to fission it. When a uranium atom or daughter atom is fissioned, it generally produces two radioactive nuclei which decay comparatively rapidly, some in a matter of minutes or even seconds, others, in a few hundred years. It takes millions of years for uranium to come into radioactive equilibrium with its decay daughters; this is why "depleted" uranium is much, much less radiotoxic than natural uranium. All of the decay daughters and much of the more radioactive isotope U-235 have been removed from depleted uranium. This compares with around 20 radioactive nuclei produced in a decay chain of either Uranium and Thorium. Even if all the Uranium and Thorium on earth were fissioned however, the world would still be radioactive because of potassium, rubidium and other elements.

A nuclear program lasting one thousand years will begin to precipitously reduce the radioactivity of the planet. This may not be a good thing, since the existence and health of life on the planet may depend in subtle ways on radioactivity. Life on earth evolved in the presence of radioactivity, indeed, much higher radioactivity than we have now, since so much, in particular that of the highly radioactive potassium-40, has decayed. Quite a bit potassium-40 is still present though, and the radioactivity from that remaining fraction dwarfs the "problem" of so called "nuclear waste." Indeed, although all people contain traces of uranium and always have, most of the internal radioactivity that people exhibit derives from the also naturally occurring radioisotopes of potassium and rubidium. Rubidium, because of its similarity to potassium, is freely taken up by tissues. It is a "spectator element." This is to say that it is the element found in highest concentration in human flesh that has no known physiological role. About one quarter of the rubidium in flesh is radioactive Rb-87.

[NickB79]

12. You said it far better than I ever could have

I was hoping you'd drop in on this discussion due to your knowledge of the subject. It never ceases to amaze me that people think that a substance that is so weak it has a half-life of 4.5 BILLION years is somehow emitting enough radiation to be mutagenic and carcinogenic.

[indigobusiness]

7. The naysayers seem to dismiss the UK Atomic Energy Authority's concerns

etc:

On hearing that DU had been used in the Gulf in 1991, the UK Atomic Energy Authority sent the Ministry of Defence a special report on the potential damage to health and the environment. It said that it could cause half a million additional cancer deaths in Iraq over 10 years. In that war the authorities only admitted to using 320 tons of DU – although the Dutch charity LAKA estimates the true figure is closer to 800 tons. Many times that may have been spread across Iraq by this year’s war. The devastating damage all this DU will do to the health and fertility of the people of Iraq now, and for generations to come, is beyond imagining.

We must also count the numberless thousands of miscarried babies. Nobody knows how many Iraqis have died in the womb since DU contaminated their world. But it is suggested that troops who were only exposed to DU for the brief period of the war were still excreting uranium in their semen 8 years later and some had 100 times the so called ‘safe limit’ of uranium in their urine. The lack of government interest in the plight of veterans of the 1991 war is reflected in a lack of academic research on the impact of DU but informal research has found a high incidence of birth defects in their children and that the wives of men who served in Iraq have three times more miscarriages than the wives of servicemen who did not go there.
---

Bad, bad juju.

[NNadir]

8. One wonders where the millions of cancers and miscarriages from

natural Uranium are.

Although this claim is scientifically nonsense, it would be more interesting if it came with a reference. Undoubtedly it would be then trackable as the innuendo, misinterpretation, and selective data collection that it undoubtedly is.

[indigobusiness]

9. One

or two.

[NNadir]

10. Actually, it's more than two.

In this paper, Chem. Rev. 2003, 103, 4207-4282 there are 470 scientific papers referenced concerned with the physiology of Uranium, and the other actinide elements.

Here is a quote on the subject of Uranium,

"9.3. Depleted Uranium
In addition to the ever-increasing amounts of
uranium handled worldwide as the use of nuclear
power continues to expand,4,5,445 the use of depleted
uranium (DU) has added another dimension to
potential introduction of uranium into the human
body in the form of finely divided shrapnel.446-448 A
large fraction of the DU leaving enrichment facilities
in the United States is converted for use as military
ordinance and armor and as ballast in airplane
construction. A number of military personnel were
accidentally wounded by DU shrapnel during the
Gulf War, and the slowly dissolving, finely divided
DU fragments are continuous sources of systemic
uranyl ion (UO2
2+, uranyl). Persons wounded during
the Gulf conflict and in Kosovo with DU shrapnel
present a unique medical problem. The fragments of
the DU ordinance, many too small to remove surgically,
are chemically reactive and locally irritating,
and as they slowly dissolve, they are potentially
exposing the wounded individuals to chronic kidney
poisoning and an unacceptable amount of uranium
accumulation in the skeleton.446-448...

...The role of DU in the development of illnesses in
veterans of the Persian Gulf conflict has recently
been discounted, as the soldiers most directly in
contact with dust, namely those in or near explosions
of DU ordinance or armored vehicles or others who
treated or rescued the wounded, do not exhibit any
increase in the symptoms expected in those with
more direct exposure.449,450 Depleted uranium has
40% less specific activity than naturally occurring
uranium, but as a heavy metal, it is still chemically
toxic.450 Thus, it follows that the kidney should be
the first organ directly affected by poisoning with
uranium, and yet these soldiers were not found to
have suffered any impairment of renal function.449
Studies seeking to establish a connection between
Rational Design of Sequestering Agents for Actinides Chemical Reviews, 2003, Vol. 103, No. 11 4269
uranium exposure and bone cancers are inconclusive.
449 The potential for kidney damage or increased
bone cancer is still being followed in these patients,
and chelating ligands could be useful in reducing the
potential effects of uranium in wounds...

[indigobusiness]

11. Tell me, are you paid to talk down this issue?

You seem rather unwilling to conceed any point, even those admitted to by the VA. You sound like a hired gun. Who pays you?

[NickB79]

13. Iraq isn't the best place to look to for empirical data on DU and health

In addition to the relatively small amounts of DU used in Iraq, there is also the issue of exposure to the numerous carcinogens and teratogens released by the burning oil wells, the low-level chemical weapons troops were exposed to when destroying ammo depots, and numerous vaccines given to combat effects of chemical and biological weapons that were never tested for the effects of being given in the same injection. In addition to the oil smoke the Iraqi people had to endure, they also lost most sanitation and medical centers, lost access to vaccines and drugs to combat disease, and had to endure malnutrition during the sanctions of the 1990's. I think it would come as no shock that there are numerous cancers, miscarriages and deaths in Iraqis and in Gulf War vets, but linking that strictly to exposure from DU would take an extraordinary research team.