University study confirms that depleted uranium will damage DNA

[JohnyCanuck]

Almost a year ago reprehensor started a thread featuring a presentation by Dr Thomas Fasy from Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, NYC detailing his concerns that depleted uranium dust left over from exploded munitions could damage DNA and was likely responsible for the significant increases in birth defects observed in Southern Iraq after GW1. See: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=4124449

Now we have further scientific confirmation that validates Dr. Fasy's concersn after a study completed at the University of Northern Arizona confirums uranium's propensity to bind to and damage DNA.

Uranium’s Effect On DNA Established

The 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

May the bastards that unleashed this stuff on the world burn in hell.

Edited to fix link.

[Terran1212]

1. And the bushes and clinton filled up the entire country of Iraq with it

[rfranklin]

2. A D(epleted) U(ranium) enema up the anus of each malefactor...

would be appropriate.

[Richard D]

3. Not enough . . .

"May the bastards that unleashed this stuff on the world burn in hell."

Hell is not nearly bad enough. Nothing is. Half life of a billion years. It's not going to stay put either. Half a billion years and it's only half as deadly.

[Warren Stupidity]

4. Anyone familiar with either gulf war vets or

the population of a nation formerly known as Iraq, knows that DepU maims and kills across generations and that our government, through three administrations, has been covering up and lying about the effects.

Just add it to the list of crimes against humanity.

[LunaC]

5. The U.N. considers DU a WMD so why aren't they bitching about it?

U.N. position on DU:
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/LunaC/23

[lyonn]

6. Thanks, just more confirmation

of what we have heard for years.

[JohnyCanuck]

15. You're welcome. n/t

[mom cat]

7. So, how many more people have to suffer and die while even more studies

are done?

[JohnyCanuck]

9. Lots probably

They've got so much invested in the du weaponry and they've bullshitted us for so long that it was harmless that I am sure this new study will have as much effect on the military/industrial/death & destruction complex as a fly fart in a hurricane. Besides, haven't you heard, there's alredy too many of us useless eaters anyway.

[mom cat]

12. Have you noticed that it is not predominantly white people down wind?

[JohnyCanuck]

13. Might be true for the most part, but white people will die from this too

Not just the army and marine corps sand pounders who bring it back in their bodies from the war zones, but those living in the vicinity of the military's stateside bombing and gunnery ranges are in danger as well

Depleted uranium: Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty bullets

by Leuren Moret

SNIP

Military research report summaries detail the testing of DU from 1974-1999 at military testing grounds, bombing and gunnery ranges and at civilian labs under contract. Today 42 states are contaminated with DU from manufacture, testing and deployment.

Women living around these facilities have reported increases in endometriosis, birth defects in babies, leukemia in children and cancers and other diseases in adults. Thousands of tons of DU weapons tested for decades by the Navy on four bombing and gunnery ranges around Fallon, Nevada, is no doubt the cause of the fastest growing leukemia cluster in the U.S. over the past decade. The military denies that DU is the cause.

The medical profession has been active in the cover-up - just as they were in hiding the effects from the American public - of low level radiation from atmospheric testing and nuclear power plants. A medical doctor in Northern California reported being trained by the Pentagon with other doctors, months before the 2003 war started, to diagnose and treat soldiers returning from the 2003 war for mental problems only.

Medical professionals in hospitals and facilities treating returning soldiers were threatened with $10,000 fines if they talked about the soldiers or their medical problems. They were also threatened with jail.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=MOR20040821&articleId=677

[Coastie for Truth]

8. Any neutron emitter that knocks an electron off of a DNA macromolecule

is a bad actor. (It's called "ionizing").

[Viva_La_Revolution]

10. kickin for truth! nt

Recommended.

[WhiteTara]

11. I'm glad to see someone writing about

this. With *co pressing for nuclear war in Iran, it needs to get out there this is end of the world stuff. Oh, right that's what the end timers want. I hate them. I have grandchildren.

[JohnyCanuck]

14. Uranium Wars

Uranium Wars:The Pentagon Steps Up its Use of Radioactive Munitions
by Marc W. Herold

SNIP

Intensely bombed hard target zones like Tora Bora and Shah-i-Kot may now be heavily contaminated with DU oxide. During the battle of Shah-i-Kot, A-10s were heavily used, flying up to eight hours every day from an unnamed base outside Afghanistan. The potential health risks to U.S. and Afghan troops being sent to check out bombed cave systems are horrendous unless they are using full nuclear, chemical and biological (NBC) protection. But even more serious are the risks in densely populated target zones like Kabul - where DU oxide is likely to contaminate soil, buildings and water and be suspended in the Kabul "haze" seen in several media reports.

Depleted uranium is the staple in the ammunition used by the M1A2 Abrams main battle tank , and in the 30 mm rapid fire Gatling gun in the A-10 attack aircraft and Apache AH64 helicopter. The Gatling cannon fires 4,000 rounds per minute of 30 mm armor-piercing munition, delivering 1,200 kilograms of depleted uranium per minute!

SNIP

The widely-used Lockheed Martin GBU-28 5,000 lb. 'bunker-buster' bomb with a BLU-109 penetrator head carried only by the Air Force's F-15E's and B-2s, contains 1.5 metric tons of depleted uranium, compared to only five kilograms in the 120 mm shell. According to the GBU-28 Bunker Buster animation on USA Today the warhead is "classified".6 The 30 mm PGU-14 armor-piercing cannon shell contains 4,650 grains <0.66 pounds > of extruded DU, alloyed with 0.75 weight percent titanium.7 The Olin Corporation is the sole maker in the U.S. of DU antitank rounds, and its foundation funds "research" which purports to show that DU has no harmful health effects.

SNIP

Given the heavy U.S. bombing of the mountains in eastern Afghanistan, it seems probable that large amounts of DU have found their way into the rivers of the Hindu basin, whose source is precisely in the mountains of the Hindu Kush. After heading east from Kabul through heavily-bombed Nangarhar, the Kabul River crosses into Pakistan and feeds into the Indus River. In arid areas as in southern Afghanistan, most of the DU remains as surface dust where it is easily dispersed by wind.14

http://www.cursor.org/stories/uranium.htm

[dailykoff]

16. Genocide the compassionate conservative way. (n/t)

[JohnyCanuck]

17. Depleted Uranium spiked with plutonium, neptunium and americium

US Dirty Bombs:
Radioactive Shells Spiked with Plutonium

SNIP

In Europe, a wildfire of publicity was lit anew by the United States’ official admission that its DU contains plutonium and other reactor-borne fission products far more radioactive and carcinogenic than uranium-238.

The discovery of uranium-236 contamination in spent munitions used against Kosovo revealed that the DU was not obtained before the nuclear reaction process. The Pentagon, NATO and the British Ministry of Defense have always downplayed the danger of DU saying it was "less radioactive than uranium ore." But at least half of the DU (250,000 metric tons) is now known to have been left over from the reprocessing of irradiated reactor fuel (done to extract weapons-grade plutonium), leaving it salted with fission products.(18)

"If it has been through a reactor, it does change our idea on depleted uranium," says Dr. Michael Repacholi of the World Health Organization, which has demanded to know how much plutonium is in DU ammunition. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is still working on an answer to that question.

As early as January 2000, the DOE admitted that its DU munitions are spiked with plutonium, neptunium and americium – "transuranic" (heavier than uranium) fission wastes from inside nuclear reactors.(19) The health consequences here are fearsome: americium -- with a half-life of 7,300 years -- decays to plutonium-239, which is more radioactive than the original americium.

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0709-07.htm