Twelve Essential Facts Americans Should Know About Depleted Uranium

Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Twelve Essential Facts Americans Should Know About Depleted Uranium
by Barbara Bellows-TerraNova, www.oneperson-knowmore@blogspot.com , Updated 11/06/07, 05:30 AM.


1. Depleted Uranium is not "depleted" of radiation; 99.3% of it is Uranium238, which emits radioactive alpha particles at the rate 12,400/second.

2. Depleted Uranium is in the penetrators, bunker busters, missiles, tanks and much more which the United States and the United Kingdom both use and sell to other countries and political factions.

3. When Depleted Uranium strikes, it sharpens in an explosion of flames, throwing off the excess in vaporized particles that hang in the air.

4. Some of the Depleted Uranium particles are picked up by air currents, and can even move across national boundaries, while some move into the water and soil.

5. The vaporized Depleted Uranium particles easily enter the human body: by breathing them in, by ingesting them from contaminated hands, food and water, and through open wounds.

6. Depleted Uranium’s so-called "low-level" radiation actually only means that its range is short, making it an extremely effective carcinogen, as the larger particles move slowly through the body, attacking the DNA of cells at close range, often causing multiple cancers. Other effects have included damage to sexual partners and birth defects.

7. The Depleted Uranium’s radioactive emissions, activated in our environment by its use in weapons, will continue to bombard whatever is nearby – forever, essentially. It has a half-life of 4.5 billion years.

8. Depleted Uranium weaponry was first used in the U.S. bombing of Iraq in 1991, under President George H.W. Bush and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney.

9. Depleted Uranium was later used by President Bill Clinton in the NATO "peace-keeping" missions in Bosnia, Kosovo and Serbia. By January 2001, as the 2nd President Bush and Dick Cheney were moving in to the White House, there was a furor in Europe about the alarming increase in leukemia and other cancers amongst the multinational NATO troops.

10. The United Nations then sent the World Health Organization to investigate Depleted Uranium and its effects in the Balkans in 2001, but when the team of scientists and doctors led by Dr. Keith Baverstock, the top expert on radiation and health at the World Health Organization, came back with a report detailing the Depleted Uranium’s toxicity, the report was suppressed and not published until 2004 when Baverstock, no longer at the WHO, gave the report to Rob Edwards at Scotland’s Sunday Herald.

11. The current Bush/Cheney administration has used the lack of findings in 2001 by the World Health Organization connecting Depleted Uranium to health problems as their rationalization for continuing the use of Depleted Uranium weapons as the literal core of their never-ending Shock and Awe campaigns.

12. In spite of Rep. Jim McDermott’s (D-WA) amendment to the Defense Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2007, signed in October 2006, which calls for a study of the health effects of Depleted Uranium on returning soldiers, due now, there remains no federal program for all members of the U.S. military and National Guard returning from the Middle East to be tested and treated for the presence of depleted uranium in their bodies. There is, of course, a signing statement by Bush which includes the right to withhold information "which could impair foreign relations."


Still, there is hope.

Last week, on October 31st, the United Nations First Committee passed the "Effects of the use of armaments and ammunitions containing depleted uranium" Resolution, requesting that states and international bodies submit a report on depleted uranium to the UN General Assembly by next year’s session. The vote was 122 to 6, with 35 abstentions. The countries voting against it were the United States, United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, Czech Republic and Israel.


Now, what we still need to know is:

Where do the Presidential candidates stand on this issue?

Who is willing to be the leader who will stop this?


*****

There are articles and documents that span decades which shed light on Depleted Uranium and the deceptions that surround it. The evidence is plentiful, often overwhelming, but one should be aware that there is also much out there that is designed to confuse the public and discredit the scientists and activists, and that has its effects on those who are trying to inform us.

That is why I've tried to be concise, and provide some links.

To verify or learn more, you might try your own Google search, and you'll see what the rest of the world knows.

Meanwhile, for starters I suggest:

Campaign Against Depleted Uranium. http://www.cadu.org.uk/ Founded by one of the great long-time scientist/activists, Dr. Rosalie Bertell.

International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW) is probably the best of the best all-in-one place http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/ . I particularly like their FAQs list at http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/en/a/8.html#4 . This is a site well worth looking around.

Dr. Keith Baverstock’s November 2001 report, suppressed by the World Health Organization is here: http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/DU-Radiological-Toxicity-WHO5nov01.htm.

Rob Edwards' article on Baverstock can be found here: http://www.robedwards.com/2004/02/who_suppressed_.html

For insight into International Law and DU, I recommend Karen Parker, a Human Rights and Humanitarian Law Lawyer: http://www.webcom.com/hrin/parker.html Scroll down on the page and you’ll find her documents on DU.

Representative Jim McDermott is here: http://www.house.gov/mcdermott/pr061020.shtml

The October 17, 2006 Presidential signing statement is at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/10/200 61017-9.html .

You can't clean it up. There is nothing that you can do to retrieve the particles and make things safe, and the stuff will be floating around when the earth is engulfed by the sun.

If you can't clean it up, there is a point when war becomes a crime against humanity.

There are plants that will sequester uranium and plutonium from the environment. Jimson weed, a poisonous and hallucinogenic member of the nightshade family, has been shown to concentrate these metals in its tissues. However, to do any good removing DU contamination from the environment, it would have to be cut, collected, and buried deep, like a low-level radioactive waste. Also, it would take multiple crops over several years, depending on the amount of initial contamination, to reduce the contamination to the former, uncontaminated level.

It is saddening to think that after the US leaves Iraq, the cradle of civilization will only be suitable for weeds to grow for at least a generation.:cry: :cry:

There are some canyons between Los Alamos and White Rock where waste was carelessly dumped in the years after the Manhattan project. Years later, when trying to assess the environmental damage, plant samples in the area were taken to be analyzed. Jimson weed is common in the area and it turned out to have the biggest uptake of radioactivity of the native plants.

It's a North American native species, which makes it far more desirable than an invasive, non-native. It's attractive, smells nice, and it soaks up radioactivity, too.

If you've read any Carlos Castaneda, it's one of the three 'power plants'.

Carlos Castaneda was obviously a brave man. Many people have died from ingesting it.
I am a garden fanatic, so I appreciate all this new info.

Then the explosive material is quickly caught up in normal air currents.

Some of the material that is attached to heavier components of dust and debris will immediately sink to the ground. And after the tank or whatever has been blown up, its larger pieces will lie on the ground, contaminated, and the children of whatever war zone it is in will play on these parts.

The radioactivity will be washed out by rain (For decades, of course!) and contaminate the ground table.

The fragments that are smaller and more aerosilzied will go upwards into the current.
Leuren Mouret says that if you take an amount of any substance and put it into the air currents, within a mere five days it will be distributed evenly across the earth. (Moret worked for Lawrence Livermore Labs in California until she started to put two and two together on the radioactivity issue - and was fired for her concerns.)

And she also notes that the radioactive smog encircling our planet in the region just below the stratosphere is five times more radioactive since 1945.

Do we even need to wonder why cancer rates are what they are??

I don't consider them weeds. They have huge, fragrant flowers throughout mid to late summer.
They were originally named after Jamestown. Settlers cooked a soup out of the giant seed pods, and suffered severe hallucinations, dehydration, and depressed bodily functions. Many who ate the soup died.

Deadly, but pretty flowers.

Its the short-life ones that sizzle.

The primary danger seems to be metal poisoning, which would be more devastating if we were using leaded gasoline.

The first "fact" is given without context. 12,400 alpha particle per second. Is that from a kilogram of DU or from an ounce? Is 12,400 alot? It sounds like alot, but maybe normal background radiation is something like 50,000 particles per second.

Eeven though Depleted Uranium has a long half life and emits relatively low levels of radioactivity compared to other uranium isotopes, the problem is that in a military situation when it explodes and burns it transforms into very tiny particles of uranium oxide which can be sucked deep into the lungs where they can remain and/or cross the lung/blood barrier into the bloodstream and from there get deposited in bone marrow, and organs. Once inside the body the (mainly) alpha radiation from DU is much more harmful to the unprotected interior body cells than it would be if it were bombarding the outside of the body where clothing and a layer of dead skin cells on the outside of the skin is enough to absorb the relatively low energy alpha radiation before it can do much harm to the living cells.

In addition to whatever harm might be caused by radiation, recent scientific work has also shown that depleted uranium is a hazard on account of its toxic properties as a heavy metal.

soldiers and their families are showing signs of genetics problems, thought to be caused by Depleted Uranium. That's a HUGE amount of people effected! :wow:

this will be a huge problem for americans.

the death rate for Gulf war one vets is tremendous! Cancers, cancers, cancers.

for the great info. It is beyond me why anyone would want to use this stuff. I understand that it is effective for munitions but the aftermath of using the stuff is devastating. This crap must be spread all over Iraq, they will never be rid of it.

1. The alpha particle rate of 12,400/s is actually per gram of uranium 238.

8. Depleted uranium munitions were used in the Arab-Israeli conflict in 1973



And perhaps most insane of all, depleted uranium is (or has been) used in a variety of non-military applications. It has been used as counterbalance weights in civilian aircraft (Boeing 747 for example). 150kg was missing after the 1992 crash of El Al flight 1862. At the time all Boeing 747 contained about 248kg of depleted uranium.

It has also been used in sailboat keels and other counterbalance applications.

Insane.



http://www.rivm.nl/bibliotheek/digitaaldepot/risico_uranium_bijlmerramp.pdf

I agree with everything posted about the dangers and horrors of DU.

Given DU's entanglement into so much of the military industrials complex (armor, weapons, etc) I don't foresee any reversals of US policy. I'm afraid it's going to take a world-wide moratorium on DU usage to even get the ball rolling, and you can bet that any US administration (other than perhaps Kucinich) will drag their feet on this.

I hate being this cynical. I don't want to discourage any work being done to stop the use of DU. On the contrary, I encourage it. I just think it's going to be a long, hard struggle; and won't come close to being realized until the catastrophic effects are commonly acknowledged. And from personal experience in heated discussions regarding DU with people right here on this board, I think that it will take decades at a minimum before we see any sort of traction on this issue. :(

if the particles do indeed stay suspended, they could be inhaled by anyone "downwind." I keep thinking about how wide the fallout from Chernobyl reached, and how many people/crops/animals have been/will be affected. What goes up, must come down, just not always in the same place...

Here is a quite extensive photograph showing a wide range of DU ammo, from 25 mm heavy machine gun rounds to 120 mm tank shells

CASE 2: THE BALKANS (BOSNIA AND THE KOSOVO CONFLICT)
A more recent case of DU ammunition use was during the conflicts in Kosovo and Bosnia. An interesting thing to note is that no major chemical or biological weaponry was used or numerous NBC sites bombed during both conflicts. Even though Yugoslavia has done extensive research into chemical weaponry, no significant amount was used in both conflicts. Hence, the only potentially hazardous device used was DU ammunition. At first, NATO claimed that DU ammunition was not being used at all. No mention was made until a small group of NATO soldiers started dying from blood/renal/rectal related cancers in a very short period of time and the term “Balkan War Syndrome” came into full force.14f New Tomahawk cruise missiles armed with a 3kg DU warhead core were first used in Bosnia and later in Kosovo.14f Over 31,000 A-10 30mm rounds were fired and over 1,500 cruise missiles (armed with DU) were used. Some regions in Bosnia and especially Kosovo (a region that NATO HEAVILY bombed for 3 months) are so contaminated with DU that the soil there is permanently destroyed. NATO soldiers are constantly told not to eat local foods or drink from local water supplies (since ingestion of DU dust is very common by eating foods or drinking water contaminated with DU dust).17 Soldiers were also told to stay away from military sites hit by DU and not to pick up any possible DU fragments.17 This concludes the basic facts of DU ammunition and the specific conflicts in which DU ammo was used.


A-10 Thunderbolt II Aircraft is a tank-busting/anti-personnel attack jet fully loaded with numerous 30mm DU rounds.


A-10 Thunderbolt II Aircraft is a tank-busting/anti-personnel attack jet fully loaded with numerous 30mm DU rounds

http://cseserv.engr.scu.edu/StudentWebPages/IPesic/ResearchPaper.htm

I loved nothing more than going to air shows to ooh and aah over the flying death machines like the A10 and others too numerous to mention. Now they fucking make want to puke.

I'm not used to seeing these, but my member star expired recently and I haven't been able to renew it yet. But that let me see this ad which Google inserted at the bottom of this particular discussion page:



Just because the Pentagon is denying the dangers, doesn't mean that some Internet shyster can't try to scam a buck off of desperate and scared people. :grr:

Depleted uranium, that is...not our favorite political site. B-)