Question?

[Stonehead]

Part of the rhetoric emitting from the Bush Administration and the President's supporters in the Republican Party is that Al Qaida and/or other Islamic extremist groups are seeking to explode nuclear devices including 'dirty bombs' within the United States. If this is a credible threat, I hope it never comes to pass. However, I have wondered if anyone has considered the health effect that we are causing with the use of depleted uranium (DU) during the Iraqi war and occupation.

 

Should we give a damn if we're giving them what they need, i.e., representation through elections, and that's just the price they have to pay? Is it hyper-cynicism to not care because who in his right mind would think that they would care if the tables were turned? Is it not ironic that Bush and Company pushed the war based on the threat of the high potential of Iraqi development of nuclear weapons, yet we, through our representatives, our military, are potentially poisoning their land through the use of DU?

 

Is it just our hubris to think that we are not making the problem worse? Will the crows come home to roost?

 

[buddha_monkee]

Easy tiger. Why don't you find something else to worry about.

 

http://deploymentlink.osd.mil/faq/du_faq.shtml

[foraker]

oooh. reports from The Man about weapons safety. That's almost as good as news from Fox or research reports from the Cato Institute! yay! that's a load off of my mind.

[buddha_monkee]

Hmmm... It's easy to point fingers.

 

Got better info? Let's see it.

[Stonehead]

Gotta love this statement: "...DU has the same properties as natural uranium, while being 40% less radioactive."

--see link above

 

No doubt, DU is valuable as a military material as it seems the report indicates that the benefits of its use outweigh its costs. However, as I recall, didn't it take quite a number of years before the military acknowledged the health effects of a particular jungle defoliant?

 

A similar debate surrounds cell phone usage and whether the energy associated with it is 'safe'. As it now stands, there's too much benefit from it to be much concerned about long-term health effects.

 

Anyway, I was interested in the questions about DU. It's not a blanket slam at the military. It's just that military sometimes gets so singleminded in pursuit of advantage that it overlooks drawbacks. In the case of Iraq, is this a potential health concern for ordinary Iraqis (and GI's for that matter) or is it one that can be mitigated through certain practices?

 

Questions...just questions...

 

[buddha_monkee]

It does sound like a blanket slam. Otherwise why post it. DU rounds are used by many modern armies, esp NATO countries. Try this: (http://www.nato.int/du/home.htm)

 

Yet you only question the policies of the US govt. What gives. Why does everyone else get a pass??

 

And then there is this, also from the same article:

 

"Various NATO countries and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) recently recovered penetrators in the Balkans and tested them for the level of contaminants. Their findings are consistent with DOE/DoD findings. The UNEP concluded that the transuranics have no significant impact on the overall radioactivity or the health risk. "

 

So that is the US govt, NATO and the UN finding pretty much the same thing.

 

And in the interest of equal time, try this website:

http://www.iacenter.org/depleted/du.htm

 

Pretty darn light on the science and heavy on hyperbole.

 

Hey, I'm not trying to come down on you. It's just that there are plenty of more important things to fret about. Why waste time hashing out non-issues when there are bigger deals to worry about. Like UN peacekeeping troops buggering little children in Africa.

[j_b]

It does sound like a blanket slam. Otherwise why post it. DU rounds are used by many modern armies, esp NATO countries. Try this: (http://www.nato.int/du/home.htm)

 

Yet you only question the policies of the US govt. What gives. Why does everyone else get a pass??

 

err ... we own nato and fire 10^6 times more ammo than anyone else , maybe?

 

And then there is this, also from the same article:

 

"Various NATO countries and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) recently recovered penetrators in the Balkans and tested them for the level of contaminants. Their findings are consistent with DOE/DoD findings. The UNEP concluded that the transuranics have no significant impact on the overall radioactivity or the health risk. "

 

So that is the US govt, NATO and the UN finding pretty much the same thing.

 

you mean they didn't find anything wrong years after the fact? fancy that! anyhow isn't the problem with penetrator losing significant mass at impact (i.e. lost mass that is vaporized)

 

Hey, I'm not trying to come down on you. It's just that there are plenty of more important things to fret about. Why waste time hashing out non-issues when there are bigger deals to worry about. Like UN peacekeeping troops buggering little children in Africa.

 

yeah right ... exposing millions of people to so-called depleted uranium should be dismissed right out of hand despite overwhelming epidemiological evidence to the contrary ...

[Stonehead]

...the term “depleted” is a misnomer, since DU contains about 60 percent of the radioactivity found in natural uranium, according to Tod Ensign, a veteran and attorney with the veterans advocacy group Citizen Soldier in New York.

 

“When a DU shell strikes its target, up to 70 percent of the depleted uranium vaporizes into fine dust, which then settles out in the surrounding soil and water,” he wrote. “Over half of the aerosolized particles are smaller than 5 microns and anything smaller than 10 microns can be inhaled. Once lodged in the lungs, these particles can emit a steady dose of alpha radiation.”

--source article

 

According to this article, there still exists a data gap in health effects from DU. Seems like a significant issue for returning GIs and civilian population where DU is utilized.