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Member Posts: 3945 From: Duluth, Minnesota, U.S. (West end of Lake Superior) Joined: Member Rating: 10.0 |
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Author | Topic: Depleted Uranium (DU) Weapons | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Minnemooseus Member Posts: 3945 From: Duluth, Minnesota, U.S. (West end of Lake Superior) Joined: Member Rating: 10.0 |
This article was also presented in a local weekly free newspaper.
Death By Slow Burn:How America Nukes Its Own Troops What Support Our Troops really means Moose
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Dan Carroll Inactive Member |
That certainly explains why Bush cut the soldiers' retirement benefits.
It's not like they're gonna need it.
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Rei Member (Idle past 7039 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
The BBC has written a number of stories on the subject:
www.google.com/search... One article that is particularly good - an interview with Dr. Doug Rokke, whose job in the US army was working with casualties and cleanup of DU weaponry. Now his uranium level is 5,000 times what is deemed as acceptable. Two of his team of 15 are now dead; all of his team is having serious problems. And to think: he was one of the people who, as part of a cleanup team, was *most* prepared for dealing with the DU. ------------------"Illuminant light, illuminate me." {Shortened display form of URL, to restore page width to normal - AM} [This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 10-02-2003]
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Quetzal Member (Idle past 5898 days) Posts: 3228 Joined: |
There was an informative discussion on IIDB last March concerning this issue. See the thread Depleted Uranium for numerous links, studies and a discussion of "authorities" in this area. For reference, I post there as "Morpho", so you'll understand the context.
Just curious Moose - why didn't you post this in a discussion thread?
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Adminnemooseus Administrator Posts: 3975 Joined: |
Thread moved here from the Links and Information forum.
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Minnemooseus Member Posts: 3945 From: Duluth, Minnesota, U.S. (West end of Lake Superior) Joined: Member Rating: 10.0 |
quote: I was afraid that people would then expect original thought from me. This DU subject came up earlier, in a certain topic that will remain nameless (I've been attempting to prepare a response for there for many months). Anyhow, Gene90 had challenged me to find non-leftist references supporting that DU weapons were indeed a long term health hazzard. I did a quite a bit of "Googling", without success. Everything I found was either leftest or war veteran related. Not a university study or mainstream press article to be found. I haven't checked the BBC stuff supplied upstring, but I do wonder if this has only become a more mainstream issue quite recently. It is bad enough that the U.S. is nuking their own people, but even worse is that they are leaving severe long term contaminations in other countries. I think of it as "military intelligence" at work. The people of the U.S. don't want us moving or storing this stuff around the home country, so we'll instead dispose of it by shooting it at our enemies. I wonder if less long term damage would be caused by just using "the bomb"? Enough for now, Moose
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Dr Jack Member Posts: 3514 From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch Joined: Member Rating: 8.4 |
This is WHO's fact sheet on Depleted Uranium.
404 And this is a report on a fact finding mission to Kosovo 404
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Rei Member (Idle past 7039 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
Jack, your comments on Dr. Rokke? Or any of the other BBC articles?
------------------"Illuminant light, illuminate me."
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Dr Cresswell Inactive Member |
quote:Interestingly, I printed out an article for work this morning analysing the health effects of DU in the tail weight of the 747 that crashed in Amsterdam a few years back. I'll post a reference tomorrow when I'm back at work ... but there is stuff out there (though you may need access to subscription journals to find it), and DU health effect unrelated to weapons will be less prone to extreme view points. Alan
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Quetzal Member (Idle past 5898 days) Posts: 3228 Joined: |
Hi Moose,
I urge you (and anyone else interested in the issue) to go to the discussion-board link I provided above. The discussion contains numerous links and references to both government and non-government, including reputable foreign, sources of information on the health and environmental effects of DU, including peer-reviewed medical literature. You might find what you're looking for there. In any case, it was a pretty good discussion if I do say so myself, even tho' it didn't last all that long. Edited to add: Okay, now I understand why no one responded. I gave the wrong bloody link. Duh-oh. Try this one: Depleted Uranium Coverup. Obviously had a senior moment, there. Sorry all. [This message has been edited by Quetzal, 10-03-2003]
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Dr Cresswell Inactive Member |
OK, here's the article:
Evaluating the risk from depleted uranium after the Boeing 747-258F crash in Amesterdam, 1992. P.A.M. Uijt de Haag, R.C.G.M. Smetsers, H.W.M. Witlox, H.W. Krs, A.H.M. Eisenga. Journal of Hazerdous Materials A76 (2000), 39-58. The abstract (is it OK to quote the whole abstract?):
On 4 October 1992, a large cargo plane crashed into an apartment building in the Bijlmermeer quarter of Amsterdam. In the years following the accident, an increasing number of people started reporting health complaints, which they attributed to exposure to dangerous substances after the crash. Since the aircraft had been carrying depleted uranium as counterbalance weights and about 150 kg uranium had been found missing after clearance of the crash site, exposure to uranium oxide particles was pointed out as the possible cause of their health complaints.
Now, I would guess that 150kg of DU spread over a few blocks is a considerably higher concentration than troops are exposed to (whether through handling munitions or travelling through areas where munitions have been fired), so I'd reckon the radiological risk is less. Of course, if the DU in munitions isn't oxidised as fully and so is in a more soluble form then the chemical toxicity may be a significant factor. Six years after the accident, a risk analysis was therefore carried out to investigate whether the health complaints could be attributed to exposure to uranium oxide set free during the accident. The scientific challenge was to come up with reliable results, knowing that —— considering the late date —— virtually no data were available to validate any calculated result. The source term of uranium was estimated using both generic and specific data. Various dispersion models were applied in combination with the local setting and the meteorological conditions at the time of the accident to estimate the exposure of bystanders during the fire caused by the crash. Emphasis was given to analysing the input parameters, inter-comparing the various models and comparing model results with the scarce information available. Uranium oxide formed in the fire has a low solubility, making the chemical toxicity to humans less important than the radiotoxicity. Best-estimate results indicated that bystanders may have been exposed to a radiation dose of less than 1 Sv, whereas a worst-case approach indicated an upper limit of less than 1 mSv. This value is considerably less than the radiation dose for which acute effects are to be expected. It is therefore considered to be improbable that the missing uranium had indeed led to the health complaints reported. Alan
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Dr Cresswell Inactive Member |
quote:I did ... thanks, there is some useful stuff there. A little bit of playing with one URL gave this IAEA page with links to reports on DU in several areas of conflict from Kosovo to Kuwait, plus an interesting Journal of Environmental Radioactivity paper I've just added to my work reading list (thanks ... see, hanging around internet discussion forums while you're supposed to be working isn't a total waste of time!). Alan
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Quetzal Member (Idle past 5898 days) Posts: 3228 Joined: |
Interesting article, Dr. C. Thanks. I found this bit especially interesting:
Uranium oxide formed in the fire has a low solubility, making the chemical toxicity to humans less important than the radiotoxicity. Best-estimate results indicated that bystanders may have been exposed to a radiation dose of less than 1 Sv, whereas a worst-case approach indicated an upper limit of less than 1 mSv. This value is considerably less than the radiation dose for which acute effects are to be expected. It is therefore considered to be improbable that the missing uranium had indeed led to the health complaints reported. What this seems to indicate is that bystanders were exposed to less than the average amount of radiation from natural sources in the UK of 2.2 mSv/year, and from all sources 2.6 mSv. (stats from UK NRPB R-311, "Ionising Radiation Exposure of the UK Population: 1999 Review"). Of course, the fire etc was a "one shot" exposure, rather than being spread out over 12 months, so there may have been more danger. However, the Europeans for example had a much higher and more dangerous spike in radioactivity due to volitiles from Chernobyl in 1986 (mostly Cs-134 and -137) than were even remotely associated with any known use or concentration - or accidental exposure - from DU. However, the threat from DU is more chemical toxicity than radioactivity. One of the key issues explored by both UNEP and the European Commission in Kosovo was environmental contamination leading to bioconcentration and subsequent health risk through incorporation. Since like any other heavy metal contaminants this depends a lot on corrosion rates and concentration, it was concluded that there was little risk (DU corrodes slowly - depending on environment and climatological considerations, of course - and there was no location that had sufficient concentration to be a significant risk).
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Quetzal Member (Idle past 5898 days) Posts: 3228 Joined: |
You might also find the National Academy of Sciences report quoted on that thread to be of interest.
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Dr Jack Member Posts: 3514 From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch Joined: Member Rating: 8.4 |
I have no particular comment to give. I don't know enough about the situation. However I would tend towards trusting reports from WHO. I'm not going to say either of your source is wrong though.
As I see it there is conflicting evidence over whether DU is harmful, wheras there is plenty of evidence that cluster bombs and landmines are extremely harmful to the local population, so if you're going to campaign against any military weapon use they seem the ones to target.
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