Depleted uranium

[Booko]

Rather than derail a topic over in Health & Healing, I thought I would start something on "Dep U" (as it's called in the military) over here.

Depleted uranium is used in munitions by several countries. It's primary use is to make rounds "heavier" and thereby increase the rounds ability to pierce armour.

There are some health effects of Dep U, though. Despite the efforts of our military-industrial complex in the U.S. to make sure the average American never hears of Dep U, the knowledge is out there, and most especially in other countries.

Dep U poses a danger not primarily because of radiation, but because of heavy metal poisoning. Dep U rounds remain in the soil where they were fired. Airborn dust particles are inhaled. The soil, and therefore the food chain and water table, are contaminated.

There is conclusive evidence of the effects of Dep U on the populations where these rounds are used. Djamila mentioned what she has seen in Bosnia. The damage done to Iraqi children is unquestioned. And there is a possible link to Gulf War Syndrome (which also affects the next generation -- our vets' children).

I really think it's in the interest of every American to educate themselves on the issues of Dep U, and write our leaders demanding we stop, and indeed even support a ban, on this method of warfare. Surely the effects are as bad as land mines, cluster bombs, and white phosphorus -- other armaments that should be banned.

Here are just a *few* of the sources on this subject, to get you started. The Wikipedia article seems accurate (from what I know on this subject) and has many links you can follow to further information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium


I'll follow up with some further sources in separate posts.

 

[Booko]

Dr. Keith Baverstock, The World Health Organization's chief expert on radiation and health for 11 years and author of an unpublished study has charged that his report " on the cancer risk to civilians in Iraq from breathing uranium contaminated dust " was also deliberately suppressed.
The information released by the U.S. Dept. of Defense is not reliable, according to some sources even within the military.
In 1997, while citing experiments, by others, in which 84 percent of dogs exposed to inhaled uranium died of cancer of the lungs, Dr. Asaf Durakovic, then Professor of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine at Georgetown University in Washington was quoted as saying,

"The [US government's] Veterans Administration asked me to lie about the risks of incorporating depleted uranium in the human body."

​

At that time Dr. Durakovic was a colonel in the U.S. Army. He has since left the military, to found the Uranium Medical Research Center, a privately funded organization with headquarters in Canada.


http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20060503&articleId=2374

 

[Booko]

Although the Pentagon has sent mixed signals about the effects of depleted uranium, Iraqi doctors believe that it is responsible for a significant increase in cancer and birth defects in the region. Many researchers outside Iraq, and several U.S. veterans organizations, agree; they also suspect depleted uranium of playing a role in Gulf War Syndrome, the still-unexplained malady that has plagued hundreds of thousands of Gulf War veterans.
Depleted uranium is a problem in other former war zones as well. Yesterday, U.N. experts said they found radioactive hot spots in Bosnia resulting from the use of depleted uranium during NATO air strikes in 1995.


http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/95178_du12.shtml

 

[Djamila]

Asaf Durakovic is a Bosnian Muslim name.

 

[Booko]

Some UK Gulf War veterans fear their children are suffering because of their own exposure to depleted uranium (DU) weapons.
Several veterans have told BBC Radio 4's environment programme, Costing the Earth, why they are worried.


The Ministry of Defence continues to insist that DU poses no particular risk to parents, let alone their children.


But the programme hears concerns that there may be a higher rate of birth defects among the children of those who served in the Gulf.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1122566.stm

 

[Booko]

Here's what the U.S. State Department has to say on the issue:

http://usinfo.state.gov/media/Archive/2005/Jan/24-107572.html

Go out and Google and look for other sources, and judge for yourself.

 

[Booko]

A few scholarly sources:

(any italics are mine)

Abstract
Recently, several studies have reported on the health and environmental consequences of the use of depleted uranium. Depleted uranium is a heavy metal that is also radioactive. It is commonly used in missiles as a counterweight because of its very high density (1.6 times more than lead). Immediate health risks associated with exposure to depleted uranium include kidney and respiratory problems, with conditions such as kidney stones, chronic cough and severe dermatitis. Long-term risks include lung and bone cancer. Several published reports implicated exposure to depleted uranium in kidney damage, mutagenicity, cancer, inhibition of bone, neurological deficits, significant decrease in the pregnancy rate in mice and adverse effects on the reproductive and central nervous systems. Acute poisoning with depleted uranium elicited renal failure that could lead to death. The environmental consequences of its residue will be felt for thousands of years. It is inhaled and passed through the skin and eyes, transferred through the placenta into the fetus, distributed into tissues and eliminated in urine. The use of depleted uranium during the Gulf and Kosovo Wars and the crash of a Boeing airplane carrying depleted uranium in Amsterdam in 1992 were implicated in a health concern related to exposure to depleted uranium. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/93519516/ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

[gee -- doesn't sound exactly harmless like the State Dept. would have us believe... Booko]

High levels of urinary uranium have been measured in PGW veterans 10 years after exposure to DU fragments and vapors. In rats, there is strong evidence of DU accumulation in tissues including testes, bone, kidneys, and brain. In vitro tests indicate that DU alloy may be both genotoxic and mutagenic, whereas a recent in vivo study suggests that tissue-embedded DU alloy may be carcinogenic in rats.

http://tih.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/17/5-10/180


Oh, there's plenty more, but these are just the most obvious things that turn up on a Google search.

 

[Booko]

Asaf Durakovic is a Bosnian Muslim name.

How cool! I wonder how long his family has been in the U.S.? One doesn't become a Colonel in the U.S. Army overnight.

 

[Djamila]

How cool! I wonder how long his family has been in the U.S.? One doesn't become a Colonel in the U.S. Army overnight.

Who knows? It's easy to tell, though. We have names that are not in this pattern, but they are minority. The names in this pattern we call Jugovic names (literally Jugo = South, Ic = Son of) - the implied meaning is a "Name from Jugoslavija" (Jugoslavia = Yugoslavia = Land of South Slavs).

So you always have us looking for "Jugovic" names in credits for US movies, all that kind of thing. And there's some famous ones. We can tell them apart, because we know the names. There's no... like rules? Of which name belongs to which religion. You just learn them.

There are some rules, though. Any name with "Hadzi" at the beginning is Muslim. For example, Ivanic is a Catholic name. Hadzivanic is a Muslim name. Hadzi is Bosnian for "Hajji" (One who makes pilgrimage to Mecca), and in the old days it was added to the names of those who converted to Islam. That's why Hadzi names often don't have a Muslim root.

Also you have "beg" in the middle. Beg is like... "Lord", it's a title, for noble Muslims. So you could have Omerovic, which is a normal Muslim name. Or you can have Omerbegovic, which is more prestigious Muslim name.

But we're always watching these things in the west. Katie Couric for example has a Catholic name. Joe Sakic, also Catholic... Matthew Broderic, Catholic. Denis Kucinich - Muslim or Catholic, first name is more Muslim - but I think he's Christian.

In America sometimes they add K or H to the end, to make it more English.

But pretty much any IC-ending name for a white person is Yugoslavian.

 

[lunamoth]

Rather than derail a topic over in Health & Healing, I thought I would start something on "Dep U" (as it's called in the military) over here.

Depleted uranium is used in munitions by several countries. It's primary use is to make rounds "heavier" and thereby increase the rounds ability to pierce armour.

There are some health effects of Dep U, though. Despite the efforts of our military-industrial complex in the U.S. to make sure the average American never hears of Dep U, the knowledge is out there, and most especially in other countries.

Dep U poses a danger not primarily because of radiation, but because of heavy metal poisoning. Dep U rounds remain in the soil where they were fired. Airborn dust particles are inhaled. The soil, and therefore the food chain and water table, are contaminated.

There is conclusive evidence of the effects of Dep U on the populations where these rounds are used. Djamila mentioned what she has seen in Bosnia. The damage done to Iraqi children is unquestioned. And there is a possible link to Gulf War Syndrome (which also affects the next generation -- our vets' children).

I really think it's in the interest of every American to educate themselves on the issues of Dep U, and write our leaders demanding we stop, and indeed even support a ban, on this method of warfare. Surely the effects are as bad as land mines, cluster bombs, and white phosphorus -- other armaments that should be banned.

Here are just a *few* of the sources on this subject, to get you started. The Wikipedia article seems accurate (from what I know on this subject) and has many links you can follow to further information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium


I'll follow up with some further sources in separate posts.

Thank you for pulling up the info on this Booko. One of the first things that crossed my mind when you and Mila were talking about it in the other thread is that it might be related to the Gulf War Syndrome...heavy metal poisoning. I'm really surprised and not surprised at the same time that this is not more widely known. This is like chemical warfare; very nasty.

I'll read on...

 

[lunamoth]

With DU stockpiles estimated to be more than 500,000 tons, the financial burden of housing this amount of low-level radioactive waste was very apparent. It was therefore more economical to use depleted uranium rather than storing it. Thus, from the late 1970s, the U.S., the Soviet Union, Britain and France, began converting their stockpiles of depleted uranium into kinetic energy penetrators.

This is nice. Take our radioactive waste and convert it into weapons and spread this poison around other countries.

 

[lunamoth]

Legal status in weapons

In 1996 the International Court of Justice (ICJ) gave an advisory opinion on the "legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons".[3] This made it clear, in paragraphs 54, 55 and 56, that international law on poisonous weapons, – the Second Hague Declaration of 29 July 1899, Hague Convention IV of 18 October 1907 and the Geneva Protocol of 17 June 1925 – did not cover nuclear weapons, because their prime or exclusive use was not to poison or asphyxiate. This ICJ opinion was about nuclear weapons, but the sentence "The terms have been understood, in the practice of States, in their ordinary sense as covering weapons whose prime, or even exclusive, effect is to poison or asphyxiate." also removes depleted uranium weaponry from coverage by the same treaties as their primary use is not to poison or asphyxiate, but to destroy materiel and kill soldiers through kinetic energy.

And millions of dollars are spent in university research for proper handling of these dangerous chemicals, which can then just be taken and made into weapons that are no longer considered hazardous waste material.

In 2001, Carla del Ponte, the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, said that NATO's use of depleted uranium in former Yugoslavia could be investigated as a possible war crime[9]. Louise Arbour, del Ponte's predecessor as chief prosecutor, had created a small, internal committee, made up of staff lawyers, to assess the allegation.

No wonder the US does not support the ICC.

 

[lunamoth]

A few scholarly sources:

(any italics are mine)



http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/93519516/ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

[gee -- doesn't sound exactly harmless like the State Dept. would have us believe... Booko]


http://tih.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/17/5-10/180


Oh, there's plenty more, but these are just the most obvious things that turn up on a Google search.

I notice that the State Dept. piece focused on the effects of the radiation, rather than the heavy metal poisoning, and also mostly on anecdotal evidence, rather than what appear to be scientifically conducted studies. And while uranium may be natural and found throughout the environment, that's misleading because it's a matter of the concentration and short term doses that make a big difference. People exposed to DU get all the naturally occuring uranium plus extra doses of concentrated DU.

Yeah, and cigarettes don't cause lung cancer.

 

[doppelganger]

And millions of dollars are spent in university research for proper handling of these dangerous chemicals, which can then just be taken and made into weapons that are no longer considered hazardous waste material.



No wonder the US does not support the ICC.

We haven't support any real international justice system since Reagan was convicted of violating international law by mining the ports and harbors of Nicaragua and illegally (even under domestic law) supporting the Contras by selling weapons to Iran and funnelling the money to Nicaraguan insurgents.

 

[lunamoth]

We haven't support any real international justice system since Reagan was convicted of violating international law by mining the ports and harbors of Nicaragua and illegally (even under domestic law) supporting the Contras by selling weapons to Iran and funnelling the money to Nicaraguan insurgents.

Good point. There are many reasons, past and present, why we don't support international justice. Does not really instill confidence in the actions of our government, does it? Well, I don't have to trust them (our leaders) if I can hold them accountable for their actions. The problem is that we don't know much of what goes on, as this situation shows.

 

[ChrisP]

I, for one, welcome our new American overlords.