Stop the Orwellian Double Speak: 

It is Enriched Uranium, not Depleted

By David M. Boje, Ph.D. (March 13, 2003)

The piece by Levi Hill can be found at http//www.roundupnews.com/news/389657.html?mkey=49552

Here is the bottom line - War is Increasingly About Civilian Dead.

Depleted Uranium - Radiation Hazard Notwithstanding by Dr. Dan Bishop, Ph.D. (Chemistry, Retired)

International Depleted Uranium Study Team (Member of the Board)

Levi Hill’s recent article in the Round Up relating to the health hazards associated with depleted uranium exposure makes some interesting points, some of which are on the mark, while others are incorrect or misleading. For example, the United States is not the only country that uses depleted uranium in munitions.

Selling depleted uranium weapons is big business. The United States, Great Britain, France and Russia all manufacture and sell these weapons worldwide. At least 20 countries (including Saudi Arabia and Israel) have stockpiled them in their arsenals. Fortunately, many of these countries have not yet had occasion to actually use them. Great Britain and Germany have used them alongside the United States in the Kosovo/Bosnia/Serbia arena. Canada, on the other hand, has recognized the human and environmental dangers associated with depleted uranium and has removed them from its arsenal.

Mr. Hill’s piece correctly points out the effectiveness of uranium tipped projectiles in piercing armor. Such projectiles have been known to penetrate tank armor, enter the tank compartment, spraying its occupants with burning molten uranium, and continue on to completely penetrate the other side of the tank. With such weapons, it is no small wonder the military will do everything in its power to keep them at their disposal. Uranium tipped ammunition for hand weapons is also coming into wide use as it is capable of penetrating vests, helmets and other body armor. Mr. Hill did not mention that depleted uranium is also used extensively in tank armor in US military vehicles. Its very high density provides an effective deterrent against conventional missiles. Of course, the vehicle’s occupants are then continually exposed to radiation, up to 0.20 mrem per hour (1999 Rand report).

Mr. Hill cites Professor Hanson as ascribing health problems of Gulf War veterans and Iraqi civilians living near the Desert Storm battlefields to chemical warfare agents used by Saddam Hussein. However, not only has there been absolutely no proof that such agents were released, no credible evidence exists that Iraqi troops ever used chemical agents during that encounter. This is an example of a widely held, self-serving myth propagated by the US military and the State Department. But would they lie to the American Public? Just review the credibility of Colin Powell’s so-called "evidence" that he presented to the UN this February.

In fact, a report published in 1961 by a group of Japanese scientists on the symptoms and diseases acquired by secondary exposure victims from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bomb explosions in World War II mirrors the variety of maladies experienced by many Gulf War veterans to a remarkable degree chronic fatigue and listlessness; deterioration of memory; dizziness, headaches and sleeplessness; numbness of hands and feet, sometimes leading to deformities around joints of hands and feet; chronic skin problems, often including otherwise unexplainable malignant growths; leukemia; lymphomas; goiter; liver and kidney malfunction; increased likelihood of miscarriages, stillborns, and unusual deformities in surviving offspring. This same array of radiation induced illnesses among Iraqi citizens, and especially Iraqi children, has been reliably reported from a great many international observers. As they say, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and swims like a duck, it probably is not a turkey.

It is interesting that Professor Hanson was cited as liking the cancer risk of inhaled uranium (formed as aerosol particles when a depleted uranium shell explodes into a tank) to that of smoking cigarettes. The cancer risk of cigarettes is well known, and hundreds of thousands of smokers are suffering from various stages of lung cancer. At least they had a choice. But in making that comparison, he is tacitly admitting the carcinogenic properties of depleted uranium.

What Mr. Hill does not mention is that the biological pathway for carcinogenesis from particles of ionizing radiation, such as those released by depleted uranium and its decay products thorium and protactinium, is quite different from that from nicotine and other chemical agents. Ionizing radiation consists of electrically charged "bullets" that penetrate into the body tissue (up to an inch in the case of beta radiation). They cause damage not only to the specific molecules into which they collide, but, because of their charge, they create a wake of destruction all along their paths. Thus ionizing radiation can cause much more damage than exposure to a corresponding body burden of chemical toxins or to exposure to electromagnetic radiation (to which ionizing radiation is often erroneously compared).

Mr. Hill does point out that inhaled uranium particles may remain in the lungs for decades before completely dissolving into the bloodstream and being removed from the body. This too contrasts with the behavior of organic chemical carcinogens such as nicotine. What he conveniently does not mention is that every second of every day for all those years, the surrounding tissue is being ravaged by those ionizing radiation bullets.

One milligram of depleted uranium, a very small amount that could easily become lodged in one’s lungs as sub-5-micron diameter aerosol particles, produces nearly eight million alpha particles and sixteen million beta particles (from thorium and protactinium) every week. The statistical probability that some of these would produce irreparable biological damage over ten or twenty years is quite significant.

In addition, as minute quantities of depleted uranium are dissolved over the years and enter the bloodstream, they become free to migrate to other organs of the body. Though much of this soluble uranium will find its way to the kidneys where it reacts with proteins in the more acidic medium there, leading to forms of nephritis, a significant portion settles in the lymph glands and bone, where once again it can perform its ionizing radiation bombardment of the lymph and bone marrow. This results in an

Increased likelihood of lymphoma and leukemia, chronic anemia and slow destruction of the immune system.

Understanding this inevitably leads to the conclusion that, unlike chemical toxins and carcinogens, there is no practical safe threshold below which exposure to ionizing radiation is absolutely harmless. It all rests with statistical probabilities. It also explains why, on observing four identically exposed individuals for five years, one may develop leukemia, another lymphoma, and the third lung cancer while the fourth individual remains entirely healthy, or why not everyone so exposed has offspring with pronounced birth defects.

Mr. Hill’s article misstates the half-life of depleted uranium, U-238. Its half-life is 4.51 billion years, not several thousand years, "less than that of plutonium". And though it does decay into lead, "a common element with very dangerous health risks", as

Professor Hanson is cited as saying, I dare say one need not be too concerned over the lead produced by a substance with such a long half-life! I wonder what Mr. Hill and Professor Hanson’s conclusions relating to depleted uranium munitions might be if they were aware of the fact that depleted uranium as used by the military is contaminated by nuclear waste materials from nuclear reactors ­ waste materials that include plutonium, americium, neptunium and other trans-uranium elements, all of which are themselves much more radioactive than the depleted uranium, and in many cases (such as plutonium) much, much more toxic. This fact was revealed to the public by the Department of Energy in 2000 and admitted to by the Department of Defense in a NATO briefing in January of 2001.

Professor Hanson is cited as using the 1999 Rand report on which to base much of his conclusions regarding depleted uranium. This report, which is itself a literature review, is the bedrock on which the US military also forms its definitive conclusions.

However, the preface to this very report states "much more research both on health effects and exposures remains to be completed before definitive statements are made." The report also provides a comprehensive list in its conclusions of recommended further research. In spite of this, the report provides a bulleted list of conclusions that summarily discounts any radiological or carcinogenic hazards that may be associated with depleted uranium.

The 1999 Rand report points out on several occasions that "Very little literature directly addresses the health effects of depleted uranium" but that a review of the literature relating to natural uranium should suffice. Unfortunately, since the depleted uranium in use is contaminated by other radioactive isotopes, each with its own chemical toxicity, studies based on natural uranium alone will have little or no relevance to the hazards of the contaminated depleted uranium to which our troops are exposed.

Finally, the following two features of the 1999 Rand report on depleted uranium should be carefully considered, exhibited below as direct quotations from that document

1. "This work is sponsored by the Office of the Special Assistant and was carried out jointly by RAND Health's Center for Military Health Policy Research and the Forces and Resources Policy Center of the National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the unified commands, and the defense agencies."

2. "Finally, we are indebted to the Hon. Bernard Rostker, Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Gulf War Illnesses, for sponsoring this review, and to the many members of his staff who have provided data and insights during the drafting process." Not exactly an unbiased source of information, especially when the report has been carefully vetted by "many members" of the staff of the Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense.

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