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Subject: DU or not DU? What did we drop on the Afgans
Johnny Frost    5/23/2003 2:38:42 AM
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3050317.stm
 
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vfrickey    RE:DU or not DU? What did we drop on the Afgans   12/4/2003 3:13:08 PM
This story of popped up in the spring of '03 in the Internet chatter leading up to the war, only it was about children in Iraq suffering from rare forms of cancer allegedly due to DU exposure. There's one easy way to find out where the DU came from - isotopic analysis of the uranium from the Afghan patients' urine versus any DU weapons, wipes of artillery and tank gun bores which were used in the relevant actions. That way, we can not only determine whether those people really have DU in their systems, but where it could have come from. Other possible sources: - two scientists with the Pakistani nuclear program were investigate for allegedly having transferred unspecified nuclear materials to Al-Qaeda. What better way to discredit Allied forces in Afghanistan than to contaminate food and drink in some villages, then suggest that Allied weapons were responsible; - weapons employed by Taliban and Al-Qaeda. The Soviets are known to have incorporated DU into some of their ordnance as an armor-piercing insert. This, again, is where an isotopic analysis of the uranium in the urine samples would be very useful - WHOSE uranium was it? I think that the suggestion in the BBC article that some of the explosives used by the Allies were nuclear in nature was irresponsible, gutter journalism. If we were going to expend nuclear weapons in theater, don't you think we have used BIGGER ones and solved the problem for good?
 
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Dancing Johnny    RE:DU or not DU? What did we drop on the Afgans   12/5/2003 3:00:03 AM
Would I be correct to say that the hazard from DU is the same as with other heavy\toxic metals such as lead, murcury, beryllium?
 
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vfrickey    RE:DU or not DU? What did we drop on the Afgans   12/9/2003 2:50:34 AM
Dancing Johnny asks: "Would I be correct to say that the hazard from DU is the same as with other heavy\toxic metals such as lead, murcury, beryllium?" That's correct. Uranium has toxic effects on the kidneys, mainly. Depleted uranium is only very slightly radioactive, because it is the fraction of uranium left over when the highly radioactive U-235 has been removed. What's left is U-238, which has a radioactive half-life of four and a half BILLION years - which means that DU decays very slowly, and doesn't create much radioactivity at any given moment. Here's a quote from an article in Jane's Defence Weekly by a toxicologist at the University of California at Los Angeles on the subject: link http://tinyurl.com/ydzy "12 January 2001 A short review of depleted uranium toxicity By Prof Otto G Raabe PhD, CHP Institute of Toxicology & Environmental Health University of California There are several reports in the news about the implied toxicity of depleted uranium used for projectiles and shielding material in modern warfare. It has been suggested to be a potent carcinogen and leukemia inducer. The toxicity of uranium has been under study for at least 50 years including life span studies in small animals. Depleted uranium is only very weakly radioactive, and virtually all of the observed or expected effects are from nephrotoxicity associated with deposition in the kidney tubules and glomeruli damage at high doses. The radiation doses from depleted uranium (specific activity only 15 Bq/mg)(U-238 has a 4.5 billion year half life) are very small compared to potential toxic effects from uranium ions in the body (primarily damage to kidney tubules). The main route of potentially hazardous exposure is inhalation since gastrointestinal uptake is very small (<1/10,000)." Dr. Raabe goes on near the end of his article to say that while uranium is toxic in the same manner as lead, it is much LESS toxic than lead. So DU armor, bullets, etc. are not diabolical cancer causing agents, or at least not as much as the lead bullets, armor, etc. that would otherwise be used. The DU flap is just one more hoax perpetrated on the world by the antiwar noise machine. Pure BS.
 
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