the du sitting next to you on the sofa isn't gonna have much effect,
most of the radiation is such that it can't go through the skin.. its the after impact du that is the problem. but its not known well thus a mysterious syndrome gulf war one was complicated by the blowing up of chemical and biological weapons factories.. i sure hope we checked which way the wind was blowing! not to mention the oil fires. the world health organization said
Potential health effects of exposure to depleted uranium
In the kidneys, the proximal tubules (the main filtering component of the kidney) are considered to be the main site of potential damage from chemical toxicity of uranium. There is limited information from human studies indicating that the severity of effects on kidney function and the time taken for renal function to return to normal both increase with the level of uranium exposure.
thats after unfinished study
more on use of du:
http://traprockpeace.org/rosenfeldapril03.html
(It is denser and more penetrating than lead, burns as it flies, and breaks up and vaporizes on impact -- which makes it very deadly. Each round fired by a tank shoots one 10-pound uranium dart that, in addition to destroying targets, scatters into burning fragments and creates a cloud of uranium particles as small as one micron. Particles that small can enter lung tissue and remain embedded.
Efforts to contact Pentagon officials for comment at the Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses and officials at the Veterans Administration who deal with DU-related illness were not returned.
What Rokke and other outspoken Desert Storm veterans fear is today's troops are being exposed to many of the same battlefield conditions that they believe are responsible for Gulf War Syndrome. These illnesses have left 221,000 veterans on medical disability and another 51,000 seeking that status from the Veterans Administration as of May 2002.
Nichols' lobbying sparked Congress to pass a 1997 law requiring the Pentagon to conduct a physical and take blood samples of all soldiers before and after deployment. In a House hearing on March 25 on that requirement, Public Law 105-85, Pentagon officials said the military had not conducted those baseline tests for Iraq War soldiers, saying they asked troops to fill out a questionnaire instead.
oops
i've heard various descriptions of the amount of du. each type of round has its own variation but its usually a solid rod.
tanks have an apporximate 3.25 by 18 inch rod that is depleted uranium, the dod said it was coated at one point to confuse the issue. the nightmare is coming.. the brits are keeping track of some of the effects..
http://traprockpeace.org/ducleanup.html
By Alex Kirby
BBC News Online environment correspondent
4-24-2003
People in Iraq need urgent advice on avoiding exposure to depleted uranium (DU), the United Nations has said.
It wants the US and UK to provide precise details of sites targeted with DU weapons. The Royal Society, the UK's national science academy, is also demanding targeting data to enable a clean-up to begin.
It says it is "highly unsatisfactory" to continue using DU without knowing people's exposure levels.
"It is vital that this monitoring takes place, and that it takes place within a matter of months." Professor Spratt called as well for monitoring of DU levels in a wide sample of soldiers, including "foot soldiers and field hospital staff across Iraq", and Iraqi civilians.
He said: "It is highly unsatisfactory to deploy a large amount of a material that is weakly radioactive and chemically toxic without knowing how much soldiers and civilians have been exposed to it."
The UK has said it will make available records of its use of DU rounds. It offers veterans voluntary DU tests.
The US says it has no plans for any DU clean-up in Iraq. It does not test all exposed veterans. DU, left over after natural uranium has been enriched, is 1.7 times denser than lead, and effective for destroying armoured vehicles.
When a weapon with a DU tip or core strikes a solid object, like the side of a tank, it goes straight through before erupting in burning vapour which settles as dust.
Unep found DU traces in air and water in Bosnia-Herzegovina up to seven years after the weapons had been fired there.
we are selling du to 17 countries last i heard
anytime they describe our missle as penetrating you can bet its got a du portion in it. its been called a giant leap in weapons tech and they(dod and our administration) say that du is harmless so its a safe bet they are using it in a lot more than tank shells.. the A-10 warthog can shoot 4000 rounds a minute thats estimated 2.25 lbs of solid uranium in the munition so thats a ton and half du per minute.
i can't find a listing of how much is in what so there's no way to know at this point how much is there and how much is in the like vaporized version and how much is in fragments.
we're now putting du in consumer goods. damn
see
http://www.umrc.net/
DU is a byproduct of the uranium enrichment process.
Presently there is no acceptable solution for safe disposal of radioactive waste. The laws and precautions governing its use have largely been discarded since large-scale military use made them impractical. Depleted uranium is also now being made available to be recycled as an element going into manufacturing of consumer or industrial products.
The enrichment process also creates small quantities of the man-made isotopes U236 and Plutonium (Pu239). These isotopes are included in the “depleted” uranium mass as it is too expensive to extract them.
For every grams of enriched uranium that is produced there are 7 grams of Depleted Uranium. This results in huge stockpiles of radioactive waste. It is estimated that there is over one million tons of DU stockpiled in the U.S. The quantities of plutonium in these stockpiles are a well-kept secret. It is routinely measured but not publicly reported.
we've made every blunder under the sun so much so that i question which are errors to a degree that's disturbing
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