Depleted Uranium is an inexpensive, radioactive heavy metal more dense than lead. It is basically nuclear waste made from the uranium enrichment process. The supply is plentiful and the US Military uses it in its guns, tanks, bombs, missiles and cannons. To get a feel for how much of it there is of the stuff, The U.S. government has produced more than 1.1 Billion pounds of DU in its uranium enrichment facilities in Ohio and Kentucky. It's also used as military tank armor, and aircraft, ship and missile counterweight ballasts as well as to provide the massive casing for hydrogen bombs that enable them to undergo fission and give off about fifty percent greater energy "bang for the buck".
Our military has found that there are many attractive advantages to using Depleted Uranium (Uranium-238) over Tungsten steel, as Uranium-238 is an easier substance to process. It is also pyrophoric, which means it burns instantly upon impact or if ignited. DU also has the advantage of being easily able to penetrate targets from armored tanks to concrete bunkers.
Always happy to rid itself of nuclear waste, Depleted Uranium has been cheerfully given away by the government to weapons manufacturers, who then in turn make a profit by selling the weapons to the US Military for use in combat as well as for running "tests" out into the air. Sometimes in the past fifty years it has been burned in open pits and other times DU is exploded in an estimated twenty-three locations all across the nation, including Hawaii and Puerto Rico.
Experts who have studied the properties of Depleted Uranium and its deleterious effects upon human health have a great deal to tell us. Recently in a letter to Tracy Press, Marion Fulk, local resident and nuclear physical chemist retired from the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab formerly involved with the Manhattan Project, tells us a bit about the uranium that is being exploded at Livermore and its effects upon human health: "Uranium-238, sometimes called 'depleted uranium', poses a serious health threat, especially if inhaled in finely divided particles like those created by open-air explosives testing. Because of its properties, uranium-238 is a triple threat to human health. Its properties as a heavy metal create health damage once inside the body. Its properties as a hazardous chemical catalyst cause additional health risks. And its properties as a radioactive material offer a third route to cellular and DNA damage, illness and premature death in humans and animals."
Despite the fact that Uranium-238 is commonly called "Depleted", this was a label invented to get the public to think that it is a weakly radioactive material. Nothing could be further from the truth. This poison dust packs a powerful punch to the human body, as Dr. Rosalie Bertell, biometrician and environmental epidemiologist, international radiation expert, and Founder of The International Institute of Concern for Public Health explains, "Depleted uranium concentrate is almost 100 percent uranium. More than 99 percent of both natural and depleted uranium consists of the isotope U-238." In addition, the U.S. Department of Energy and the 1995 U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute admits that a small amount of additional toxic heavy metals and radioactive isotopes are also present in Depleted Uranium, such as plutonium, neptunium, americium, Uranium-236 as well as Uranium-234 and Uranium-235.
The Uranium-238 which is used in our weapons and is "tested" at test sites throughout the United States is some mighty powerful stuff. We should not, therefore, allow the name of this type of radioactive munition, "Depleted Uranium", fool us. As a matter of fact, in order to bring greater clarity to the issue, scientists from the UK at the Low Level Radiation Campaign are no longer calling uranium weapons "Depleted Uranium" or "DU" but have switched to the term "WDU", which stands for Weapons-Derived Uranium when referring to exposures from use of weapons containing any class of Uranium. Hopefully the term WDU will eventually catch on, because just like the words that the US Military uses to describe DU such as claiming it is "mildly" or "weakly" radioactive, the fact of the matter is, no radiation is harmless radiation.
Uranium weapons destroy health and irreparably damage all living things. In his book Radiation-Induced Cancer From Low-Dose Exposure, John W. Gofman, M.D., Ph.D. makes his point about radiation crystal clear: "By contrast, we think human evidence and logic combine to make a case which is already conclusive -- by any reasonable standard of proof -- against the existence of any safe dose or dose-rate of ionizing radiation, with respect to cancer-induction."
For the case of simplicity for now, we will stick to the misnomer "Depleted Uranium". A pyrophoric munition, DU explodes spontaneously upon being fired. Up to 80% of it is then oxidized, and an aerosol is formed of minute radioactive particles between the range of below 1 micrometer to 5 micrometers. Immediately after the Uranium-238 is fired, these particles are so tiny that they are actually an invisible gas which can be either inhaled easily into the lungs, ingested in food, or can enter the body inside a break in the skin, such as through a small cut on a finger. In combat, Depleted Uranium can also enter the body via shrapnel that enters the skin.
At the May, 1999 Hague Peace Conference, Dr. Rosalie Bertell stated that Depleted Uranium is "converted at high temperature into an aerosol, that is, minute insoluble particles of uranium oxide, UO2 or UO3 , in a mist or fog...Uranium oxide and its aerosol form are insoluble in water. The aerosol resists gravity, and is able to travel ... in air. Once on the ground, it can be resuspended when the sand is disturbed by motion or wind. Once breathed in, the very small particles of uranium oxide, those which are 2.5 microns [ one micron = one millionth of a meter ] or less in diameter, could reside in the lungs for years". Once in the lungs, the uranium slowly passes through the lung tissue into the blood. Uranium oxide dust has a biological half life in the lungs of about a year. Eventually, the uranium passes through the lung tissue and then into the blood stream, which may then be broken down in body fluids.
Eventually the uranium may be stored in bone, lymph, liver, kidney or other tissues. When found in urine seven or eight years after exposure, it is an indication of its long term internal uranium contamination through storage in the body's tissues.
Marion Fulk gives us an energetic picture of how DU creates havoc once inside the body. "It is an alpha emitter, which means that it is particularly damaging if lodged inside the body. Uranium-238 decays with an energy of 4 million electron volts per alpha particle. The energy emitted tears up surrounding cells and may initiate a whole bunch of negative health outcomes, including, but not limited to, cancers."
Dr. Doug Rokke states how fast DU works once inside the body, "Alpha particle emission measurements show that the dose or exposure rate is in excess of 10000 counts per minute." DU, he says, "is a serious internal hazard".
Explaining this nasty cell-busting process, Janette D. Sherman, M.D., specialist in internal medicine and toxicology, member of The Radiation and Public Health Project, and author of Life's Delicate Balance: Causes and Prevention of Breast Cancer and Chemical Exposure and Disease states that when we are exposed to Depleted Uranium, it is a serious hazard as a chemically toxic heavy metal, plus it is also radioactive. Because the uranium is so concentrated, the alpha activity is increased, and a decay process occurs. Both alpha and beta radiation are emitted into the cell tissue that surrounds the miniature DU particle, affecting other cells and disrupting cell membranes, DNA, and the cell development process.
Quoting from Dr. Sherman's book, "Aside from the radioactivity of uranium, it is a heavy metal poison and foreign body irritant with the potential to remain in the body for decades." Uranium poisoning also involves general health impairment to the kidneys, liver, lungs, and cardiovascular, nervous and cell production systems, and cause disorders of proteins and carbohydrate metabolism .
Hmmm...Uranium can stay in the body for decades, you say? Well then, how do we know that any of us is not walking around right now with an invisible particle of Uranium-238 lodged inside one of our lungs, hanging out and waiting to give us cancer twelve years down the road? The point of the matter is, we don't.
Cathy Garger is a freelance writer, public speaker, activist, and a certified personal coach who specializes in Uranium weapons. Living in the shadow of the national District of Crime, Cathy is constantly nauseated by the stench emanating from the nation's capital during the Washington, DC, federal work week.
Follow the links at the top of the article (www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_23826.shtml and tinyurl) to find even more links to take action against this barbarity. Current activities include lawsuits to stop testing, lobbying of the Tracy City Council which meets on February 6th, 2007 and other actions planned by TriValley CARES posted at http://haltdutesting.blogspot.com.
We need to outlaw the use of weaponized depleted uranium. Use of this substance should constitute a felony crime against humanity and all living things!
by
Tim Riley (7 articles, 5 quicklinks, 7 diaries, 132 comments)
on Friday, February 2, 2007 at 3:57:54 PM
Rense.con the Jeff Rense Show has a picture I supplied for a show of a deadly DU Bomb going off way back in 1961. The Rense address is: http://rense.com/general75/hyd.htm
Those "people" at Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab really have been detonating these radioactive bombs for about 50 years. I suspect that is why the San Francisco Bay Area has such bad health statistics among 7 Million people. San Francisco needs everybody's help, those people at Livermore really are trying to kill us.
http://rense.com/general75/hyd.htm http://rense.com/general75/lvermore.htm
This is an overwhelming indictment of the genocidal (or rather, omnicidal) nature and intent of our government. The people who can direct the commission of such atrocities are the most evil psychopaths in history!
by
Hajja Romi (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 5 comments)
on Friday, February 2, 2007 at 9:05:37 PM
What is it going to take before the people of this country get off of their hamster wheels and DO SOMETHING!!
DO something to stop the insane puppet governmental system hijacked by psychotic multinational elites who don't give a rat's behind if we live or die.
Did you hear that America?
The government that you trust and defend doesn't care about your life or your children's lives. ALL they care about is their profit margins that allow them to sit in their penthouse offices and look down on the rest of us slaves while we run around making them richer.
They call the shots, send our children to die for their corporate foreign policy, so that they can control countries and natural resources, and play with their toys that go BOOM, and kill people!
They order the manufacturing of nuclear weaponry such as Depleted Uranium, a misnomer, because it isn't depleted at all. These weapons are DEADLY!! They kill by eating your body up from the inside out, and they are not only manufacturing them here in the US, they are testing them...EXPLODING THEM RIGHT HERE IN OUR BACK YARD!!
All of this...while they go to their dinners and luncheons and laugh about the death and destruction, and the fact that they are getting away with it while a nation of citizens sit paralyzed, brainwashed, and too fearful to hold them accountable. They just have to claim God talks to them, say a prayer or two, hug a couple of babies, and call it christianity...ahhh...then they are forgiven for all, and now you can sleep at night. Just don't go outside and breathe the air, drink or swim in the water, eat the food grown from the earth contaminated by it, play in the grass covered by it, play in the sand at the beach, etc..
This is happening to ALL of us...NOT just in the Middle East, where millions of innocent men, women, and children have lost their lives, and many more will live with the horrors and deformities that will continue destroying and mutating DNA for a very long time!
It's happening to the people in Tracy, SanFrancisco, Berkley, California, Nevada, and ALL of the rest of us, everywhere, because it does not just stay in one place.
If you needed a reason to act, well, this is it!
The time is NOW!!
by
Elaine Nichols (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments)
on Friday, February 2, 2007 at 10:01:28 PM
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