Community | October 20, 2009 | 43 comments

Depleted Uranium: Dead and Deformed Babies in Iraq and Afghanistan Are No Joke

source: http://pubrecord.org/world/5811/depleted-uranium-babies-afghanistan/

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WakeUpPeople
The horrors of the US Agent Orange defoliation campaign in Vietnam, about which I wrote on Oct. 15, could ultimately be dwarfed by the horrors caused by the depleted uranium weapons which the US began using in the 1991 Gulf War (300 tons), and which it has used much more extensively–and in more urban, populated areas–in the Iraq War and the now intensifying Afghanistan War.

Depleted uranium, despite its rather benign-sounding name, is not depleted of radioactivity or toxicity. The term “depleted” refers only to its being depleted of the U-235 isotope needed for fission reactions in nuclear reactors. The nuclear waste material from nuclear power plants, DU as it is known, is what is removed from the power plants’ spent fuel rods and is essentially composed of the uranium isotope U-238 as well as U-236 (a product of nuclear reactor fission, not found in nature), as well as other trace radioactive elements.

Once simply a nuisance for the industry, that still has no permanent way to dispose of the dangerous stuff, it turns out to be an ideal metal for a number of weapons uses, and has been capitalized on by the Pentagon. 1.7 times heavier than lead, and much harder than steel, and with the added property of burning at a super-hot temperature, DU has proven to be an ideal penetrator for warheads that need to pierce thick armor or dense concrete bunkers made of reinforced concrete and steel. Once through the defenses, it burns at a temperature that incinerates anyone inside (which is why we see the carbonized bodies of bodies in the wreckage of Iraqi tanks hit by US fire).

Accordingly it has found its way into 30 mm machine gun ammunition, especially that used by the A-10 Warthog ground-attack fighter planes used extensively in Iraq and Afghanistan (as well as Kosovo). It is also the warhead of choice for Abrams tanks and is also reportedly used in GBU-28 and the later GBU-37 bunker buster bombs, each of which can have 1-2 tons of the stuff in its warhead.

DU is also used as ballast in cruise missiles, and this burns up when a missile detonates its conventional explosive. Some cruise missiles are also designed to hit hardened targets and reportedly feature DU warheads, as does the AGM-130 air-to-ground missile, which carries a one-ton penetrating warhead. In addition, depleted uranium is used in large quantities in the armor of tanks and other equipment. This material becomes a toxic source of CU pollution when these vehicles are attacked and burned.

While the Pentagon has continued to claim, against all scientific evidence, that there is no hazard posed by depleted uranium, US troops in Iraq have reportedly been instructed to avoid any sites where these weapons have been used—destroyed Iraqi tanks, exploded bunkers, etc.—and to wear masks if they do have to approach. Many torched vehicles have been brought back to the US, where they have been buried in special sites reserved for dangerously contaminated nuclear materials. (Thousands of tons of DU-contaminated sand from Kuwait, polluted with DU during the US destruction of Iraq’s tank forces in the 1991 war, were removed and shipped to a waste site in Idaho last year with little fanfare.)

Suspiciously, international health officials have been prevented or obstructed from doing medical studies of DU sites in Iraq and Afghanistan. But an excellent series of articles several years ago by the Christian Science Monitor described how reporters from that newspaper had visited such sites in Iraq with Geiger-counters and had found them to be extremely “hot” with radioactivity.

The big danger with DU is not as a pure metal, but after it has exploded and burned, when the particles of uranium oxide, which are just as radioactive as the pure isotopes, can be inhaled or ingested. Even the smallest particle of uranium in the body is both deadly poisonous as a chemical, and over time can cause cancer—particularly in the lungs, but also the kidneys, testes and ovaries.

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43 comments // Depleted Uranium: Dead and Deformed Babies in Iraq and Afghanistan Are No Joke

  • David_Vandale
  • David_Vandale
    • 0
      David_Vandale  

    • Global cancer rates could increase by 50% to 15 million by 2020.
      What a novel way to dispose of depleted uranium which has a shelf life of 4.5 billion years.

    • 1 year ago
  • jubal
  • WhiteNoise
  • thewallisgirl
  • RFIDemocracy
  • jubal
  • jubal
  • Saladin
    • 0
      Saladin  

    • The actual danger of Depleted uranium is not that it's radioactive, having a half-life of ten thousand years means it's -barely- radioactive. Which is why it was thought safe to use.

      The danger is that the metal itself is a -poison-, much like lead or other heavy metals but far worse.

      That is what is believed, scientifically, to be causing all these problems.

      But regardless, we shouldn't be using this metal. It's abhorrent to any convention of warfare to leave a lasting effect on an innocent populace generations after the war has ended.

    • 2 years ago
  • pakazak
  • Saladin
    • 0
      Saladin  
    • Saladin:

      Exactly, which is what makes it so dangerous. Hell, if it were just radioactive, we could deal with that!

      But it's poisonous, and it's used in EXPLOSIVE shells. So you can't just stay away from it, it blows around in the wind after the war is over.

    • 2 years ago
  • pakazak
  • Ricky84
  • phukna
    • 0
      phukna  

    • i see it as killing three birds with one stone,
      a proper way to get rid of our nucleare waste,
      recyling into useful weapons
      and killing future generations of american haters.

      reduse, reuse, red lobster!!!

    • 2 years ago
  • pakazak
    • 0
      pakazak  
    • phukna:

      except for the part where we don't get rid of the waste - what's the half-life? 10,000 years? - it's just being held for us.

      useful weapons is an oxymoron.

      and seem like we'll be growing some mutants of our very own soon.

    • 2 years ago
  • Vb86Vic
  • mcjk
    • 0
      mcjk  
    • phukna:

      That is not only disgusting, but grossly wrong.
      Our troops spend a lot of time with the depleted uranium, leading them to cancer as well.

    • 2 years ago
  • RFIDemocracy
  • interditx
    • 0
      interditx  
    • phukna:

      Our own troops and Americans around testing facilities are being affected by this. D.U ammo incinerates on impact, leaving a deadly uranium oxide dust, inhaled or absorbed it is as harmful as the depleted fuel rods it started out as.

    • 2 years ago
  • Incredulous
    • 0
      Incredulous  

    • We are the paid police force of the world, and buying into any other fantasy about ourselves is just that, a fantasy.

      Our representatives do not represent us, they represent the needs and interests of those who use our tax dollars and our children's lives to expand their markets across the globe.

      The sooner we wake up and realize this about ourselves, the better chance we have to change it before it completely changes us.

      The only difference between the Republicans and the Democrats, as far as I can see, is the good cop, bad cop facade they take on to get us to comply. Democrats pretend to have the best interests of the people first, but their voting records rarely defend that position, and Republicans have simply convinced the willing that the interests of big business are their interests.

      Welcome to America.

    • 2 years ago
  • Vb86Vic
    • 0
      Vb86Vic  

    • Reading this kinda ruined my day.. I'm glad to know about it, but how awful it must be to witness this type of thing. Just to know that our species is capable of destroying itself so willingly (those who do this for profit anyways) makes me sick..

    • 2 years ago
  • panichead
  • pakazak
  • bombastinator
  • pukemnukem
    • 0
      pukemnukem  

    • While not attempting to justify the usage of DU munitions, Afghanistan and Iraq has a long history of chemical weapons being used on the local population. During the Soviet occupation, large amounts of deadly chemical weapons were used wholesale, including the poisoning of towns' water supplies. In Iraq, during the Iran-Iraq war, and during the suppression of the Kurdish minorities, Saddam used large amounts of chemical weapons. To look at these two populations, Iraq and Afghanistan, and link all birth defects to just DU munitions and ignoring other potential causes is a fallacy.

    • 2 years ago
  • nodonjuan
  • Mariana_GS
  • Saladin
  • pakazak
    • 0
      pakazak  
    • pukemnukem:

      i think the correct answer to that question is 'yes',
      as in 'yes, every chemical manufacturer and every arms dealer, in some small way, has a hand in any death and destruction caused' - and that goes for the governments that support them.

    • 2 years ago
  • Mariana_GS
    • 0
      Mariana_GS  
    • pukemnukem:

      If that was directed to me, I wasn't being "partisan", I was making an honest question. If your paranoia and misplaced anger led you to think I was being sardonic, then sucks to be you.

      I really did want to know! So thanks, pakazak.

    • 2 years ago
  • bombastinator
    • 0
      bombastinator  
    • pukemnukem:

      it occurs to me that iraq also spent several months with all it's oil wells on fire as well. That can't have been good. War is messy an poisonous and has been for a long time. There are still farmers getting hit very occasionally in Europe when they inadvertently plow up poison gas left over from world war one.

    • 2 years ago
  • pukemnukem
    • 0
      pukemnukem  
    • pukemnukem:

      Well from your name I can see you have no compassion for dons or juans...

      The name comes from a job I used to have. I used to work in the nuclear power field for the military. So I guess I am part of the military-industrial complex just trying to spread evil disinformation...

    • 2 years ago
  • RFIDemocracy
    • 0
      RFIDemocracy  
    • Image
    • pukemnukem:

      I think there is plenty of compelling evidence of how serious the issue is.
      It's much more than munitions as they are using it to armor vehicles, etc. Everything has a reading now.
      They have been in use since 1973 and the dust is re-aerosoled by disturbing it. It is virtually there forever. Many munitions storage sites in the US are said to be highly toxic.

      **Depleted uranium, known as DU, is a highly dense metal that is the byproduct of the process during which fissionable uranium used to manufacture nuclear bombs and reactor fuel is separated from natural uranium. DU remains radioactive for about 4.5 billion years.

      Uranium, a weakly radioactive element, occurs naturally in soil and water everywhere on Earth, but mainly in trace quantities. Humans ingest it daily in minute quantities.
      DU shell holes in the vehicles along the Highway of Death are 1,000 times more radioactive than background radiation, according to Geiger counter readings done for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Dr. Khajak Vartaanian, a nuclear medicine expert from the Iraq Department of Radiation Protection in Basra, and Col. Amal Kassim of the Iraqi navy.
      The desert around the vehicles was 100 times more radioactive than background radiation; Basra, a city of 1 million people, some 125 miles away, registered only slightly above background radiation level.
      But the radioactivity is only one concern about DU munitions.
      A second, potentially more serious hazard is created when a DU round hits its target. As much as 70 percent of the projectile can burn up on impact, creating a firestorm of ceramic DU oxide particles. The residue of this firestorm is an extremely fine ceramic uranium dust that can be spread by the wind, inhaled and absorbed into the human body and absorbed by plants and animals, becoming part of the food chain.

      Once lodged in the soil, the munitions can pollute the environment and create up to a hundredfold increase in uranium levels in ground water, according to the U.N. Environmental Program.

      Studies show it can remain in human organs for years.

      The U.S. Army acknowledges the hazards in a training manual, in which it requires that anyone who comes within 25 meters of any DU-contaminated equipment or terrain wear respiratory and skin protection, and states that "contamination will make food and water unsafe for consumption."
      Just six months before the Gulf War, the Army released a report on DU predicting that large amounts of DU dust could be inhaled by soldiers and civilians during and after combat.
      Infantry were identified as potentially receiving the highest exposures, and the expected health outcomes included cancers and kidney problems.
      The report also warned that public knowledge of the health and environmental effects of depleted uranium could lead to efforts to ban DU munitions.
      But today the Pentagon plays down the effects. Officials refer queries on DU munitions to the latest government report on the subject, last updated on Dec. 13, 2000, which said DU is "40 percent less radioactive than natural uranium."
      The report also said, "Gulf War exposures to depleted uranium (DU) have not to date produced any observable adverse health effects attributable to DU's chemical toxicity or low-level radiation. . . ."
      In response to written queries, the Defense Department said, "The U.S. Military Services use DU munitions because of DU's superior lethality against armor and other hard targets."
      It said DU munitions are "war reserve munitions; that is, used for combat and not fired for training purposes," with the exception that DU munitions may be fired at sea for weapon calibration purposes.**

      BTW, the final statement above is now known to be false, or at least no longer operative.

    • 2 years ago
  • bombastinator
    • 0
      bombastinator  

    • The warthog has basically been phased out of service. There is only one group in the National Guard still flying them, and the vehicle is not being replaced.

      The wikipedia entry on depleted uranium is extensive.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium
      There are apparently extensive military uses besides actual bullets

      There has been experimentation with other mixes for use in penetrator rounds. The one I specifically remember involves a weird alloy which includes copper and several other common metals in which the various metals bind together so poorly that the compound behaves very much like a plastic. I'm not finding any supportive data online for it though so I may be wrong here.

    • 2 years ago
  • RFIDemocracy
  • bombastinator
    • 0
      bombastinator  
    • bombastinator:

      I recall several reasons being mentioned at one time or another. The vehicle has a few issues.

      1) It was never particularly well liked by the air force. The program was instituted by an army turned air force general who saw a need for the aircraft an basically hammered it through. With his retirement it's primary protector disappeared.

      2) while the plane's gigantic auto cannon proved obscenely effective against massed armor, it has an insane rate of fire which has actually been shown to be far too high for many smaller situations. (very pertinent here because it means not only more DU on the ground but more than is even needed or wanted)

      3) the plane's design requires "low an slow" flight, which makes it much more vulnerable to enemy fire. While it is very heavily armored, it still suffered much higher than average losses in the last few conflicts. Specifically in situations where it was patrolling or in more general support roles. While the aircraft remains amazing in pitched battles and ambushes against heavy armor, it's best use appears to be more limited than originally intended. They're still handy but we just don't need a whole lot of them.

    • 2 years ago
  • pakazak
    • 0
      pakazak  

    • is this what we meant when we were trying to "sow the seeds of democracy" throughout the Middle East?
      we're a wonderful society, always ready to share the latest technology in death and destruction with the entire world.

    • 2 years ago
  • Incredulous
  • WhiteNoise
  • Progresshiv
  • WhiteNoise
  • vicafri
  • Maeveeo
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