Arabs: Israel ammo in Gaza had depleted uranium

Gary Kasparov is good only at chess - for the rest, he is hopeless and deluded.

How many Israelis did you write down on your piece of paper? How many of them need to die before it's ok to defend themselves?

The Orthodox Jews in Israel treat their women as chattel too, and want to bring back antiquated and primitive lifestyles to the whole of Israel as well as want to see all Arabs and goyims wiped out of Israel - Israel is not the promised land, it is the stolen land.

What's interesting here is that everyone is outraged when these weapons are used. I don't see anyone speaking out for our Troops who are also exposed. No one cares about that. Oh, that's just their Job. It's okay for them, so You can have Your Rights secured here, to psychobabble on about how cruel your Government is. Your Freedom is not FREE!! Someone pays! What price do You pay?

The outrage is about how DU affects and destroys the lives of innocent civilians, first and foremost.

America has been using DU in our weapons systems since the first Gulf War (the almost justifiable one). It wouldn't be a surprise if we had been supplying the Hebrew Nation with weapons using DU. Can you think of a better way to cause sustainable damage to a population than to expose them to radiation for a long time?

Can't think of a nicer bunch of people (hamas) that deserve it either.

That deformity happened really fast, like instant.
I really have no comment.

That's what spreading Democracy looks like!

No, only in the US's killing fields around the world.

Vierotchka,

That’s a fairly uninformed statement. I can't think of a single modern, major nation military force that doesn't make use of DU.

But more importantly, my whole point was to state the real issue from DU, not the sensationalized issue. The REAL issue is its toxicity, not its radioactivity.

See, by sensationalizing the issue by highlighting the radioactive aspect, you strongly encourage those of us with a science or engineering background to marginalize both the commentator and, by proxy, the comment.

What is DU?

* Depleted Uranium is a waste product of the nuclear enrichment process.
* After natural uranium has been ‘enriched’ to concentrate the isotope U235 for use in nuclear fuel or nuclear weapons, what remains is DU.
* The process produces about 7 times more DU than enriched uranium.

Despite claims that DU is much less radioactive than natural uranium, it actually emits about 75% as much radioactivity. It is very dense and when it strikes armour it burns (it is ‘pyrophoric’). As a waste product, it is stockpiled by nuclear states, which then have an interest in finding uses for it.

DU is used as the ‘penetrator’ – a long dart at the core of the weapon – in armour piercing tank rounds and bullets. It is usually alloyed with another metal. When DU munitions strike a hard target the penetrator sheds around 20% of its mass, creating a fine dust of DU, burning at extremely high temperatures.

This dust can spread 400 metres from the site immediately after an impact. It can be resuspended by human activity, or by the wind, and has been reported to have travelled twenty-five miles on air currents. The heat of the DU impact and secondary fires means that much of the dust produced is ceramic, and can remain in the lungs for years if inhaled.

Who uses it?

At least 18 countries are known to have DU in their arsenals:

* UK
* US
* France
* Russia
* China
* Greece
* Turkey
* Thailand
* Taiwan
* Israel
* Bahrain
* Egypt
* Kuwait
* Saudi Arabia
* India
* Belarus
* Pakistan
* Oman

Most of these countries were sold DU by the US, although the UK, France and Pakistan developed it independently.

Only the US and the UK are known to have fired it in warfare. It was used in the 1991 Gulf War, in the 2003 Iraq War, and also in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s and during the NATO war with Serbia in 1999. While its use has been claimed in a number of other conflicts, this has not been confirmed.

http://www.cadu.org.uk/intro.htm

Now Israel has apparently been using it. I would not be surprised at all if this is confirmed.

DU has a half-life of 4.5 billion years - when used in warfare, it infiltrates the aquifers, enters rivers, brooks, lakes, is ingested by animals and enters humans through the lungs and through ingestion. It is a horrible poison which also damages the DNA in women's ova and in men's sperm, leading to horrific and often extremely painful deformation of their offspring. It causes cancer and leukemia, especially in children. This horror will still be poisoning all life-forms that ingest it, for billions of years. Using it is the worst possible war crime and the worst possible crime against humanity and the environment.

More from the link posted above:

Health Problems

* DU is both chemically toxic and radioactive. In laboratory tests it damages human cells, causing DNA mutations and other carcinogenic effects.
* Reports of increased rates of cancer and birth defects have consistently followed DU usage.
* Representatives from both the Serbian and Iraqi governments have linked its use with health problems amongst civilians.
* Many veterans remain convinced DU is responsible for health problems they have experienced since combat

Information from animal studies suggests DU may cause several different kinds of cancer. In rats, DU in the blood-stream builds up in the kidneys, bone, muscles, liver, spleen, and brain. In other studies it has been shown to cross both the blood-brain barrier and the placenta, with obvious implications for the health of the foetus. In general, the effects of DU will be more severe for women and children than for healthy men.

In 2008 a study by the Institute of Medicine in the US listed medical conditions that were a high priority to study for possible links with DU exposure: cancers of the lung, testes and kidney; lung disease; nervous system disorders; and reproductive and developmental problems.

Again with the sensationalism. Please note, no where am I claiming that DU is not a dangerous substance. What I am doing is claiming that the information you are providing is incorrect and sensationalized.

On a brief side note, Vierotchka, the list of countries that use DU that you provided contradict your initial response to my post. Thank you for saving me the work.

Your source (the one you listed) has a specific agenda. Here are my sources:
Depleted uranium or DU, contains less than one third as much U-235 and U-234 as natural uranium. http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabc.htm, http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs257/en/index.html

While there are associated risks due to its radioactivity, the chemical toxicity of it represents a far, far greater risk. Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry, 91, pp. 246-252, http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs257/en/index.html
The risk from DU being created by its toxicity is also backed up by numerous animal studies. Wan B, Fleming J, Schultz T, Sayler G (2006). "In vitro immune toxicity of depleted uranium: effects on murine macrophages, CD4+ T cells, and gene expression profiles". Environ Health Perspect 114 (1): 85–91., Arfsten D. P., Still K. R., Ritchie G. D. (2001). "A review of the effects of uranium and depleted uranium exposure on reproduction and fetal development.". Toxicol Ind Health 17 (5-10): 180–91., Domingo J. L. (2001). "Reproductive and developmental toxicity of natural and depleted uranium: a review". Reprod Toxicol 15 (6): 603–9., Briner W., Murray J. (2005). "Effects of short-term and long-term depleted uranium exposure on open-field behavior and brain lipid oxidation in rats.". Neurotoxicolgy and Teratology 27 (1): 135–44., Radiation- and Depleted Uranium-Induced Carcinogenesis Studies: Characterization of the Carcinogenic Process and Development of Medical Countermeasures A.C.Miller, D.Beltran, R.Rivas, M.Stewart, R.J.Merlot and P.B. Lison (June 2005) (PDF).

Oh, almost forgot. DU is not a beta emitter. It is foremost an alpha emitter, and a very, very low level gamma emitter. However, the decay products of DU are beta emitters (roughly at the same rate as the alpha from a natural uranium).

Now, for those who are science, math inclined (requies high school chemistry or better). You can look up the decay and decay products along with the particles/radiation emitted by knowing the relative composition of DU.
From the World Health Organization: The uranium remaining after removal of the enriched fraction contains about 99.8% 238U, 0.2% 235U and 0.001% 234U by mass; this is referred to as depleted uranium or DU. Or, from Wiki: primarily composed of the isotope uranium-238 (U-238). Natural uranium is about 99.27 percent U-238, 0.72 percent U-235, and 0.0055 percent U-234

Again, I believe that these organizations concentrating on sensationalizing the dangers are ultimately doing more harm to their cause than help. The single greatest danger from DU is its toxicity. Not that this makes it any better. However, highlighting the radioactive aspect while shadowing the toxicity simply tells those of us with a science background that you are advocating a view derived from passion, not reason.

Typical ignorant drivel. Israel is a country fighting for its life. You may not like their tactics, but they have been effective and necessary. No one who is not from that part of the world can truly understand what it is like to be surrounded by people that want to kill you and are willing to die to do so. So go eat some more tofu and sing kumbaiya with all of your other patchouli smelling friends and leave politics to the grown ups.

So these weapons are not banned? They are in the Arsenals of 18 World Powers. None of these other Countries would be subject to war crimes for using them. Why should Israel? If these weapons need to be banned then they should be. Israel is not the problem here.

Depleted Uranium UN Resolutions

http://www.prop1.org/2000/du/resource/000310un.htm

TO: douginla.......

israel is fighting for it's life????....you realize that the land the call home is the land that the palestinians settled before the Jewish people were put there by the UN and British after the wwi and wwii because the GB was the only place where they could get away from anti-semitism in Europe but GB didn't want them and decided to send them to Palestine instead...the UN backed them on this decision!

After Palestine had allowed the Jewish people to take refuge in their country, the UN partitioned the country into 2 parts...Arab and Jewish and then in 1948...the Jews declared independence. Do you see how these people somehow managed to take advantage to the kindness of the Palestinians and take their land and then oppress them and set ridiculous checkpoints....and then completely assaulted the Gaza strip for the past 2 or so weeks?!?!?!...So in what logical sense do you think the Israelis are fighting for their lives? I think it's the other way around...Palestinians fighting for their own lives...but are unsuccessful because they are not allowed to have the resources to attack israel