URANIUM MEDICAL RESEARCH CENTRE

[debbie mannas]

For people interested in finding out more about DU.



www.umrc.net/index.asp



In addition, there are PLENTY of related links on the net. EVERYONE agrees it is dangerous, but the people who use it would have you believe it is somehow not going to be inhaled or ingested in a land which is full of it.



GAH.

[DreamTone7]

There is nothing I saw in this article that would tend to support your argument on the effects of using Depleted Uranium in shells. As I stated in your other post, not all Uranium is the same.



Uranium comes in many different types. Oil is used to make many different things that all have unique properties.....from gasoline to plastic. You cannot lump all Uranium into one category. Anybody who knows something about Nuclear Physics will tell you this. Why don't you please go ask somebody who knows what they are talking about since you don't seem to want to believe me.



Now, if you wanted to make an argument about using nuclear power (utilizing fission, of course), I would be more than happy to support you (for my own reasons, of course).

[debbie mannas]

That was a link to a RMRC website which has several links backing up their claims, and with documented studies of the infamous Gulf War Syndrome.



On the other hand the link you posted was to the Defense Depts cover up of the Gulf War Syndrome. C'mon dyu really expect people to believe the US govt?? hahahahahahahahahaha

[DreamTone7]

Actually, I expect you to go on believing in whatever it is that supports your viewpoint. Why don't you dig a little deeper into the agenda of your sources? Hmmm? Ties with the media I suspect, though I admit I haven't looked into it yet.



I don't completely trust our (Americas) government either. But I think I know a little more about this subject than the average person. The half-truths your sources depict as complete facts are what make me suspect of their motives. I saw no half-truths at the link I provided.

[Seismic Anamoly]

Hmmm...I dunno...

[RonOnGuitar]

<<Actually, I expect you to go on believing in whatever it is that supports your viewpoint. Why don't you dig a little deeper into the agenda of your sources?>>



The internet is both a blessing to, and a blight on, serious research and thoughtful investigation, this is an example of the "blight". As you've posited, it's always wise to ask what axe a group has to grind. By way of example, the tabacco industry had doctors who claimed that tabacco wasn't at all harmful - sometimes they even flaunted smoking cigs as a healthy thing to do!



With an item like this, someone is banking on the mere mention of "uranium" to panic the unwary, perhaps to get to encouarge contributions to his "centre". If you look at their "research", it quickly jumps out that one name is on all of it. Looks like a one man op set up as what is usually termed "DBA" - "doing business as".



Even a small search with the usual terms (e.g. "antiwar") yields up a plethora of enlightening info on the one-man "centre". Fringe politics is pretty much the guy's stock in trade; I noted that a bookseller-website that touts it's "selection of classic Marxist titles", while hawking "anti-war T-Shirts" is the place to buy the guy's unique writings. It's fine that he has personal viewpoints that do not at all reflect hard scientific reality, but they should not be accepted as anything more than the result of a creative and wishful imaginings.



True and dependable science is not dependent on a person's politics, but rather *just is*. This is just one reason why the one-man "centre" should be dismissed out of hand. We may not like what unagendized science shows us, but if we choose to be intellectually honest with ourselves we have no sensible choice other than to accept that situation. as the only acceptable one.



It would seem that if any institution wanted to look for any reason - no matter how tiny or insignificant - to complain about the liberation of Iraq, it would be the otherwise irrelevant UN. However , the WHO, the health arm of the UN has already addressed the odd panic that has been stirred up over this non-issue. The World Health Oganization notes that there is some danger to coalition troops who were hit by "friendly fire", otherwise WHO had found, according to

Leeka Kheifeps, head of the radiation program at the World Health Organization:"Under most circumstances it's probably not going to have any strong health effect". (Full article below.)



As the Iraqi's liberation leads to a society that cares about the well-bring of it's people (as opposed to torturing them!) it's quite obvious the populace's biggest radition-related worry will be exposure during dental x-rays. And that would be a real and valid concern, not dependent on fringe hype.



There is no small wisdom in nourishing a heathly sense of proportion in such things.



=Ron=



Depleted uranium weapons risk 'very small'

By Steve Mitchell

UPI Medical Correspondent

From the Science & Technology Desk

Published 3/31/2003 5:11 PM

View printer-friendly version





WASHINGTON, March 31 (UPI) -- Some weapons being deployed in Iraq contain depleted uranium, and although the metal appears to pose little health risk, it could be dangerous to soldiers and civilians under certain situations, experts said Monday.



Depleted uranium is an extremely dense metal used in armor-penetrating shells and to enhance tank armor. As its name implies, most of the element's radioactive qualities have been removed but some groups have suggested the metal still could pose a health risk.



"Under most circumstances it's probably not going to have any strong health effect," Leeka Kheifeps, head of the radiation program at the World Health Organization, told United Press International.



Brian Spratt, in the department of infectious diseases at St. Mary's Hospital in London, who served as chairman of a panel of experts that reviewed the health effects of depleted uranium for the Royal Society, said most specialists in this area "probably feel that if the exposure is low or moderate, the (health) risks are not very great."



However, "if the intakes are high," there could be a risk of lung cancer or damage to the kidneys in later years, Spratt said.



This could happen in some of the friendly-fire incidents that have occurred in Iraq, when heavily armored coalition forces' tanks are struck by missiles containing depleted uranium. Small fragments of the metal might become aerosolized and inhaled by soldiers surviving the attack.



"Those would be the kind of people we would worry about," Spratt said.



Others at risk could be individuals who clean up the destroyed tanks after battle, but "there should be much greater awareness about the need to wear respirators," which would protect people, than there was after the first Gulf War, he said.



Despite the theoretical possibility of bits of depleted uranium being aerosolized, there is "little data on what the likely intakes are on the battlefield so we have to try to estimate" from studies that involved test-firing depleted uranium weapons on tanks, Spratt said.



There appears to be no detectable negative effect in soldiers who might have been exposed to depleted uranium during the first Gulf War. "Most of the studies of the American and British veterans of the first Gulf War ... (are) not seeing any excesses of death," Spratt said.



Instead, most predictions are that "for the large number of soldiers on the battlefield, the risks are so low that you could never measure them," he said.



The WHO recently completed an assessment of levels of depleted uranium detected in Kosovo. "They found slightly elevated levels but not to an amount that would be a large concern," Kheifeps said.



"To the extent we know, (depleted uranium) is not a huge threat," she said, adding that although the possibilities should continue to be monitored, it does not seem to be a major problem.



"When it's used in war situations, this is small concern compared to the devastation" and destruction that occurs," she said.



However, Spratt said he thinks it might be too soon to rule out the possibility of a health risk. "What we really need is to get some much better data on what the particulate intakes really are" among soldiers on the battlefield, he said.



One method would be to collect urine samples from soldiers in different parts of the battlefield and test for uranium.



"We want to sample soldiers across the battlefield because we might be surprised and find there are much higher intakes than we might imagine," he said.



www.upi.com/view.cfm?Stor...0652-2989r

[Social Spit]

"C'mon dyu really expect people to believe the US govt?? hahahahahahahahahaha"



Well more than I can believe the Iraqi Minister of Information, I guess.

[debbie mannas]

precisely social spit.



So under what circumstances would DU be dangerous? And what are the chances of inhalation in a bombed out city?? Ever been in a burning building? I have.



Read the article again. DU is dangerous. They are just trying to say that chances of people getting DU into their system is small.



Yeah right. Post your pro-DU stuff if you can say yes to this:



Will you live in a known DU contaminated area?

Will you be comfortable knowing your children are handling/firing DU shells?



A simple YES or NO.

[DreamTone7]

"Contaminated" is a pretty broad term. I'd have to say "comtaminated how?" Through shell-fire? No problem. I would answer: "YES".



My kids handling the shells....again: "YES".

[debbie mannas]

www.orau.gov/reacts/defin...tamination



A person is externally contaminated if radioactive material is on skin or clothing.



A person is internally contaminated if radioactive material is breathed in, swallowed, or absorbed through wounds.



The environment is contaminated if radioactive material is spread about or uncontained.



www.theotherside.org/arch...rigan.html











by Philip Berrigan

LEST THE READER BE MISLED BY THIS ARTICLE'S TITLE, LET IT BE SAID: THERE WAS NO trial of depleted uranium. The four of us who took action last December to protest this horrific evil were indicted, charged, convicted, and imprisoned. As for depleted uranium itself: No indictment, no trial. Nor is there likely to be.

Yet depleted uranium has been part of the U.S. arsenal for over ten years. A byproduct of nuclear reactors, depleted uranium is only slightly less radioactive than raw uranium. As a heavy metal, it has so dense a structure that bullets coated with it can pierce protective covering, and shells containing a depleted uranium rod can penetrate tanks and armored vehicles. Upon impact, these shells pulverize, scattering radioactive particles up to twenty-five miles-- to be breathed or ingested--or to contaminate the soil for the next 4.2 billion years.

At last the military alchemists have succeeded in compressing the gap between nuclear and conventional weapons. The United States has used these nuclear weapons in Iraq and in Yugoslavia--a violation of international law--but there will be no trial.

No trial, despite a staggering total of dead in Iraq--as high as two million since 1991--the harvest of U.S.-led international sanctions and depleted uranium.

No trial, despite the deaths of over four hundred U.S. veterans of Desert Storm--victims of cancer, or of respiratory, liver, or kidney failure.

No trial, despite the chronic illnesses of 110,000 veterans, none of them told about the deadliness of depleted uranium.

No trial, despite the pitiable appearance of grossly deformed babies, born to Iraqi, British, and American soldiers exposed to depleted uranium.

No trial, despite the Pentagon's refusal to clean up an estimated three hundred to eight hundred tons of depleted uranium in Kuwait and Iraq.

No trial, despite U.S. giveaways of depleted uranium to a score of "friendly" nations--a blank check to build their own nuclear weapons, fight their own nuclear wars, and further contaminate the planet with radioactivity.

No trial by the media, no trial in pulpits, no trial on campuses, no trial by politicians, no trial by public opinion. A little noise over depleted uranium from veterans' groups and the peace movement, but overall, no trial. And especially, no trial by widespread nonviolent civil resistance.

The volume of silence over these hellish weapons is surreal, numbing, stupefying. How to explain it?



Certainly, in their fifty-five-year love affair with the bomb, Americans have not measured the cost of this idolatry: spiritual numbing, social denial, moral paralysis. A$19 trillion price tag since 1940 for past, present, and future wars reveals our addiction to war and bloodshed. ("Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.")

The War Department has become a master, as far back as the invasion of Grenada, at suppressing the media. ("Control the media and win the war.") We continue to bomb Iraq--monasteries, grain fields, shepherds and their flocks--but few of us know about it. The war-makers understand that suppression of key facts, along with dissemination of lies and disinformation, leaves the public uncertain and confused--especially about what to do.

What to do, there's the rub. Something that will witness to Christ's victory over death and God's sovereignty over life. How about enacting the "swords into plowshares" prophecy of Isaiah 2:4, which states that only the weaponless can climb God's mountain and achieve union with God? How about "loving enemies" as Christ did, even as we realize that we must protect our enemies in order to love them? How about reminding sick and dying Gulf War veterans, in fact all GIs, that the Pentagon judges them expendable? How about allowing our actions to speak our conviction of the absolute necessity of disarmament? How about a public expression of faith and sanity in a society that appears to have lost both?

Such concerns impelled four of us to cut into the Warfield Air National Guard base in East Baltimore on December 19, 1999, to symbolically disarm, with household hammers and our own blood, two A-10 Warthog fighter planes. These "tank busters" fired 95 percent of the depleted uranium munitions during our twin wars in Iraq and Yugoslavia, using a twenty-millimeter, seven-barrel Gatling gun that spews out thirty-nine hundred shells per minute.

In a battlefield context, Warthogs are arguably the most devastating weapons system yet fashioned. Even in the company of other terrible engines of war, they are a monstrosity. Imagine one of them strafing a village: It makes a pass and leaves a trench--people dead, buildings blasted, trees and vegetation splintered, the air, soil, and water infected with radioactivity. The Warthog is an engine of hell. It has no right to exist.

Therein lies the bottom line: Who will protest its existence? Who will resist this killing by others? Millions of decent people will not kill, but few will prevent others from killing, especially when those others lurk in governments and the military, in transnationals and banks--the quiet, well-manicured terrorists who kill under the law.



Do we desire a taproot for peace? Then we must stop the killing--killing in war, killing on death row, killing the weak and the powerless. The commandment "Thou shalt not kill!" is absolutely elementary and pivotal. Until we honor the image of God in the neighbor, until we eliminate our sins of omission (our failure to protect others), until we understand that we can't believe or love unless we stop the killing, then the pursuit of disarmament, justice, and peace is a melodrama of contradiction and futility.

Perhaps depleted uranium requires no trial. God's law has already found it guilty. International law has already found it a war crime. When Americans find the faith to stop the killing, the prophecy of Isaiah and the Sermon on the Mount will become the ultimate political statement. Only then will we outlaw depleted uranium, dumping it, along with other nuclear weapons, into the dust-bin of history.

[debbie mannas]

www.observer.co.uk/politi...33,00.html



Gulf veteran babies 'risk deformities'



Nic Fleming and Mark Townsend

Sunday August 11, 2002

The Observer



Children of British soldiers who fought in wars in which depleted uranium ammunition was used are at greater risk of suffering genetic diseases passed on by their fathers, new research reveals.

Veterans of the conflicts in the Gulf, Bosnia and Kosovo have been found to have up to 14 times the usual level of chromosome abnormalities in their genes. That has raised fears they will pass cancers and genetic illnesses to their offspring. The study is the first to analyse chromosome deformation in soldiers.



Paul Tyler MP, a member of the Royal British Legion Gulf War Syndrome working group, said it would be 'outrageous' if the findings were ignored by the Government.



'High levels of genetic damage do not occur naturally. It increases the probability of cancer, deformed babies and other genetic conditions significantly,' said Professor Albrecht Schott, a German biochemist who co-ordinated the research.



Schott collected blood samples from 16 British veterans last year. Fourteen had fought in the Gulf war, one of whom also served in Bosnia. Of the others, one served only in Kosovo and one only in Bosnia. Two of the veterans are women. The former soldiers have between double and 14 times the usual level of chromosome abnormalities. The average was five-and-a-half times higher than found in civilians. None had less than double the normal rate.



Ex-Warrant Officer Ray Bristow, who served in Saudi Arabia during the 1991 Gulf war, has previously been found to have hundreds of times higher than the safe limit of depleted uranium in his urine. The father of three from Hull, now a wheelchair user, suffers problems with his memory, respiratory system, liver, kidney, bowels and hearing. He recently had a large tumour removed from his hand.



Schott, who has a £30,000 debt after funding the tests himself, said that in the 18 months since they were done the condition of many veterans had worsened. Some were suffering from cancers.



'This confirms that we have been exposed to ionising radiation,' said Shaun Rusling, chairman of the National Gulf Veterans and Families Association. 'That is the only way we could have this level of chromosome damage.'



Last month the MoD said it was launching an investigation after a study revealed 19 Gulf veterans had developed lymphatic or bone marrow cancers compared with 11 in a control group.



A US government survey of 21,000 veterans has also shown that those who served in the Gulf were two to three times more likely to report birth defects in their children.



Depleted uranium is used in shells because its high density allows maximum penetration of hard targets such as tanks and underground bunkers. The US and Britain have admitted using 350 tonnes of depleted uranium in the Gulf war. Iraqi scientists have reported high levels of childhood cancers and deformed babies in populations exposed to the ammunition.



Some 53,000 British troops served in the Gulf. Of these, at least 552 have died and more than 5,200 have reported a range of illnesses.



Once in the body, depleted uranium can remain for years emitting small doses of alpha radiation. Former soldiers who were heavy smokers, or had undergone chemotherapy or X-ray treatment were excluded from the study as these factors could also lead to higher than normal levels of chromosome aberrations.



Kenny Duncan believes that his children's health problems are linked to his service in the Gulf war. All three were born with deformed toes and suffer from asthmas, hay fever and eczema.



His wife Mandy said: 'It's scandalous that while we are suffering with the consequences of what the Government has done, politicians are just thinking about money.'



A spokesman for the MoD dismissed Schott's findings. 'We consider the tests neither well thought out nor scientifically sound,' he said.

[debbie mannas]

www.mindfully.org/Nucs/20...1feb03.htm





Declassified 1943 memo to General L.R. Groves

a blueprint for depleted uranium

"If you can't clean it up, don't use it." Doug Rokke

The Invisible War: Depleted Uranium and the Politics of Radiation 2000



Letter to Congressman McDermott by Leuren Moret February 21, 2003

February 21, 2003



The Honorable Jim McDermott, Congressman

Washington State 7th Congressional District

1809 7th Avenue

Suite 1212

Seattle, WA 98101-1399

(206) 553-7170

(206) 553-7175 FAX



RE: Declassified 1943 memo to General L.R. Groves – a blueprint for depleted uranium



Dear Congressman McDermott,



Mr. Joe Pemberton, a lawyer in Bellingham, Washington, has asked me to provide you with scientific information on the critical and overlooked issues of particle size, penetration of gas masks, and mobility of depleted uranium formed under battleground conditions. It is also powerful scientific information to counter false statements recently made by the White House1 and the DOD2.



I am writing this letter out of concern for the military personnel who may now be serving on or near the Gulf War battlefields in Iraq and may be quartered in areas already contaminated by depleted uranium munitions. But they are not my only concern. The Gulf War Veterans who are now suffering severe health consequences have also been exposed to depleted uranium, chemicals and biological materials including vaccines while serving in Iraq and Kuwait.



The children and people of Iraq have been the greatest victims from exposure to depleted uranium15 used in the Gulf War and will continue to be. Over time, they cannot escape the chronic, low level exposure to internal radiation from depleted uranium and its decay products (see Attach. 7) as it cycles and recycles through their environment3 in water, air and food products.



Depleted uranium dust will continue to be an extreme hazard to soldiers, civilians, populations in countries downwind6,8, and the environment as a radiological contaminant to all living systems for ten half-lives or 45 BILLION years.



I am a former Lawrence Berkeley Lab and Lawrence Livermore Lab scientist, and now work with a group of independent scientists called the Radiation and Public Health Project4. Together this group has written ten books on the health effects of low level radiation. Presently I am writing a science report on depleted uranium for the United Nations Human Rights Subcommission, now investigating the illegality and use of depleted uranium munitions. I have written the Foreword (Attach.1) to Discounted Casualties: The Human Cost of Depleted Uranium by Akira Tashiro5.



Attached (Attach. 2) is a declassified memo to General L. R. Groves, director of the Manhattan Project, dated October 30, 1943. Major Doug Rokke provided me with this memo. It summarizes a report written by Manhattan Project physicists Drs. James B. Conant, A. H. Compton and H.C. Urey on the dissemination of very fine radioactive material as a method of warfare. It is a “blueprint” for depleted uranium as it has been used in Iraq, Kuwait, Kosovo, Bosnia and Afghanistan during the past decade. The memo details the use of very fine and superfine particles of radioactive materials as a military weapon. Depleted uranium, produces very fine and superfine particles in large amounts as it burns. The 1943 memo outlines what was known in 1943 and below are my comments:



- A gas warfare instrument: the memo indirectly referred to fission products from Fermi’s nuclear pile or radioactive waste like depleted uranium. The pyrophoric effect of depleted uranium, which spontaneously burns when heated to 170 C (once it is fired) and on impact, effectively forms very large numbers of extremely fine (0.1 micron) and submicroscopic particles as small as 0.001 micron or 10 Ångstroms (see Attach. 3 - Chart “Characteristics of Particles and Particle Dispersoids”) as described in the memo. Particles in this size range behave like a gas when inhaled, disperse in the lungs to the blood lung barrier where the white blood cells (greater than 7microns in diameter) engulf the tiny particles of depleted uranium and carry them throughout the body. Once these particles have been engulfed by blood cells or lodged in tissues, they may not be detectable in the urine. Contaminated personnel will take the depleted uranium home, deposited in tissues throughout their bodies.



There is no known treatment for exposure.



- It will permeate a gas mask filter: particles in the 0.1 micron range will penetrate even a HEPA filter (High Efficiency Particulate Airfilter – see Attach. 4 - HEPA chart) in large numbers. The filters in gas masks issued to military personnel are much less efficient than HEPA filters. There are 1 billion particles of 0.1 micron diameter in a cubic meter of normal air. It is clear that a man (without a gas mask) breathing at a normal rate (about 28 cubic meters per day6) and retaining 75% of the very fine particulate matter in the respiratory system6 will inhale very large numbers of very fine particles in a short time period.



In a day an average man would normally inhale 28 million particles in the 0.1 micron range through a gas mask with HEPA filters. It would take one billion fine particles to fill the period at the end of this sentence. On the battlefield during live fire, the high concentrations of fine and very fine depleted uranium particles could increase the numbers inhaled in the small particle range by magnitudes.



The gas masks issued to military personnel now deployed to the Gulf Region are defective and do not provide even a minimum of protection to personnel. Recently I went on a speaking tour in 3 northeastern states with Major Doug Rokke, January 25-February 1, 2003. In nearly every talk we gave, a National Guardsman or other military person would tell us that their masks fell off when they tilted their heads.



Air filters in gas masks also fail as they are wetted by moisture from breathing or are used in the rain.



There is no possible protection from exposure to very fine particles of depleted uranium through filtering of air.



- As a terrain contaminant: the dispersal of very fine particles of depleted uranium will contaminate the terrain and deny access to either side except at the risk of exposure. That includes civilians and animals who may live there after the battle. The half-life of depleted uranium – 4.5 billion years – leaves the contaminated terrain radioactive forever.



Small particles less than 1 micron in diameter do not settle from the air (see Attach. 3 – Chart “Characteristics of Particles and Particle Dispersoids”) but become incorporated into atmospheric dust (see Attach. 5 - Chart “Natural Aerosols”) and are transported around the earth until they are removed (“rainout”) by rain, pollution or snow3. Seasonal climate change, agricultural activities, fires and other natural and man-made disturbances will continue to remobilize particles in the upper dust level contaminating terrains off the battlefield.



Weathering of larger particles of depleted uranium deposited on the battlefield7 will contribute to concentrations of depleted uranium fine and superfine particles in the air and upper dust level.



Air monitors in Hungary8 and Greece during bombing in Kosovo and Bosnia measured Uranium 238 carried by the wind from the battlefields. Seasonal fluctuations of depleted uranium particles in the air have been reported in Kuwait6.



- Water and food contamination: the depleted uranium dust will cycle through the environment both on and off the battlefield contaminating water supplies and food. Food grown in contaminated areas will be transported to markets and contaminate populations and areas far from the battlefields. Wind, water, birds9 and animals who transport the depleted uranium in their droppings, slowly contaminate wider and wider areas.



- Internal contamination: inhalation of very fine depleted uranium dust particles is extremely damaging to the respiratory tract and will get into the blood stream where it is carried by blood cells and contaminates tissues throughout the body. These “hot particles”10 will continue to emit alpha and gamma radiation (see Attach. 6 - photo “Hot particle in lung tissue”) as they travel throughout the body or where they rest in tissue. After the Uranium 238 nucleus decays, the radioactive daughter product which forms (see Attach. 7) will continue to decay to other isotopes as many as four times. This will increase the level of radioactive exposure by magnitudes. Depleted uranium particles lodged in tissue will decay and continue emitting higher levels of radioactivity from daughter isotopes into the surrounding tissues.



SYNERGISTIC EFFECTS: The health effects from exposure to a combination of radiation, chemicals, and biological agents was not addressed in this WW II memo. This is a critical issue on the battlefield and should be considered in studies of Gulf War Illness. The combination of radiation with heavy metals, chemicals and biological toxins accelerate and increase the adverse health effects of exposure. The effects are unknown since very little research exists in this field11.



THIS IS AN ISSUE WHICH SHOULD BE CONSIDERED IN FUTURE CONFLICTS SUCH AS THE PLANNED BOMBING OF IRAQ.



MEASUREMENTS OF DU IN TISSUES FROM 71 DEAD RESIDENTS OF BASRA:

Dr. Hari Sharma, a radiochemist living in Canada and member of the Radiation and Public Health Project, has measured depleted uranium levels in the tissues of 71 residents of Basra who died after the Gulf War from cancers12. They were in the age range of 35-50 years. He found high concentrations of depleted uranium in tissue samples from these individuals. The levels were about the same throughout the tissues, suggesting that very fine particles were transported in the blood and deposited or lodged throughout the body.



WORLD TRADE CENTER AIR STUDIES:

Dr. Thomas Cahill, Emeritus Professor of Physics and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of California at Davis, conducted an independent study of the air around Ground Zero at the World Trade Center after the 9/11 disaster13. Using very sophisticated monitoring instruments14 which detect very fine and ultra fine particles, Cahill and his group monitored the smoldering pile at the WTC for 5 months following the disaster from one mile north of the center. They measured concentrations of particles in six size ranges from 2.5 microns to 0.09 microns13. They reported the highest concentrations of very fine particles of metals ever reported in the US13, and unprecedented numbers of very fine and super fine particles13. This air monitoring study of the WTC provided new information about very fine and superfine particles which have rarely been studied. Burning metals and other materials at high temperatures generate very large amounts of very small particles. For this reason depleted uranium which has burned is particularly hazardous.



The EPA has verified that depleted uranium was in the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11 18,19 and that the crash site was contaminated. Residents of New York City detected radiation on hand held geiger counters at the WTC site. The EPA not only failed to protect emergency response personnel at both sites, but did not report or measure13 concentrations of very fine particles at any of the 9/11 plane crash locations. These are the most hazardous to health, and many personnel who worked at the crash sites are now very ill.



Dr. Cahill also studied the Kuwaiti oil field fires following the Gulf War.



ECRR: RELEASED JANUARY 30, 2003

A new report from the European Parliament has been released “2003 Recommendations of the European Committee on Radiation Risk: Health Effects of Ionising Radiation Exposure at Low Doses for Radiation Protection Purposes” Regulators’ Edition: Brussels, 2003 10. The report was written by 46 international scientists and has over 550 references to epidemiological studies which include nuclear site leukemias, Chernobyl infants, minisatellite mutations, weapons fallout cancers, DU Gulf Veterans, and Iraqi children.



The report concludes that the International Committee on Radiation Protection (ICRP) determined international standards for risk and dose effects from studies on A-bomb survivors which were based on high dose, external, acute exposures. The ICRP model only considered cancer as a health risk associated with radiation exposure. The ICRP model, using “bathtub” chemistry, “steam engine” physics, and deceptive reporting, produced faulty and fraudulent estimates of risk and dose effects. Additionally, because the ICRP model is based on acute, high dose, external exposure it cannot accurately determine risks or dose response for internal, chronic, isotopic exposures. For this reason, the ICRP and ECRR models are mutually exclusive.



This new ECRR report based on epidemiological studies, concludes that the health effects of low level radiation exposure have been underestimated by the ICRP model by 100-1000 times. It also includes other health effects due to radiation exposure from global weapons fallout. In addition to cancer it estimates the number of foetal deaths, infant mortality, and predicts “a 10% loss of life quality integrated over all diseases and conditions in those who were exposed over the period of global weapons fallout”.



The committee concluded that underestimates of risk and dose effects for depleted uranium exposure could be very great since the effect at the cell level may be very different than other types of radiation exposures. For this reason the health effects of depleted uranium exposure in Gulf Veterans will be investigated in depth by this committee and will be presented in a new report.



Internal exposure to depleted uranium is a “novel” exposure to an altered form of natural isotopes. The size, shape, surface texture, density, chemical composition and other physical and chemical factors of the particles greatly affect the health impact and damage to the cells of any biological system from depleted uranium exposure. Particle size may be the most overlooked and one of the most important characteristics of depleted uranium dust formed on the battlefield. After burning, depleted uranium is altered both physically and chemically and estimates of risk to health and dose effects cannot be based on previous studies of naturally occurring uranium. In the Research Report Summaries7 of depleted uranium studies done for the military between 1974 and 1999, they clearly provide information and concerns in these studies about the hazards of depleted uranium both to health, exposure on the battlefield and damage to the environment. This summary is well worth reading as it provides a timeline of the military politicizing decisions on the use of depleted uranium over 25 years. For example, in a 1980 Army report17:



This report provides an excellent history of the logic behind the Army’s decision to use DU as a

kinetic energy, armored-piercing munition. DU’s final selection over tungsten was based on

several reasons, including the lower initial cost of the penetrator itself and its better overall

performance. DU and tungsten were rated even for “producibility”. Tungsten had the advantage

for safety, environmental concerns, and deployment.



RADIATION RESPECTS NO BORDERS

Depleted uranium is being used as an effective munition on the battlefield and as a radiological weapon to destroy the genetic future of the Iraqi people15. Before the Gulf War, Iraq was the most developed and advanced country in the Middle East16. Writing, religion, poetry, music and science began in the region which includes Iraq, the Cradle of Civilization. The ability of the Iraqi people has been recognized for millenia. The Iraqi people are more feared than Saddam Hussein by the US. Their talent for creativity, ability to be self-determined, and their natural resources have made them the target of the US Government, US oil companies and the Department of Defense.



In November of 1991, Richard Berta, the Western Regional Inspector for the Department of Energy who was based at the Lawrence Livermore Lab where I worked, told me: “The Pentagon exists for the oil companies…”



The use of depleted uranium by the Department of Defense has created a slow Chernobyl in the Middle East.



With my best wishes and hopes that this radiation nightmare will finally come to an end, and with thanks for your efforts to move the issue into the light,







Leuren Moret

President, Scientists for Indigenous People

City of Berkeley Environmental Commissioner

Past President, Association for Women Geoscientists

2233 Grant Street Apt. 1

Berkeley, CA 94703

Phone/FAX (510) 845-3139

<leurenmoret@yahoo.com>



REFERENCES:



White House statement on “depleted uranium scare”.

www.whitehouse.gov/ogc/ap...index.html



DOD Colonel Bob Cherry – Letter to Editor, February 2003, Olean Times Herald.



Letter from Dr. Ernest Sternglass August 23, 2001, RE: “Radiation and Dust Particles”



Radiation and Public Health Project

www.radiation.org



Discounted Casualties: The Human Cost of Depleted Uranium by Akira Tashiro, Chugoku Shimbun 2001.

www.chugoku-np.co.jp/abom...dex_e.html



“Estimating the Concentration of Uranium in Some Environmental Samples in Kuwait After the 1991 Gulf War” by F. Bou-Rabee, Appl. Radiat. Isol., Vol. 46, No. 4, pp. 217-220, 1995.



Research Report Summaries on Depleted Uranium from 1974-1999, conducted at National Laboratories and military labs.

www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_i...0Summaries



“Did NATO Attacks in Yugoslavia Cause a Detectable Environmental Effect in Hungary?” by A. Kerekes et. al, Health Physics, Vol. 80 (2), February 2001, pp.177-178.



“Birds Bring Radioactivity Ashore” by Andy Coghlan, New Scientist, January 4, 2003, p.5.



2003 Recommendations of the European Committee on Radiation Risk: Health Effects of Ionising Radiation Exposure at Low Doses for Radiation Protection Purposes Regulators’ Edition: Brussels, 2003.

www.euradcom.org



The Petkau Effect – The Devastating Effect of Nuclear Radiation on Human Health and the Environment by R. Graeub, 2nd Edition, Four Walls Eight Windows, New York (1994).



Personal communication: email March 28, 2002.



“N.Y. air hazards found: EPA assurances contradicted by UCD scientists” by E. Lau and C. Bowman, Sacramento Bee February 12, 2002.

SacramentoBee-2-12-02-NYairHazardsFound-EPAassurancesContradictedByUCdavisScientists.pdf [PDF file]



Detection and Evaluation of Long-Range Transport of Aerosols (DELTA) Group

delta.ucdavis.edu/



A Different Nuclear War: Children of the Gulf War by Takashi Morizumi

www.savewarchildren.org



Children of Iraq: The Dream of the Future UNICEF, printed by Express International – Lebanon (198 .



Richard P. Davitt “A Comparison of the Advantages and Disadvantages of Depleted Uranium and Tungsten Alloy as Penetrator Materials”, Tank Ammo Section Report No. 107, Dover, NJ: US Army Armament Research and Development Command, June 1980.

www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_i...0Summaries



“Depleted uranium: devastation at home and abroad” by Leuren Moret, San Francisco Bay View, November 7, 2001.

www.wagingpeace.org/artic...7moret.htm



“Tödliches Uran-Recycling” by Geseko von Lüpke, NATUR January 2002.

warp6.dva.de/sixcms/detail.php?id=112520



ATTACHMENTS:



Attachment 1: “Forword” by Leuren Moret to Discounted Casualties: The Human Cost of Depleted Uranium by

Akira Tashiro, Chugoku Shimbun (2001).



Attachment 2: Declassified memo to General L.R. Groves, Director of the Manhattan Project, October 30, 1943.

Source – US Army Major Doug Rokke



Attachment 3: TABLE: “Characteristics of Particles and Particle Dispersoids” from the HANDBOOK OF CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS 53rd Edition. This chart provides the particle range which is very wide for metallurgical dusts and fumes, a range from 100 microns to 0.001 microns (10 Angstroms). Particles smaller than 0.1 microns will coagulate and form larger particles, but the greatest number or population of particles will be in the 0.1 micron range (see Chart “Natural Aerosols”). This particle range is smaller than blood cells, bacteria, pollens, spores and other typical air contaminants. Very fine particles are extremely hazardous to health because they are carried by the blood throughout the body. The rate of radiation exposure from one very small particle can be more than is allowed for a whole body exposure in one year (see photo “Hot particle in lung tissue”).



Attachment 4: CHART: “Penetration of a HEPA filter as a function of particle size” from 18TH DOE NUCLEAR AIRBORNE WASTE MANAGEMENT AND AIR CLEANING CONFERENCE, Baltimore 1984. Experimental penetration of particles through a HEPA filter – determination that approximately 0.1% in the 0.1 micron particle range will pass through the filter. If there are 100,000 particles 0.1 micron in diameter per cubic centimeter of air, then 120 per cubic centimeter of air will pass through a HEPA filter. In one day an average man will inhale 28 million particles in the 0.1 micron range through a HEPA filter.



Attachment 5: CHART: “Natural Aerosols” from ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY 7th Edition (1992), McGraw Hill.

This chart provides the average size distribution for natural aerosols in atmospheric dusts. The largest population or number of particles in an aerosol dust is in the 0.1-0.01 micron range. Depleted uranium particles in this size range will be incorporated in atmospheric dusts and will travel indefinitely, transported by winds.



Attachment 6: PHOTO: “Hot” or radioactive particle in lung tissue” photo by Del Tredici, Burdens of Proof by Tim Connor, Energy Research Foundation (1997). This is a photo of a “hot particle”, in this case a 1 micron particle of plutonium, and shows the alpha tracks emitted from that particle in one year.



Attachment 7: Van Nostrand’s Scientific Encyclopedia 5th Edition (1976) Decay paths for natural uranium – Table 1 The Uranium Series, and Table 3 The Actinium Series. The decay paths for uranium are very complex but decay through a number of steps before they become stable and are no longer radioactive. Each of these steps produces a radioactive daughter product which will be more radioactive than the original uranium atom.

[Galmin]

Dr. Doug Rokke



news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/362543.stm

[debbie mannas]

the BBC's taking this on board.



It needs a really really wide audience.



Cheers Galmin.