2014-04 from Nuclear Information and Resource Center [http://www.nirs.org], posted at [http://org2.salsalabs.com/o/5502/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=17253]:
Two months ago, something happened at the Department of Energy's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico--something that resulted in a radiation release from deep under the earth that found its way outside the site, including the release of plutonium.
What that something was, however, remains unknown. Even though Department of Energy investigators have managed to enter WIPP in recent days (although not to the actual area where the release is believed to have occurred), there has been essentially zero publicly-released information on what happened or whether it could happen again, or conceivably whether something worse could happen.
The Department of Energy (DOE) is in charge of investigating what happened at WIPP. And it makes sense for them to conduct such an investigation--after all, it is responsible for the site.
But the DOE's track record--and trustworthiness--on radioactive waste issues is, at best, dismal. Even a fully transparent DOE investigation, and so far it has been far from transparent, would be suspect. Indeed, there remain far more unanswered questions than answered ones.
An independent investigation into what happened and what actions need to be taken to prevent a recurrence, or something worse, is needed. But that won't happen on its own; DOE is certainly not going to call for one.
So we're asking you to contact your Congressmembers and insist that an independent investigation to examine the WIPP travesty be formed.
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Nuclear safety disregarded by private URS firm of San Francisco
"Whistleblower Fired After Voicing Safety Concerns at Nuclear Site;
Donna Busche, who repeatedly cited dangerous conditions, is not first forced from job at leak-prone nuclear waste dump"
2014-02-19 by Sarah Lazare for "CommonDreams.org" [http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/02/19/whistleblower-fired-after-voicing-safety-concerns-nuclear-site]:
The person responsible for overseeing the cleanup of the former nuclear weapons site in Hanford, Washington—the most contaminated in the United States—was fired on Tuesday after blowing the whistle on the dangerous conditions at the facility.
Donna Busche—manager of Environmental and Nuclear Safety for the San Francisco-based URS Corporation, a Hanford cleanup subcontractor hired by the federal government — is at least the third senior official who has been fired or forced out after raising the alarm about lack of safety at the site, according to the Los Angeles Times [http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-hanford-whistleblower-fired-20140218,0,7410182.story]. She said executives told her she was being fired for “unprofessional conduct.”
“The Energy Department’s overall safety culture is broken and all they are doing now is sitting idly by,” Busche declared on Tuesday.
While URS claims Busche was not punished or retaliated against, Busche says she was "absolutely" targeted [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/second-whistleblower-donna-busche-fired-at-troubled-wash-state-hanford-nuke-plant/].
Busche, who had repeatedly charged that the clean-up company was steamrolling safety protections and ignoring dangerous technology flaws, had previously filed a lawsuit and a U.S. Labor Department complaint charging that URS was attempting to repress and fire her for speaking out.
"When people stand up and say something is unsafe and, as a result of that, they get fired, it sends a message to everyone else that to protect your career you should say nothing," said Tom Carpenter, Executive Director for the watchdog organization Hanford Challenge, in an interview with Common Dreams.
He added, "I feel extremely disappointment that the federal government, who hires these contractors, has failed to hold this company to account."
The Hanford facility, which was built by the federal government during the 1940s, has long been central to the U.S. military's nuclear arsenal, including the development of the atom bomb, production of plutonium for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, and other nuclear weapons.
The massive facility, which is now mostly decommissioned, is home to more than 53 million gallons of extremely radioactive sludge held in troubled tanks that have previously leaked [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/6-tanks-at-hanford-nuclear-site-in-wash-leaking/]. An estimated 1 million gallons of radioactive fluid has already spilled at the site, threatening the nearby Columbia River.
The Energy Department is engaged in a multi-billion dollar effort to transform this radioactive waste into a glass-like substance for permanent underground storage. Yet several high-ranking scientists and officials at the site have warned the technology is unsound and the process reckless.
Although they were also fired, the previous warnings by whistleblowers prompted work stoppages and a federal investigation into dangers at the site—including the possibility of a hydrogen explosion.
Monday, February 17, 2014
Military nuclear waste dump is leaking into underground water sources
"Suspected Radiation Leak in Military's Nuclear Dumping Ground;
'This is highly toxic poisoning that can be eliminated by stopping the desire to be a nuclear power over the world' "
2014-02-17 by Sarah Lazare for "CommonDreams.org" [http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/02/17/suspected-radiation-leak-militarys-nuclear-dumping-ground]:
A New Mexico deep-earth repository for the U.S. military's nuclear waste has likely sprung an underground radiation leak, sparking concern among Native American communities and other residents who "carry the burden" of this state's nuclear legacy.
"Since the detonation and creation of first atomic bomb in New Mexico, we the people who live in close proximity of storage and creation of these weapons have been in a state of fear," said Kathy Wanpovi Sanchez, Environmental Health and Justice Program Manager for Tewa Women United, an indigenous organization based in northen New Mexico.
Over the weekend, abnormally high levels of radioactive particles were found underground at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad in southeastern New Mexico, where radioactive waste, including from nuclear weapons production, is dumped deep beneath the earth's surface and stored in salt formations.
"I believe it's safe to say we've never seen a level like we are seeing. We just don't know if it's a real event, but it looks like one," said Department of Energy spokesman Roger Nelson.
WIPP stores waste that releases alpha and beta radiation, which are highly cancerous when ingested, explained Arnie Gundersen, former nuclear industry executive turned whistleblower, in an interview with Common Dreams. DOE officials say radiation has not been detected in surface samples, and no workers have been exposed. They say they do not yet know the source of the suspected underground leak.
Gundersen says the technology behind WIPP is untested — hence the word "pilot" in the facility's title. "As a society, we believe that if you stick things in the earth, they are safe," he said. "But with radioactivity, it's not dead. It can come back to haunt you if there is a leak afterwards. This is alive."
Don Hancock, Director of the Nuclear Waste Program at the Southwest Research and Information Center, says the concerns about the site extend beyond the method of nuclear waste storage. "We have always thought the site is a bad site primarily because it is centrally located in one of the largest and most active oil and gas production areas in the United States. This does not seem to be an appropriate place to put waste."
The incident comes just over a week after an underground truck fire forced an evacuation of the facility.
Nuclear experts are not convinced that the situation is safe. "This kind of incident is not supposed to happen," said Hancock. "Just like the fire on the underground, there were these two incidents within a 12-day period. That is worrisome and that is a significant situation."
Storage is not the only issue facing local residents. Nuclear waste transported from across the country, and across the state from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the north, where nuclear weapons are developed, passes through "Native American reservations, major highways, and near school systems," as it makes its way to WIPP, says Sanchez.
"Our pain and death due to cancer have been ignored. We are sick and tired of all this madness. And all this transportation and waste storage is for the benefit of a nuclear war weapons arsenal. Why?" asked Sanchez. "The U.S. government disregards and takes advantage of indigenous people. This is an unequal share of the burden we are carrying."
She added, "This is highly toxic poisoning that can be eliminated by stopping the desire to be a nuclear power over the world."
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Radiation poisoning from Hunter's Point to Iraq
Ban Depleted Uranium Weapons! [link]
"At Hunters Point Shipyard, Cyclotron Smashed Atoms Where Lennar Wants to Build Homes",
2005-01-12 by Dennis Kyne for "San Francisco Bayview" newspaper [http://www.sfbayview.com/011205/shipyard011205.shtml] [archive.org]:
Dennis Kyne is a combat veteran with 15 years in the U.S. Army. He holds a degree in political science cum laude from San Jose State University with an emphasis on nuclear proliferation, [www.denniskyne.com].
---
Plutonium, a radioactive metal named after the planet Pluto, was discovered in 1940 after uranium was bombarded with neutrons in a cyclotron. Plutonium 239, the end product of this cycle, as well as uranium, are among the few materials whose atoms can split (or "fission") to create a nuclear explosion, releasing massive amounts of energy instantly.
The cyclotron, often called an atom smasher or plutonium breeder, appeared on the Hunters Point Shipyard after the arrival of the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory (NRDL). NRDL was operational from 1946 until 1969 and used several buildings for radioactive laboratory and cyclotron operations.
Three decades after Hunters Point was vacated by NRDL, the Navy has transferred Parcel A to the city, and San Francisco is giving it away to Lennar to build 1,600 homes. This shouldn't happen. Cyclotron activity was near Parcel A, and, although named after the planet Pluto, plutonium behaves like the god of hell.
Plutonium, only in the environment since 1945, remains radioactive for an extremely long time, and health results from contaminated plutonium sites have not been shared with local leaders. Manhattan Project participants have been observed for decades, and the population of Rocky Flats, Colorado, is a group that is being monitored as well. Veterans of Desert Storm have been asked to participate in study groups because of exposure to the 300-plus tons of uranium that were dumped on Kuwait and Iraq in 1991.
Low level radiation has been found to damage human organs. Ingestion of particulate matter causes incredible contamination to the organ donor system as well as the blood donor system.
Plutonium, with a half life of 24,000 years, and uranium, with a half life of 4.5 billion years, are causing cancer and birth defects in the surrounding Hunters Point community at an alarming rate. Lennar's liberation of radioactive particles from contaminated acres will put the Hunters Point community under radiological attack.
Ernest Lawrence, the famed physicist that the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory is named for, won the Nobel Prize for developing a cyclotron in 1939. Housed in Building 820 at the Shipyard, just west of Parcel A, cyclotron use left cesium 137 and strontium 90 in the area. These highly radioactive metals cannot be found on the element chart as they are byproducts of the fissionable (atom splitting) process.
Leuren Moret, famed Lawrence Livermore Lab whistle blower, in her seminal work for the Hamburg Uranium Conference in 2003, writes that after the shutdown of the Rancho Seco Nuclear Power Plant near Sacramento in 1989, infant mortality rates improved for nearly all races in San Francisco County, but did not improve for Blacks.
Moret's work, "The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War," explains the role strontium 90 plays in this statistic: "The Radiation and Public Health Project began to collect baby teeth from children with and without cancer living near nuclear reactors for comparison of the Strontium-90 levels."
The results clearly show that children living around the Turkey Point and St. Lucie nuclear reactors in Florida were affected. After collecting the teeth, it was found that in children under 10 years of age, cancer rose 325.3 percent.
Strontium-90 levels in children with cancer were an average of 85 percent higher than in children without cancer. Causal relationship? I think so.
It appears that because there was a cyclotron, and because uranium atoms were smashed, we are seeing an incredibly high number of infant deaths in the Hunters Point community.
Breast cancer is no stranger to Hunters Point women either. Samuel Epstein states in his book "The Politics of Cancer," "There is suggestive evidence that radiation-contaminated water supplies are in part responsible for escalating breast cancer mortality in some areas of the country.
"Recent evidence suggests that increased breast cancer incidence in the Long Island counties of Suffolk and Nassau, as well as Westchester County north of New York City, is related to radiation-contaminated drinking water. This is due to radioactive contamination of the Croton River watershed reservoirs; the watershed is located only about five miles downwind to the northeast from the Indian Point nuclear plant that has released radioactive fission products since the early 1960s."
Cross-applying this conclusion from Indian Point to the Hunters Point watershed, we will see the same result in the surrounding communities. Decades of radioactive waste, washed into the Bay daily through broken tidal gates and leaking storm drains at the Shipyard, created a water table that is surely carrying radiation. As with the Croton River in New York, some of this waste was carried away and became the bottom of the Bay.
Decades of nuclear research has been dumped into the watershed of San Francisco, and, like our friends in New York, we have been victims of a faceless enemy. Science has told us not to worry, and civics has told us to keep building. History has taught us to clean up our messes, and that is where civics and science abandon us.
Did San Francisco and the Navy forget about the radiation? After ceasing active operations in 1974, the Navy leased most of the yard to Triple A ship repair company. Improper waste disposal was reported in 1986, leading to an investigation by the San Francisco District Attorney. While this company did dump a lot of garbage, they didn't use the cyclotron.
Decades after the Navy abandoned the Shipyard, officials have not addressed the effects of low level radiation on humans. Some news agencies have ignored the fact that radiation ever existed on this Shipyard.
There is a sense of urgency to halt the upheaval of this toxic soil so it can be cleaned appropriately. I have visited Hunters Point, stood as close as possible to the Rocky Flats facility and once slept on the radioactive battlefield of Desert Storm.
My tour of Parcel A gave me a buzz, the same buzz I felt on the front line of Iraq and the same buzz I would later feel upon my visit to Colorado. I no longer need a dosimeter to tell if I am in a radioactive area. Moret and Epstein clearly support my conclusion with statistically significant evidence.
There is a sense of complacency in the world. Indigenous people have been slaughtered and left to die around the uranium mining areas. Pygmy cultures in Africa have been exploited, while Hopi and Navajo reservations have been exposed to the uranium tailings. After mining it, communities were established to process and research this uranium.
Hunters Point was a community that housed NRDL. Communities that have been violently attacked with this element, such as Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Basra, Vieques, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Baghdad, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan can attest to the incredibly horrific birth defects that have occurred from the use of radioactive munitions.
Hunters Point has been attacked. Until the complacency to address the implications of low level radiation is reversed, cancer rates will continue to soar. Should San Francisco's leaders choose to ignore the effects of low level radiation coming from Hunters Point, they will be guilty of sentencing thousands of people to an early death.
"At Hunters Point Shipyard, Cyclotron Smashed Atoms Where Lennar Wants to Build Homes",
2005-01-12 by Dennis Kyne for "San Francisco Bayview" newspaper [http://www.sfbayview.com/011205/shipyard011205.shtml] [archive.org]:
Dennis Kyne is a combat veteran with 15 years in the U.S. Army. He holds a degree in political science cum laude from San Jose State University with an emphasis on nuclear proliferation, [www.denniskyne.com].
---
Plutonium, a radioactive metal named after the planet Pluto, was discovered in 1940 after uranium was bombarded with neutrons in a cyclotron. Plutonium 239, the end product of this cycle, as well as uranium, are among the few materials whose atoms can split (or "fission") to create a nuclear explosion, releasing massive amounts of energy instantly.
The cyclotron, often called an atom smasher or plutonium breeder, appeared on the Hunters Point Shipyard after the arrival of the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory (NRDL). NRDL was operational from 1946 until 1969 and used several buildings for radioactive laboratory and cyclotron operations.
Three decades after Hunters Point was vacated by NRDL, the Navy has transferred Parcel A to the city, and San Francisco is giving it away to Lennar to build 1,600 homes. This shouldn't happen. Cyclotron activity was near Parcel A, and, although named after the planet Pluto, plutonium behaves like the god of hell.
Plutonium, only in the environment since 1945, remains radioactive for an extremely long time, and health results from contaminated plutonium sites have not been shared with local leaders. Manhattan Project participants have been observed for decades, and the population of Rocky Flats, Colorado, is a group that is being monitored as well. Veterans of Desert Storm have been asked to participate in study groups because of exposure to the 300-plus tons of uranium that were dumped on Kuwait and Iraq in 1991.
Low level radiation has been found to damage human organs. Ingestion of particulate matter causes incredible contamination to the organ donor system as well as the blood donor system.
Plutonium, with a half life of 24,000 years, and uranium, with a half life of 4.5 billion years, are causing cancer and birth defects in the surrounding Hunters Point community at an alarming rate. Lennar's liberation of radioactive particles from contaminated acres will put the Hunters Point community under radiological attack.
Ernest Lawrence, the famed physicist that the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory is named for, won the Nobel Prize for developing a cyclotron in 1939. Housed in Building 820 at the Shipyard, just west of Parcel A, cyclotron use left cesium 137 and strontium 90 in the area. These highly radioactive metals cannot be found on the element chart as they are byproducts of the fissionable (atom splitting) process.
Leuren Moret, famed Lawrence Livermore Lab whistle blower, in her seminal work for the Hamburg Uranium Conference in 2003, writes that after the shutdown of the Rancho Seco Nuclear Power Plant near Sacramento in 1989, infant mortality rates improved for nearly all races in San Francisco County, but did not improve for Blacks.
Moret's work, "The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War," explains the role strontium 90 plays in this statistic: "The Radiation and Public Health Project began to collect baby teeth from children with and without cancer living near nuclear reactors for comparison of the Strontium-90 levels."
The results clearly show that children living around the Turkey Point and St. Lucie nuclear reactors in Florida were affected. After collecting the teeth, it was found that in children under 10 years of age, cancer rose 325.3 percent.
Strontium-90 levels in children with cancer were an average of 85 percent higher than in children without cancer. Causal relationship? I think so.
It appears that because there was a cyclotron, and because uranium atoms were smashed, we are seeing an incredibly high number of infant deaths in the Hunters Point community.
Breast cancer is no stranger to Hunters Point women either. Samuel Epstein states in his book "The Politics of Cancer," "There is suggestive evidence that radiation-contaminated water supplies are in part responsible for escalating breast cancer mortality in some areas of the country.
"Recent evidence suggests that increased breast cancer incidence in the Long Island counties of Suffolk and Nassau, as well as Westchester County north of New York City, is related to radiation-contaminated drinking water. This is due to radioactive contamination of the Croton River watershed reservoirs; the watershed is located only about five miles downwind to the northeast from the Indian Point nuclear plant that has released radioactive fission products since the early 1960s."
Cross-applying this conclusion from Indian Point to the Hunters Point watershed, we will see the same result in the surrounding communities. Decades of radioactive waste, washed into the Bay daily through broken tidal gates and leaking storm drains at the Shipyard, created a water table that is surely carrying radiation. As with the Croton River in New York, some of this waste was carried away and became the bottom of the Bay.
Decades of nuclear research has been dumped into the watershed of San Francisco, and, like our friends in New York, we have been victims of a faceless enemy. Science has told us not to worry, and civics has told us to keep building. History has taught us to clean up our messes, and that is where civics and science abandon us.
Did San Francisco and the Navy forget about the radiation? After ceasing active operations in 1974, the Navy leased most of the yard to Triple A ship repair company. Improper waste disposal was reported in 1986, leading to an investigation by the San Francisco District Attorney. While this company did dump a lot of garbage, they didn't use the cyclotron.
Decades after the Navy abandoned the Shipyard, officials have not addressed the effects of low level radiation on humans. Some news agencies have ignored the fact that radiation ever existed on this Shipyard.
There is a sense of urgency to halt the upheaval of this toxic soil so it can be cleaned appropriately. I have visited Hunters Point, stood as close as possible to the Rocky Flats facility and once slept on the radioactive battlefield of Desert Storm.
My tour of Parcel A gave me a buzz, the same buzz I felt on the front line of Iraq and the same buzz I would later feel upon my visit to Colorado. I no longer need a dosimeter to tell if I am in a radioactive area. Moret and Epstein clearly support my conclusion with statistically significant evidence.
There is a sense of complacency in the world. Indigenous people have been slaughtered and left to die around the uranium mining areas. Pygmy cultures in Africa have been exploited, while Hopi and Navajo reservations have been exposed to the uranium tailings. After mining it, communities were established to process and research this uranium.
Hunters Point was a community that housed NRDL. Communities that have been violently attacked with this element, such as Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Basra, Vieques, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Baghdad, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan can attest to the incredibly horrific birth defects that have occurred from the use of radioactive munitions.
Hunters Point has been attacked. Until the complacency to address the implications of low level radiation is reversed, cancer rates will continue to soar. Should San Francisco's leaders choose to ignore the effects of low level radiation coming from Hunters Point, they will be guilty of sentencing thousands of people to an early death.
Thursday, September 30, 2004
Ban Depleted Uranium Weapons!
The following is adapted from a list of links originally collected 2004 by Bay Area scientist Lauren Moret, for those participating in the No Nuke and Anti-War movement (the version used being updated 2006-02).
It has been adapted, expanded, and slightly updated as new material is found (2014-09).
** [link] are to pages at this website containing the original source materials adapted from offline websites.
** [archive.org] & [archive.today] are to backed-up pages in case the original link is taken offline.
Four-part series on DU, 2004 by Christopher Bollyn for "American Free Press" [link]
** Part I: “Depleted Uranium: U.S. Commits War Crime Against Iraq, Humanity”
** Part II: “Cancer Epidemic Caused by U.S. WMD: MD Says Depleted Uranium Definitively Linked,”
"Another US war crime: the use of depleted uranium munitions in Iraq", 2003-05-29 by Ben Nichols and Joe Lopez [link]
An article by Helen Caldicott warning about DU usage in upcoming Iraq War (2002-10) [link]
Radiation poisoning from Hunter's Point to Iraq (2005-01) [link]
Information compiled by WISE Uranium Project:
** Depleted Uranium Weapons in the Gulf Wars, 1991, 2003 (last updated 20 Jun 2014) [http://www.wise-uranium.org/dissgw.html] [archive.today]
** "Depleted Uranium Processing and Storage Facilities" [http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/dfac.html] [archive.org] (updated 2004-10-22)
** "Bibliography: Military Use of Depleted Uranium (DU)" [http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/dlit.html] [archive.org] (updated 2004-08-12)
** Depleted Uranium [http://www.wise-uranium.org/indexd.html] [archive.today]
"Contamination of Persian Gulf War Veterans and Others by Depleted Uranium" 1996-07-19 (updated 1999-02-21) by Leonard A. Dietz [http://www.wise-uranium.org/dgvd.html] [archive.today]
Chris Busby, Ph.D., interviewed at IPPNW (Berlin, Germany), 2004-05-08 by Sunny Miller, Director of the Traprock Peace Center [http://www.traprockpeace.org/chris_busby_08may04.html] [archive.org]
Dan Fahey Document Library [http://www.danfahey.com/]
"Death By Slow Burn: How America Nukes Its Own Troops" (2004-04-01) [http://proliberty.com/observer/20030401.htm] [archive.org]
"Department of Transportation rules against secret shipments of radioactive munitions by the Department of Defense", 2005-06-08 from Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action [http://www.gzcenter.org/DOT%20rules%20against%20secret%20radioactive%20shipments.htm] [archive.org]
"New Research Indicates Health Risks from Uranium May Be More Varied Than Reflected in Current Federal Policy; Depleted Uranium from Proposed New Mexico Enrichment Plant May Become Multi-Billion Dollar Taxpayer Liability without a Hefty Financial Guarantee; Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Corporate Options for DU Disposal Risk Long-Term Violation of Health and Environmental Standards, New Analysis Indicates", 2005-02-23 [http://www.ieer.org/reports/du/LESprfeb05.html] [archive.org]
Depleted Uranium Webpage Links from the Low Level Radiation Campaign [http://www.llrc.org/du/duframes.htm] [archive.org] (updated 2006)
"Depleted Uranium and Health: Facts and Helpful Suggestions" by Glen Lawrence, Ph.D. of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Long Island University, Brooklyn, NY [http://www.traprockpeace.org/du_health.pdf] [archive.org]
Essential information for soldiers and civilians who are at risk for uranium contamination in areas where DU munitions have been used.
Depleted Uranium: Cause and Effect [http://criticalconcern.com/depleted_uranium_cause_effect.htm]
"Depleted Uranium: Devastation at Home and Abroad" by Leuren Moret [http://www.savewarchildren.org/Text/Moret.htm]
"Depleted uranium: Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty bullets" by Leuren Moret [http://www.sfbayview.com/081804/Depleteduranium081804.shtml]
Depleted Uranium Education Project [http://www.iacenter.org/depleted/du.htm]
"Depleted Uranium - The Real Dirty Bombs" by Christopher Bollyn (2004-08-27) [http://www.rense.com/general56/dep.htm] [archive.org]
"Depleted Uranium: Trojan Horse of Nuclear War" by Leuren Moret [http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/DU-Trojan-Horse1jul04.htm]
Depleted Uranium Munitions - A Weapon of Mass Destruction [http://www.iraqjournal.org/journals/030330.html]
Depleted Uranium Follow-Up Program Veterans Health Administration [http://www.vethealth.cio.med.va.gov/DUProgram.htm]
Depleted Uranium Kills : A Death By Slow Burn [http://www.barremore.net/depleted-uranium-kills.html]
Depleted Uranium Special [http://www.writers-against-war.org/public/depleted-uranium.html] [Graphic]
Depleted Uranium - The Stone Unturned [http://www.nuclearfiles.org/redocuments/1997/970328-plowshares.html]
Depleted Uranium Munitions [http://www.icrc.org/Web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/iwpList136/3105566F330BC2ECC1256B66005F8843]
Depleted Uranium Munitions: The Use of Radiological Weapons as a Violation of Human Rights [http://hlp.home.igc.org/docs/depleteduranium.htm]
Depleted Uranium [http://traprockpeace.org/depleted_uranium_hamburg03.html#veterans]
'Depleted' Uranium and Health Glen Lawrence, Ph.D. [http://www.traprockpeace.org/du_health.pdf]
"Depleted Uranium Coming Home To Roost - Dillon Bill In Connecticut Legislature" by Sepp Hasslberger [http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2005/02/13/depleted_uranium_coming_home_to_roost_dillon_bill_in_conn_legislature.htm]
Depleted Uranium from Proposed New Mexico Enrichment Plant May Become Multi-Billion Dollar Taxpayer Liability without a Hefty Financial Guarantee [http://www.ieer.org/reports/du/LESprfeb05.html]
Depleted Uranium Munitions Study Act (Introduced in House) H.R. 2410 Rep. Jim McDermott [http://criticalconcern.com/hr_2410.htm]
Depleted Uranium Released During Canadian Plane Crash [http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/depleted_uranium.html]
Depleted Uranium Situation Requires Action By President Bush and Prime Minister Blair - -Doug Rokke,Ph.D [http://www.traprockpeace.org/doug_rokke_12july04.html]
Depleted Uranium (DU) weapons fired by U.S. Navy on Washington coast Jan 7, 2003 [http://www.nukewatch.com/du/20030107gz.html]
Depleted Uranium:Wonder Weapon or Toxic Hazard? [http://www.citizen-soldier.org/CS09-uranium.html]
A description of DU
[http://www.balkansyndrome.com/]
Despite Continued Threats, DU Expert Pushes On Dr. Asaf Durakovic, undeterred by death threats and harassment over the past year, continues his fight to break the "conspiracy of silence" surrounding depleted uranium. By Brian Ohkubo Covert, Independent Journalist Thursday, May. 12, 2005.
[http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2005/05/1714441.php]
Discounted Casualties - the human cost of depleted uranium [http://www.chugoku-np.co.jp/abom/uran/special/index2.html]
"The Doctors, the Depleted Uranium, and the Dying Children" [http://www.traprockpeace.org/depleted_uranium_iraq.html] German television production (available here as VHS video), shows the US has used radioactive bombs in the current war against Iraq.
Dr. George Hill Speaks Out on Depleted Uranium Not all physicians agree with the Physician for Social Responsibility report on Depleted Uranium. [http://www.criticalconcern.com/dr_hill-on-DU.htm]
Read Dr. Hill's letter to the PSR (.doc)
Dr. George Hill Testimony on the SB6732DU Bill [http://www.criticalconcern.com/george_hill_testimony_on_du_bill.htm] (New)
Don’t drink the water by Dennis Kyne [http://www.sfbayview.com/033005/dontdrink033005.shtml]
DU Death Toll Tops 11,000 [http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/du_death_toll.html]
DU - Health Concerns (Military) [http://www.deploymentlink.osd.mil/du_library/health.shtml]
DU Library: Depleted Uranium Information Page (Govt) [http://lii.org/search?goto=024062]
DU Munitions in Okinawa [http://www.chugoku-np.co.jp/abom/uran/okinawa_e/index.html]
DU Watch - a source for all kinds of DU information [http://www.stopnato.org.uk/du-watch/index.htm]
DU - Hysteria or Real Health Threat? by Judy Blyth
[http://www.anawa.org.au/weapons/du.html]
Effects of Depleted Uranium by Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, India [http://www.thepowerhour.com/articles/du_effects.htm]
Evidence Mounts that Gulf War Syndrome is Related to the Use of Depleted Uranium Shells by NATO [http://www.jacksonprogressive.com/issues/kosovo/balkansyndrome010701.html]
Exposing The Myth Of The ‘Casualty-Free War’: Gulf War Syndrome [http://www.americanfreepress.net/11_04_02/EXPOSING_THE_MYTH_/exposing_the_myth_.html]
Fact Sheet on Depleted Uranium U.S. Department of State [http://www.usembassy.hu/docs/uranium.htm]
Former Head Of Pentagon's Depleted Uranium Project Says Thousands Of Troops Are Sick And Dying From Illegal DU Use And Military's Failure To Admit Responsibility [http://www.arcticbeacon.com/articles/article/1518131/31934.htm]
German language DU Website [http://www.uranmunition.de/]
Gulf War Syndrome - Depleted Uranium [http://www.gulfwarvets.com/du.htm] by American Gulf War Veterans
The Gulf War Battlefield Still "Hot" with Depleted Uranium by Scott Peterson [http://www.merip.org/mer/mer211/211_peterson.html]
The Fabulous Factsheet File [http://www.ieer.org/fctsheet/index.html]
Is uranium hazardous? What is plutonium? Find out here.
Heads Roll At The Veterans Administration: Mushrooming Depleted Uranium (DU) Scandal Blamed [http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_15334.shtml]
Health and Environmental Effects of 'Depleted' Uranium Diane Hensel, Ph.D. [http://www.traprockpeace.org/diane_henshel.html]
Health hazards of depleted uranium munitions [http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/policy/cur_du.htm]
Horror of USA's depleted Uranium [http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php/20050429121615724]
If Depleted Uranium is Safe, Let Them Prove It Congressman Jim McDermott May 11, 2005 http://www.house.gov/mcdermott/sp050517.shtml
Immediate Action Required on Depleted Uranium (a primer for the beginner) By Doug Rokke, Ph.D. [http://www.axisoflogic.com/cgi-bin/exec/view.pl?archive=137&num=16946]
International Action Center [http://www.iacenter.org/]
International Depleted Uranium Study Team [http://www.idust.net/]
Italian soldiers have died thus far due to exposure to depleted uranium [http://www.agi.it/english/news.pl?doc=200410191947-1213-RT1-CRO-0-NF11&page=0&id=agionline-eng.oggitalia]
Japan may be Next Victim of Depleted Uranium in Iraq, Claims DU Expert [http://japan.indymedia.org/newswire/display/1317/index.php]
Letter from Leuren Moret to Congressman McDermott [http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2003/Leuren-Moret-Gen-Groves21feb03.htm]
Louisiana - 1st State to Pass DU Bill [http://www.criticalconcern.com/Louisiana_DU_Bill.htm]
Low Level Radiation Campaign [http://www.llrc.org/] Researching the low level effects of ionising radiation
“Marin Depleted Uranium Resolution Heats Up – GI’s Will Come Home To A Slow Death,” August 2004 Coastal Post Online. Carol Sterrit: [www.coastalpost.com/04/08/01]
Military Toxics Project [http://www.miltoxproj.org/]
National Gulf War Resource Centre [http://www.ngwrc.org/Issues.cfm?NewsTopicID=8]
Nationwide campaign against secret shipments of radioactive ammunition announced Nov 21, 2003 [http://www.gzcenter.org/NavyDU.htm]
"Ode To Nuha - US Depleted Uranium Takes Another" by Rana El-Khatib [http://www.rense.com/general57/urani.htm]
"Our Tools of War, Turned Blindly Against Ourselves" by Rob Nixon [http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i24/24b00701.htm]
"The Queen's Death Star: Depleted Uranium, Measured in British Atmosphere From Battlefields in the Middle East", 2006-02-26 by Leuren Moret [http://www.venusproject.com/ethics_in_action/Depleted_Uranium_British.html] [archive.org]
Radioactive Tank No. 9 comes limping home by Bob Nichols [http://www.sfbayview.com/110905/radioactivetank110905.shtml]
Radioactive Wounds of War [http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082605A.shtml]
Remains of Toxic Bullets Litter Iraq [http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0515/p01s02-woiq.html]
"Environmental Exposure Report - Depleted Uranium in the Gulf II" (2000-12-13)
[http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/] [archive.org]
Research Report Summaries on Depleted Uranium from 1974-1999, conducted at National Laboratories and military labs. [http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabl1.htm#TAB%20L_Research%20Report%20Summaries]
Research Report Summaries on Depleted Uranium from 1974-1999, conducted at National Laboratories and military labs
[http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabl1.htm#TAB%20L_Research%20Report%]
Science of Science Fiction? Facts, Myths and Propaganda In The Debate Over Depleted Uranium Weapons [http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/pdf/dumyths.pdf]
Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y. demands that all veterans of Iraq get checked. Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a former Army doctor and nuclear medicine expert who examined and tested the nine men at The News' request, concluded four of them "almost certainly" inhaled radioactive dust from exploded depleted uranium shells fired by U.S. troops. [http://www.nydailynews.com/04-05-2004/news/story/180644p-156921c.html]
Soldier's new mission is exposing risk of depleted uranium [http://www.postindependent.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040815/VALLEYNEWS/108150002&rs=2] Glenwood Spring CO article on Dennis Kyne
The "Dump Nuclear" Campaign to persuade the UK Government that they should drop this expensive, dangerous and outdated technology. [http://www.dumpnuclear.org]
The Hazard Posed by Depleted Uranium Munitions [http://www.puaf.umd.edu/faculty/papers/fetter/sags-du.pdf]
Heads roll at Veterans Administration Mushrooming depleted uranium (DU) scandal blamed [http://www.sfbayview.com/012605/headsroll012605.shtml]
Karen Parker: Fighting to stop the use of illegal weapons [http://www.awakenedwoman.com/karen_parker.htm]
The International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons [http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/]
The Laka Foundation is a documentation and research centre on nuclear energy. It has a good online library section on depleted uranium [http://www.laka.org/indexeng.html]
The National Online - Depleted Uranium - The Silver Bullet [http://www.tv.cbc.ca/national/pgminfo/du/index.html]
Nuclear Information and Resource Service & World Information Service on Energy [http://www.nirs.org/]
The War Against Ourselves: An Interview with Major Doug Rokke [http://www.futurenet.org/25environmentandhealth/rokke.htm]
Toxic ammo is tested in fish areas - U.S. Navy uses depleted uranium in coast waters; activists may go to court [http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/103402_fife09.shtml?searchpagefrom=1&searchdiff=795]
The Tail of a Bullet - The Depleted Uranium Issue Christian Science Monitor
[http://www.csmonitor.com/atcsmonitor/specials/uranium/index.html?s=lni]
The Tiny Victims of Desert Storm like a growing number of Gulf War veterans, some of whom remain apparently healthy, he has fathered a child with devastating birth defects. [http://www.life.com/Life/essay/gulfwar/gulf01.html]
Troops In Iraq Will Once Again Be Exposed To Deadly Chemicals Congressman Jim. McDermott Mar 5, 2003 "I was in Iraq in 1991, and I was there again this year; and the evidence is overwhelming of the impact of what Iraq has suffered from depleted uranium and what we, the United States, are about to suffer." [http://www.house.gov/mcdermott/sp030305b.shtml]
The United States Used Depleted Uranium (DU) Weapons in Iraq [www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=15&q=http://www.sumeria.net/politics/duweapons.html&e=747]
Uranium Medical Research Centre [http://www.umrc.net/] Current and recent developments, published research, conference proceedings, reports
Uranium Wars: The Pentagon Steps Up its Use of Radioactive Munitions [http://www.cursor.org/stories/uranium.htm]
US Military, President Out of Control -- What Does "Mildly Radioactive" Mean, Anyway? By Bob Nichols, Project Censored Award Winner [http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_15814.shtml]
U.S. use of depleted uranium under fire - KING5 Video 11/11/04 [http://www.king5.com/topstories/stories/NW_111104WABdepleteduraniumSW.49604608.html]
US says Pacific arms tests use depleted uranium [http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19387/story.htm]
U.S. Radiation Sites WA [http://www.prop1.org/prop1/radiated/wa0rept.htm]
"U.S. Army Training Video on Depleted Uranium: Our military refuses to show this training film to our troops in Iraq" [http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3581.htm] or [http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/video1/DU-A28K.WMV] [archive.org]
Use of DU: A Crime Against Humanity by Doug Rokke
[http://prop1.org/2000/du/00du/000413dr.htm]
Use of Depleted Uranium Weapons Lingers as Health Concern [http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0804-04.htm]
WAC 246-233-010 General licenses -- Source material [http://www.leg.wa.gov/WAC/index.cfm?section=246-233-010&fuseaction=section]
WAC 246-235-091 Manufacture and distribution of industrial products containing depleted uranium under general license [http://www.leg.wa.gov/WAC/index.cfm?section=246-235-091&fuseaction=section]
Veterans for Peace Workshop on DU (radioactive munitions), Boston, July 23, 2004 [http://www.traprockpeace.org/vfp_du_july04/ http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0722-03.htm]
Warning of Toxic Aftermath from Uranium Munitions [http://www.truthout.com/docs_03/072303I.shtml]
Warning of uranium contamination risks to NGO staff, Coalition forces, foreign contract personnel and civilians in Iraq [http://www.umrc.net/UMRC_bulletin_07_Feb_2004.asp]
War's Littlest Victim [http://www.nydailynews.com/front/v-pfriendly/story/236934p-203326c.html]
War's Unintended Effects: Use of Depleted Uranium Weapons Lingers as Health Concern [http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/iraq2002/133581_du04.html]
Weapons of Mass Deception: What the Pentagon Doesn’t Want Us To Know About Depleted Uranium [http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/062903H.shtml]
Weapons Dust Worries Iraqis [http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1101-01.htm]
Weapons of Self Destruction - Is Gulf War syndrome - possibly caused by Pentagon ammunition - taking its toll on G.I.'s in Iraq? [www.vanityfair.com/commentary/content/articles/041115roco04]
What does the US know about DU? - Leuren Moret [http://www.traprockpeace.org/moret_25nov03.pdf]
What does depleted mean in depleted uranium (DU)? Secondly, is the DU in DU rounds (ammunition) considered naturally occurring radioactive material? Health Physic Society. [http://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q1281.html]
What happened to the test tube paradigm? Dennis Kyne [http://www.sfbayview.com/020905/whathappened020905.shtml]
WHO Blocked Depleted Uranium Study by Sepp Hasslberger
[http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2004/03/05/who_blocked_depleted_uranium_study.htm]
Why are Depleted Uranium Munitions a Local Issue? October 16 at the Public Park across from the entrance to Naval Magazine Indian Island. Douglas Milholland, Port Townsend. [http://www.criticalconcern.com/Why_are_Depleted_Uranium_Munitions_a_Local_Issue.htm]
World Depleted Uranium Weapons Conference, Hamburg, Germany, October 16-19, 2004: [www.worlduraniumweaponsconference.de/speakers/speakers.htm]
World Information Service on Energy [http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/#DU]
"World is blind to real situation in Iraq: activists", 2006-05-27 [http://www.bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=12101] [archive.org]: OSAKA -- An Iraqi journalist and a Japanese human rights activist said the public has a poor idea of the situation in Iraq and warned of an impending health catastrophe as more Iraqis contract cancer from exposure to depleted uranium shells used by the U.S. and Britain.
World Uranium Weapons Conference [http://www.traprockpeace.org/depleted_uranium_hamburg03.html]
* This means that it will go releasing ionizing radiation into the environment, essentially forever. After the Gulf War DU remained suspended in the air above Kuwait City for two years.
[http://www.criticalconcern.com/depleted_uranium.htm]
"Britain used DU in 1950s 'nuclear guinea pig' tests", 2001-05-27 [http://www.robedwards.com/2001/05/britain-used-du-in-1950s-nuclear-guinea-pig-tests.html] [https://web.archive.org/web/20141020075110/http://www.robedwards.com/2001/05/britain-used-du-in-1950s-nuclear-guinea-pig-tests.html]
It has been adapted, expanded, and slightly updated as new material is found (2014-09).
** [link] are to pages at this website containing the original source materials adapted from offline websites.
** [archive.org] & [archive.today] are to backed-up pages in case the original link is taken offline.
Four-part series on DU, 2004 by Christopher Bollyn for "American Free Press" [link]
** Part I: “Depleted Uranium: U.S. Commits War Crime Against Iraq, Humanity”
** Part II: “Cancer Epidemic Caused by U.S. WMD: MD Says Depleted Uranium Definitively Linked,”
"Another US war crime: the use of depleted uranium munitions in Iraq", 2003-05-29 by Ben Nichols and Joe Lopez [link]
An article by Helen Caldicott warning about DU usage in upcoming Iraq War (2002-10) [link]
Radiation poisoning from Hunter's Point to Iraq (2005-01) [link]
Information compiled by WISE Uranium Project:
** Depleted Uranium Weapons in the Gulf Wars, 1991, 2003 (last updated 20 Jun 2014) [http://www.wise-uranium.org/dissgw.html] [archive.today]
** "Depleted Uranium Processing and Storage Facilities" [http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/dfac.html] [archive.org] (updated 2004-10-22)
** "Bibliography: Military Use of Depleted Uranium (DU)" [http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/dlit.html] [archive.org] (updated 2004-08-12)
** Depleted Uranium [http://www.wise-uranium.org/indexd.html] [archive.today]
"Contamination of Persian Gulf War Veterans and Others by Depleted Uranium" 1996-07-19 (updated 1999-02-21) by Leonard A. Dietz [http://www.wise-uranium.org/dgvd.html] [archive.today]
Chris Busby, Ph.D., interviewed at IPPNW (Berlin, Germany), 2004-05-08 by Sunny Miller, Director of the Traprock Peace Center [http://www.traprockpeace.org/chris_busby_08may04.html] [archive.org]
Dan Fahey Document Library [http://www.danfahey.com/]
"Death By Slow Burn: How America Nukes Its Own Troops" (2004-04-01) [http://proliberty.com/observer/20030401.htm] [archive.org]
"Department of Transportation rules against secret shipments of radioactive munitions by the Department of Defense", 2005-06-08 from Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action [http://www.gzcenter.org/DOT%20rules%20against%20secret%20radioactive%20shipments.htm] [archive.org]
"New Research Indicates Health Risks from Uranium May Be More Varied Than Reflected in Current Federal Policy; Depleted Uranium from Proposed New Mexico Enrichment Plant May Become Multi-Billion Dollar Taxpayer Liability without a Hefty Financial Guarantee; Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Corporate Options for DU Disposal Risk Long-Term Violation of Health and Environmental Standards, New Analysis Indicates", 2005-02-23 [http://www.ieer.org/reports/du/LESprfeb05.html] [archive.org]
Depleted Uranium Webpage Links from the Low Level Radiation Campaign [http://www.llrc.org/du/duframes.htm] [archive.org] (updated 2006)
"Depleted Uranium and Health: Facts and Helpful Suggestions" by Glen Lawrence, Ph.D. of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Long Island University, Brooklyn, NY [http://www.traprockpeace.org/du_health.pdf] [archive.org]
Essential information for soldiers and civilians who are at risk for uranium contamination in areas where DU munitions have been used.
Depleted Uranium: Cause and Effect [http://criticalconcern.com/depleted_uranium_cause_effect.htm]
"Depleted Uranium: Devastation at Home and Abroad" by Leuren Moret [http://www.savewarchildren.org/Text/Moret.htm]
"Depleted uranium: Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty bullets" by Leuren Moret [http://www.sfbayview.com/081804/Depleteduranium081804.shtml]
Depleted Uranium Education Project [http://www.iacenter.org/depleted/du.htm]
"Depleted Uranium - The Real Dirty Bombs" by Christopher Bollyn (2004-08-27) [http://www.rense.com/general56/dep.htm] [archive.org]
"Depleted Uranium: Trojan Horse of Nuclear War" by Leuren Moret [http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/DU-Trojan-Horse1jul04.htm]
Depleted Uranium Munitions - A Weapon of Mass Destruction [http://www.iraqjournal.org/journals/030330.html]
Depleted Uranium Follow-Up Program Veterans Health Administration [http://www.vethealth.cio.med.va.gov/DUProgram.htm]
Depleted Uranium Kills : A Death By Slow Burn [http://www.barremore.net/depleted-uranium-kills.html]
Depleted Uranium Special [http://www.writers-against-war.org/public/depleted-uranium.html] [Graphic]
Depleted Uranium - The Stone Unturned [http://www.nuclearfiles.org/redocuments/1997/970328-plowshares.html]
Depleted Uranium Munitions [http://www.icrc.org/Web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/iwpList136/3105566F330BC2ECC1256B66005F8843]
Depleted Uranium Munitions: The Use of Radiological Weapons as a Violation of Human Rights [http://hlp.home.igc.org/docs/depleteduranium.htm]
Depleted Uranium [http://traprockpeace.org/depleted_uranium_hamburg03.html#veterans]
'Depleted' Uranium and Health Glen Lawrence, Ph.D. [http://www.traprockpeace.org/du_health.pdf]
"Depleted Uranium Coming Home To Roost - Dillon Bill In Connecticut Legislature" by Sepp Hasslberger [http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2005/02/13/depleted_uranium_coming_home_to_roost_dillon_bill_in_conn_legislature.htm]
Depleted Uranium from Proposed New Mexico Enrichment Plant May Become Multi-Billion Dollar Taxpayer Liability without a Hefty Financial Guarantee [http://www.ieer.org/reports/du/LESprfeb05.html]
Depleted Uranium Munitions Study Act (Introduced in House) H.R. 2410 Rep. Jim McDermott [http://criticalconcern.com/hr_2410.htm]
Depleted Uranium Released During Canadian Plane Crash [http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/depleted_uranium.html]
Depleted Uranium Situation Requires Action By President Bush and Prime Minister Blair - -Doug Rokke,Ph.D [http://www.traprockpeace.org/doug_rokke_12july04.html]
Depleted Uranium (DU) weapons fired by U.S. Navy on Washington coast Jan 7, 2003 [http://www.nukewatch.com/du/20030107gz.html]
Depleted Uranium:Wonder Weapon or Toxic Hazard? [http://www.citizen-soldier.org/CS09-uranium.html]
A description of DU
[http://www.balkansyndrome.com/]
Despite Continued Threats, DU Expert Pushes On Dr. Asaf Durakovic, undeterred by death threats and harassment over the past year, continues his fight to break the "conspiracy of silence" surrounding depleted uranium. By Brian Ohkubo Covert, Independent Journalist Thursday, May. 12, 2005.
[http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2005/05/1714441.php]
Discounted Casualties - the human cost of depleted uranium [http://www.chugoku-np.co.jp/abom/uran/special/index2.html]
"The Doctors, the Depleted Uranium, and the Dying Children" [http://www.traprockpeace.org/depleted_uranium_iraq.html] German television production (available here as VHS video), shows the US has used radioactive bombs in the current war against Iraq.
Dr. George Hill Speaks Out on Depleted Uranium Not all physicians agree with the Physician for Social Responsibility report on Depleted Uranium. [http://www.criticalconcern.com/dr_hill-on-DU.htm]
Read Dr. Hill's letter to the PSR (.doc)
Dr. George Hill Testimony on the SB6732DU Bill [http://www.criticalconcern.com/george_hill_testimony_on_du_bill.htm] (New)
Don’t drink the water by Dennis Kyne [http://www.sfbayview.com/033005/dontdrink033005.shtml]
DU Death Toll Tops 11,000 [http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/du_death_toll.html]
DU - Health Concerns (Military) [http://www.deploymentlink.osd.mil/du_library/health.shtml]
DU Library: Depleted Uranium Information Page (Govt) [http://lii.org/search?goto=024062]
DU Munitions in Okinawa [http://www.chugoku-np.co.jp/abom/uran/okinawa_e/index.html]
DU Watch - a source for all kinds of DU information [http://www.stopnato.org.uk/du-watch/index.htm]
DU - Hysteria or Real Health Threat? by Judy Blyth
[http://www.anawa.org.au/weapons/du.html]
Effects of Depleted Uranium by Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, India [http://www.thepowerhour.com/articles/du_effects.htm]
Evidence Mounts that Gulf War Syndrome is Related to the Use of Depleted Uranium Shells by NATO [http://www.jacksonprogressive.com/issues/kosovo/balkansyndrome010701.html]
Exposing The Myth Of The ‘Casualty-Free War’: Gulf War Syndrome [http://www.americanfreepress.net/11_04_02/EXPOSING_THE_MYTH_/exposing_the_myth_.html]
Fact Sheet on Depleted Uranium U.S. Department of State [http://www.usembassy.hu/docs/uranium.htm]
Former Head Of Pentagon's Depleted Uranium Project Says Thousands Of Troops Are Sick And Dying From Illegal DU Use And Military's Failure To Admit Responsibility [http://www.arcticbeacon.com/articles/article/1518131/31934.htm]
German language DU Website [http://www.uranmunition.de/]
Gulf War Syndrome - Depleted Uranium [http://www.gulfwarvets.com/du.htm] by American Gulf War Veterans
The Gulf War Battlefield Still "Hot" with Depleted Uranium by Scott Peterson [http://www.merip.org/mer/mer211/211_peterson.html]
The Fabulous Factsheet File [http://www.ieer.org/fctsheet/index.html]
Is uranium hazardous? What is plutonium? Find out here.
Heads Roll At The Veterans Administration: Mushrooming Depleted Uranium (DU) Scandal Blamed [http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_15334.shtml]
Health and Environmental Effects of 'Depleted' Uranium Diane Hensel, Ph.D. [http://www.traprockpeace.org/diane_henshel.html]
Health hazards of depleted uranium munitions [http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/policy/cur_du.htm]
Horror of USA's depleted Uranium [http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php/20050429121615724]
If Depleted Uranium is Safe, Let Them Prove It Congressman Jim McDermott May 11, 2005 http://www.house.gov/mcdermott/sp050517.shtml
Immediate Action Required on Depleted Uranium (a primer for the beginner) By Doug Rokke, Ph.D. [http://www.axisoflogic.com/cgi-bin/exec/view.pl?archive=137&num=16946]
International Action Center [http://www.iacenter.org/]
International Depleted Uranium Study Team [http://www.idust.net/]
Italian soldiers have died thus far due to exposure to depleted uranium [http://www.agi.it/english/news.pl?doc=200410191947-1213-RT1-CRO-0-NF11&page=0&id=agionline-eng.oggitalia]
Japan may be Next Victim of Depleted Uranium in Iraq, Claims DU Expert [http://japan.indymedia.org/newswire/display/1317/index.php]
Letter from Leuren Moret to Congressman McDermott [http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2003/Leuren-Moret-Gen-Groves21feb03.htm]
Louisiana - 1st State to Pass DU Bill [http://www.criticalconcern.com/Louisiana_DU_Bill.htm]
Low Level Radiation Campaign [http://www.llrc.org/] Researching the low level effects of ionising radiation
“Marin Depleted Uranium Resolution Heats Up – GI’s Will Come Home To A Slow Death,” August 2004 Coastal Post Online. Carol Sterrit: [www.coastalpost.com/04/08/01]
Military Toxics Project [http://www.miltoxproj.org/]
National Gulf War Resource Centre [http://www.ngwrc.org/Issues.cfm?NewsTopicID=8]
Nationwide campaign against secret shipments of radioactive ammunition announced Nov 21, 2003 [http://www.gzcenter.org/NavyDU.htm]
"Ode To Nuha - US Depleted Uranium Takes Another" by Rana El-Khatib [http://www.rense.com/general57/urani.htm]
"Our Tools of War, Turned Blindly Against Ourselves" by Rob Nixon [http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i24/24b00701.htm]
"The Queen's Death Star: Depleted Uranium, Measured in British Atmosphere From Battlefields in the Middle East", 2006-02-26 by Leuren Moret [http://www.venusproject.com/ethics_in_action/Depleted_Uranium_British.html] [archive.org]
Radioactive Tank No. 9 comes limping home by Bob Nichols [http://www.sfbayview.com/110905/radioactivetank110905.shtml]
Radioactive Wounds of War [http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082605A.shtml]
Remains of Toxic Bullets Litter Iraq [http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0515/p01s02-woiq.html]
"Environmental Exposure Report - Depleted Uranium in the Gulf II" (2000-12-13)
[http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/] [archive.org]
Research Report Summaries on Depleted Uranium from 1974-1999, conducted at National Laboratories and military labs. [http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabl1.htm#TAB%20L_Research%20Report%20Summaries]
Research Report Summaries on Depleted Uranium from 1974-1999, conducted at National Laboratories and military labs
[http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabl1.htm#TAB%20L_Research%20Report%]
Science of Science Fiction? Facts, Myths and Propaganda In The Debate Over Depleted Uranium Weapons [http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/pdf/dumyths.pdf]
Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y. demands that all veterans of Iraq get checked. Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a former Army doctor and nuclear medicine expert who examined and tested the nine men at The News' request, concluded four of them "almost certainly" inhaled radioactive dust from exploded depleted uranium shells fired by U.S. troops. [http://www.nydailynews.com/04-05-2004/news/story/180644p-156921c.html]
Soldier's new mission is exposing risk of depleted uranium [http://www.postindependent.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040815/VALLEYNEWS/108150002&rs=2] Glenwood Spring CO article on Dennis Kyne
The "Dump Nuclear" Campaign to persuade the UK Government that they should drop this expensive, dangerous and outdated technology. [http://www.dumpnuclear.org]
The Hazard Posed by Depleted Uranium Munitions [http://www.puaf.umd.edu/faculty/papers/fetter/sags-du.pdf]
Heads roll at Veterans Administration Mushrooming depleted uranium (DU) scandal blamed [http://www.sfbayview.com/012605/headsroll012605.shtml]
Karen Parker: Fighting to stop the use of illegal weapons [http://www.awakenedwoman.com/karen_parker.htm]
The International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons [http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/]
The Laka Foundation is a documentation and research centre on nuclear energy. It has a good online library section on depleted uranium [http://www.laka.org/indexeng.html]
The National Online - Depleted Uranium - The Silver Bullet [http://www.tv.cbc.ca/national/pgminfo/du/index.html]
Nuclear Information and Resource Service & World Information Service on Energy [http://www.nirs.org/]
The War Against Ourselves: An Interview with Major Doug Rokke [http://www.futurenet.org/25environmentandhealth/rokke.htm]
Toxic ammo is tested in fish areas - U.S. Navy uses depleted uranium in coast waters; activists may go to court [http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/103402_fife09.shtml?searchpagefrom=1&searchdiff=795]
The Tail of a Bullet - The Depleted Uranium Issue Christian Science Monitor
[http://www.csmonitor.com/atcsmonitor/specials/uranium/index.html?s=lni]
The Tiny Victims of Desert Storm like a growing number of Gulf War veterans, some of whom remain apparently healthy, he has fathered a child with devastating birth defects. [http://www.life.com/Life/essay/gulfwar/gulf01.html]
Troops In Iraq Will Once Again Be Exposed To Deadly Chemicals Congressman Jim. McDermott Mar 5, 2003 "I was in Iraq in 1991, and I was there again this year; and the evidence is overwhelming of the impact of what Iraq has suffered from depleted uranium and what we, the United States, are about to suffer." [http://www.house.gov/mcdermott/sp030305b.shtml]
The United States Used Depleted Uranium (DU) Weapons in Iraq [www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=15&q=http://www.sumeria.net/politics/duweapons.html&e=747]
Uranium Medical Research Centre [http://www.umrc.net/] Current and recent developments, published research, conference proceedings, reports
Uranium Wars: The Pentagon Steps Up its Use of Radioactive Munitions [http://www.cursor.org/stories/uranium.htm]
US Military, President Out of Control -- What Does "Mildly Radioactive" Mean, Anyway? By Bob Nichols, Project Censored Award Winner [http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_15814.shtml]
U.S. use of depleted uranium under fire - KING5 Video 11/11/04 [http://www.king5.com/topstories/stories/NW_111104WABdepleteduraniumSW.49604608.html]
US says Pacific arms tests use depleted uranium [http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19387/story.htm]
U.S. Radiation Sites WA [http://www.prop1.org/prop1/radiated/wa0rept.htm]
"U.S. Army Training Video on Depleted Uranium: Our military refuses to show this training film to our troops in Iraq" [http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3581.htm] or [http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/video1/DU-A28K.WMV] [archive.org]
Use of DU: A Crime Against Humanity by Doug Rokke
[http://prop1.org/2000/du/00du/000413dr.htm]
Use of Depleted Uranium Weapons Lingers as Health Concern [http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0804-04.htm]
WAC 246-233-010 General licenses -- Source material [http://www.leg.wa.gov/WAC/index.cfm?section=246-233-010&fuseaction=section]
WAC 246-235-091 Manufacture and distribution of industrial products containing depleted uranium under general license [http://www.leg.wa.gov/WAC/index.cfm?section=246-235-091&fuseaction=section]
Veterans for Peace Workshop on DU (radioactive munitions), Boston, July 23, 2004 [http://www.traprockpeace.org/vfp_du_july04/ http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0722-03.htm]
Warning of Toxic Aftermath from Uranium Munitions [http://www.truthout.com/docs_03/072303I.shtml]
Warning of uranium contamination risks to NGO staff, Coalition forces, foreign contract personnel and civilians in Iraq [http://www.umrc.net/UMRC_bulletin_07_Feb_2004.asp]
War's Littlest Victim [http://www.nydailynews.com/front/v-pfriendly/story/236934p-203326c.html]
War's Unintended Effects: Use of Depleted Uranium Weapons Lingers as Health Concern [http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/iraq2002/133581_du04.html]
Weapons of Mass Deception: What the Pentagon Doesn’t Want Us To Know About Depleted Uranium [http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/062903H.shtml]
Weapons Dust Worries Iraqis [http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1101-01.htm]
Weapons of Self Destruction - Is Gulf War syndrome - possibly caused by Pentagon ammunition - taking its toll on G.I.'s in Iraq? [www.vanityfair.com/commentary/content/articles/041115roco04]
What does the US know about DU? - Leuren Moret [http://www.traprockpeace.org/moret_25nov03.pdf]
What does depleted mean in depleted uranium (DU)? Secondly, is the DU in DU rounds (ammunition) considered naturally occurring radioactive material? Health Physic Society. [http://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q1281.html]
What happened to the test tube paradigm? Dennis Kyne [http://www.sfbayview.com/020905/whathappened020905.shtml]
WHO Blocked Depleted Uranium Study by Sepp Hasslberger
[http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2004/03/05/who_blocked_depleted_uranium_study.htm]
Why are Depleted Uranium Munitions a Local Issue? October 16 at the Public Park across from the entrance to Naval Magazine Indian Island. Douglas Milholland, Port Townsend. [http://www.criticalconcern.com/Why_are_Depleted_Uranium_Munitions_a_Local_Issue.htm]
World Depleted Uranium Weapons Conference, Hamburg, Germany, October 16-19, 2004: [www.worlduraniumweaponsconference.de/speakers/speakers.htm]
World Information Service on Energy [http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/#DU]
"World is blind to real situation in Iraq: activists", 2006-05-27 [http://www.bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=12101] [archive.org]: OSAKA -- An Iraqi journalist and a Japanese human rights activist said the public has a poor idea of the situation in Iraq and warned of an impending health catastrophe as more Iraqis contract cancer from exposure to depleted uranium shells used by the U.S. and Britain.
World Uranium Weapons Conference [http://www.traprockpeace.org/depleted_uranium_hamburg03.html]
* This means that it will go releasing ionizing radiation into the environment, essentially forever. After the Gulf War DU remained suspended in the air above Kuwait City for two years.
[http://www.criticalconcern.com/depleted_uranium.htm]
"Britain used DU in 1950s 'nuclear guinea pig' tests", 2001-05-27 [http://www.robedwards.com/2001/05/britain-used-du-in-1950s-nuclear-guinea-pig-tests.html] [https://web.archive.org/web/20141020075110/http://www.robedwards.com/2001/05/britain-used-du-in-1950s-nuclear-guinea-pig-tests.html]
Wednesday, September 1, 2004
American Free Press four-part series on Depleted Uranium (DU) by Christopher Bollyn
Ban Depleted Uranium Weapons! [link]
"Depleted Uranium:U.S. Commits War Crime Against Iraq, Humanity"
2004-08-08 by Christopher Bollyn for "American Free Press" [http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/depleted_uranium.html], reposted at Mindfully.org [http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/DU-War-Iraq8aug04.htm] [archive.org]:
America’s controlled press has failed to inform the public that, in spite of years of UN inspections and numerous international treaties, tons of banned weapons of mass destruction (WMD)—used and unused—remain in Iraq. Indeed, both chemical and radio active WMD have been—and continue to be used against U.S. and coalition soldiers.
The media silence surrounding these banned WMDs, and the horrendous consequences of their use, is due to the simple fact that they are being used by the U.S.-led coalition. They are the new “silver bullet” in the U.S. arsenal. They are depleted uranium weapons.
Depleted uranium (DU) weapons were first used during Gulf War I against Iraq in 1991. The Pentagon estimated that between 315 and 350 tons of DU were fired during the first gulf war. During the 2003 invasion and current occupation of Iraq, U.S. and British troops have reportedly used more than five times as many DU bombs and shells as the total number used during the 1991 war.
While the use of DU weapons and their effect on human health and the environment are subjects of extreme importance, the Pentagon is noticeably reluctant to discuss these weapons. Despite numerous calls to specific individuals identified as being the appointed spokesmen on the subject, not one would answer their phone during normal business hours for the purpose of this article.
(Dr. Doug Rokke, photo by Paul Goettlich)
Dr. Doug Rokke, [more on Doug Rokke https://archive.today/NWMss] on the other hand, former director of the U.S. Army’s Depleted Uranium Project, is very willing to talk about the effects of DU. Rokke was involved in the “clean up” of 34 Abrams tanks and Bradley armored vehicles erroneously hit by U.S. projectiles during the 1991 gulf war. Today he suffers from the ill effects of DU in his body.
Rokke told American Free Press that the Pentagon uses DU weapons because they are the most effective at killing and destroying everything they hit. The highest level of the U.S. and British governments have “totally disregarded the consequences” of the use of DU weapons, Rokke said.
The first gulf war had the largest “friendly fire” disasters in the history of American warfare, Rokke says. “The majority of the casualties were the result of friendly fire,” he told AFP.
DU is used in many forms of ammunition as an armor penetrator because of its extreme density. The uranium used in these missiles and bombs is a by-product of the nuclear enrichment process. Experts say the Department of Energy has 100 million tons of DU and using it in weapons saves the government great sums to safely dispose of it.
This is why DU is shaped into penetrator rods used in the billions of rounds being fired in Iraq and Afghanistan. The radioactive waste from the U.S. nuclear weapons industry has, in effect, been exported and spread in Iraq, Afghanistan, the former Yugoslavia, Puerto Rico and elsewhere.
THE REAL “DIRTY BOMBS” -
“A flying rod of solid uranium 18 inches long and three-quarters of an inch in diameter” is what becomes of a DU tank round after it is fired, Rokke said. Because uranium-238 is pyrophoric, meaning it burns on contact with air, DU rounds are burning as they fly.
When the DU penetrator hits an object it breaks up and causes secondary explosions, Rokke said. “It’s way beyond a dirty bomb,” Rokke said, referring to the terror weapon that uses conventional explosives to spread radioactive material.
Some of the uranium used with DU weapons vaporizes into extremely small particles, which are dispersed into the atmosphere, where they remain until they fall to the ground with the rain. As a gas, the chemically toxic and radioactive uranium can easily enter the body through the skin or the lungs and be carried around the world until it falls to earth with the rain.
AFP asked Marion Falk, a retired chemical physicist who built nuclear bombs for more than 20 years at Lawrence Livermore lab, if he thought that DU weapons operate in a similar manner as a dirty bomb. “That’s exactly what they are,” Falk said. “They fit the description of a dirty bomb in every way.”
According to Falk, more than 30 percent of the DU fired from the cannons of U.S. tanks is reduced to particles one-tenth of a micron (one millionth of a meter) in size or smaller on impact.
“The larger the bang” the greater the amount of DU that is dispersed into the atmosphere, Falk said. With the larger missiles and bombs, nearly 100 percent of the DU is reduced to radioactive dust particles of the “micron size” or smaller, he said.
While the Pentagon officially denies the dangers of DU weapons, since at least 1943 the military has been aware of the extreme toxicity of uranium dispersed as a gas. A declassified memo written by James B. Conant and two other physicists working on the U.S. nuclear project during World War II and sent to Brig. Gen. L.R. Groves on October 30, 1943, provides the evidence:
“As a gas warfare instrument the [radioactive] material would be ground into particles of microscopic size to form dust and smoke and distributed by a ground-fired projectile, land vehicles or aerial bombs,” the 1943 memo reads. “In this form it would be inhaled by personnel. The amount necessary to cause death to a person inhaling the material is extremely small. It has been estimated that one millionth of a gram accumulation in a person’s body would be fatal. There are no known methods of treatment for such a casualty.”
The use of radioactive materials “as a terrain contaminant” to “deny terrain to either side except at the expense of exposing personnel to harmful radiation” is also discussed in the Groves memo of 1943.
“Anybody, civilian or soldier, who breathes these particles has a permanent dose, and it’s not going to decrease very much over time,” Leonard Dietz, a retired nuclear physicist with 33 years experience, told The New York Daily News. “In the long run … veterans exposed to ceramic uranium oxide have a major problem.”
Inhaled particles of radioactive uranium oxide dust will either lodge in the lungs or travel through the body, depending on their size. The smallest particles can be carried through cell walls and “affect the master code—the expression of the DNA,” Falk told AFP.
Inhaled, it “affects the body in so many ways and there are so many different symptoms that they want to give it different names,” Falk said about the wide variety of ailments afflicting gulf war veterans.
Today, more than one out of every three veterans from the first gulf war are permanently disabled. Terry Jemison of the Department of Veterans Affairs said that of the 592,561 discharged veterans from the 1991 war in Iraq, 179,310 are receiving disability compensation, and another 24,763 cases are pending.
The “epigenetic damage” done by DU has resulted in many grossly deformed children born in areas such as southern Iraq, where tons of DU have contaminated the environment and local population. An untold number of American babies have also been born with severe birth defects as a result of DU contamination.
The New York Daily News conducted a study on nine recently returned soldiers from the New York National Guard. Four of the nine were found to have “almost certainly” inhaled radioactive dust from exploded DU shells.
Laboratory tests revealed two manmade forms of uranium in urine samples from four of the nine soldiers. The four soldiers are the first confirmed cases of inhaled DU from the current Iraq war.
“These are amazing results, especially since these soldiers were military police not exposed to the heat of battle,” said Dr. Asaf Duracovic, who examined the soldiers and performed the testing. “Other American soldiers, who were in combat, must have more DU exposure,” Duracovic said. Duracovic is a colonel in the Army reserves and served in the 1991 gulf war.
The test results showing that four of nine New York guardsmen test positive for DU “suggest the potential for more extensive radiation exposure among coalition troops and Iraqi civilians,” Daily News reported.
“A large number of American soldiers [in Iraq] may have had significant exposure to uranium oxide dust,” Dr. Thomas Fasey, a pathologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center and an expert on depleted uranium, said, “And the health impact is worrisome for the future.”
HOTTER THAN HELL -
“I’m hotter than hell,” Rokke told AFP. The Department of Energy tested Rokke in 1994 and found that he was excreting more than 5,000 times the permissible level of depleted uranium. Rokke, however, was not informed of the results until 1996.
As director of the Depleted Uranium Project in 1994-95, Rokke said his task was three-fold: determine how to provide medical care for DU victims, how to clean it up and how to educate and train personnel using DU weapons.
Today, Rokke says that DU cannot be cleaned up and there is no medical care. “Once you’re zapped—you’re zapped,” Rokke said. Among the health problems Rokke is suffering, as a result of DU contamination, is brittle teeth. He said that he just paid out $400 for an operation for teeth that have broken off. “The uranium replaces the calcium in your teeth and bones,” Rokke said.
“You fight for medical care every day of your life,” he said.
“There are over 30,000 casualties from this Iraq war,” Rokke said.
The three tasks set out for the Depleted Uranium Project have all failed, Rokke said. He wants to know why medical care is not being provided for all the victims of DU and why the environment is not being cleaned up.
“They have to be held accountable,” Rokke said, naming President George W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. They chose to use DU weapons and “totally disregarded the consequences.”
"Cancer Epidemic Caused by U.S. WMD; M.D. Says Depleted Uranium Definitively Linked" 2004-09-01 by Christopher Bollyn for "American Free Press" [http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/cancer_epidemic_.html] [archive.org]:
A growing number of U.S. military personnel who are serving, or have served, in Iraq or Afghanistan has become sick and disabled from a variety of symptoms commonly known as Gulf War Syndrome. Depleted uranium (DU) weapons have been blamed for many of the symptoms.
“Gulf war vets are coming down with these symptoms at twice the rate of vets from previous conflicts,” said Barbara A. Goodno from the Department of Defense’s Deployment Health Support Directorate.
A recent discovery by American Free Press that nearly half the soldiers in one returned unit have malignant growths has provided the scientific community with “critical evidence,” experts say, to help understand exactly how DU affects humans.
One of the first published researchers of Gulf War Syndrome, Dr. András Korényi-Both, told AFP that 27 percent to 28 percent of Gulf War veterans have suffered chronic health problems, more than five times the rate of Viet Nam vets and four times the rate of Korean War vets.
Korényi-Both said his son had recently returned from Iraq, where he had been part of the initial Gulf War II assault from Kuwait to Baghdad. From his unit of 20 men, eight now have “malignant growths,” Korényi-Both said.
Korényi-Both is not an expert on DU but has written extensively about how the fine desert sand blowing around Iraq and the Arabian peninsula provides an ideal vehicle for toxins, increasing the range and effect of atomic, biological and chemical (ABC) agents, such as DU, that attach themselves to the particles.
Korényi-Both described how, during the 1991 Gulf War, he and others had inhaled large quantities of sand dust that could have been laden with ABC agents. The dust “destroyed our immune systems,” he said.
FULK’S THEORY -
Marion Fulk, a former nuclear chemical physicist at the Lawrence Livermore lab, is investigating how DU affects the human body. Fulk said that eight malignancies out of 20, in 16 months, “is spectacular—and of serious concern.”
The high malignancy rate found in this unit appears to have been caused by battlefield exposure to DU weapons.
According to Fulk, when DU, consisting mainly of uranium-238, decays, it transforms into two short-lived and “very hot” isotopes of thorium and protactinium, then undergoes further decay to another uranium isotope, giving off high-energy radiation at each stage of the process.
Scientist Leuren Moret said: “We can expect to see multiple cancers in one person. These multiple unrelated cancers in the same individual have been reported in Yugoslavia and Iraq in families that had no history of any cancer. This is unknown in the previous studies of cancer,” she said, “a new phenomenon.”
Goodno questioned Korényi-Both’s report that eight of 20 recently returned soldiers from one unit had experienced malignant growths. Goodno and Korényi-Both did agree, however, that Iraqi ABC agents had not played a role in the 2003 invasion.
This is significant because three factors have generally been blamed for causing Gulf War Syndrome: Iraqi chemical and biological weapons, the cocktail of vaccinations given to coalition soldiers and DU. The absence of any detectable Iraqi ABC agents during the 2003 invasion of Iraq narrows the potential factors for delayed illness or disability among veterans to prewar vaccinations and DU.
While the number of disabled vets from previous wars is decreasing by about 35,000 per year, since the “war on terror” began in 2001, the total number of disabled vets has grown to some 2.5 million—“more than ever before,” Brad Flohr of the Department of Veterans Affairs said. Asked if there are more disabled vets now than after World War II, Flohr said he believed so.
Terry Jemison of the Department of Veterans Affairs told AFP that current statistics indicate that more than half a million veterans of the 14-year-old Gulf War I era are now receiving disability compensation. During this period, some 7,035 soldiers are reported having been wounded in Iraq.
With 518,739 disabled “Gulf War I era veterans” currently receiving disability compensation, according to Jemison, the number of veterans disabled after the war is more than 73 times the number of wounded, in and out of combat, from the entire 14-year conflict with Iraq.
DEPLETED URANIUM WEAPONS -
Last December, Dr. Asaf Durakoviae, a nuclear medicine expert who has conducted extensive research on depleted uranium, examined nine soldiers from the 442nd Military Police Company of New York and found that four of the men had absorbed or inhaled DU.
Several of the men had traces of another isotope, U-236, which is only produced in a nuclear reactor.
“These men were almost certainly exposed to radioactive weapons on the battlefield,” Durakovae said.
“Due to the current proliferation of DU weaponry, the battlefields of the future will be unlike any battlefields in history,” Durakovae, then chief of Nuclear Medicine for the Veterans Administration, said after Gulf War I, in which he served.
Since 1991, the U.S. military has used DU in munitions as penetrating rods, which destroy enemy tanks and their occupants, and as armor plating on U.S. tanks. When DU penetrating rods strike a hard target some of the radioactive and toxic uranium is vaporized into ultra-fine particles that are easily inhaled or absorbed through the skin.
According to a survey of 10,051 Gulf War I veterans, conducted between 1991 and 1995 by Vic Sylvester and the Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm Association, 82 percent of veterans reported having entered captured Iraqi vehicles. “This would suggest that 123,000 soldiers have been directly exposed to DU,” Durakovae said.
“Since the effects of contamination by uranium cannot be directed or contained, uranium’s chemical and radiological toxicity will create environments that are hostile not only to the health of enemy forces but of one’s own forces as well,” Durakovae said.
“Because of the chemical and radiological toxicity of DU, the small number of particles trapped in the lungs, kidneys and bone greatly increase the risk of cancer and all other illnesses over time,” said Durakovae, an expert of internal contamination of radioisotopes.
According to Durakovae, other symptoms associated with DU poisoning are: emotional and mental deterioration, fatigue, loss of bowel and bladder control, and numerous forms of cancer. Such symptoms are increasingly showing up in Iraq’s children and among Gulf War I veterans and their offspring, he said.
“Although I personally served in Operation Desert Shield as unit commander,” Durakovae said, “my expertise of internal contamination was never used because we were never informed of the intended use of DU prior to or during the war.”
“The numbers are overwhelming, but the potential horrors only get worse,” Robert C. Koehler of the Chicago-based Tribune Media Services wrote in his March 25 article on DU weapons, “Silent Genocide.”
“DU dust does more than wreak havoc on the immune systems of those who breathe it or touch it; the substance also alters one’s genetic code,” Koehler wrote. “The Pentagon’s response to such charges is denial, denial, denial. And the American media is its moral co-conspirator.”
"Depleted Uranium:U.S. Commits War Crime Against Iraq, Humanity"
2004-08-08 by Christopher Bollyn for "American Free Press" [http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/depleted_uranium.html], reposted at Mindfully.org [http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/DU-War-Iraq8aug04.htm] [archive.org]:
America’s controlled press has failed to inform the public that, in spite of years of UN inspections and numerous international treaties, tons of banned weapons of mass destruction (WMD)—used and unused—remain in Iraq. Indeed, both chemical and radio active WMD have been—and continue to be used against U.S. and coalition soldiers.
The media silence surrounding these banned WMDs, and the horrendous consequences of their use, is due to the simple fact that they are being used by the U.S.-led coalition. They are the new “silver bullet” in the U.S. arsenal. They are depleted uranium weapons.
Depleted uranium (DU) weapons were first used during Gulf War I against Iraq in 1991. The Pentagon estimated that between 315 and 350 tons of DU were fired during the first gulf war. During the 2003 invasion and current occupation of Iraq, U.S. and British troops have reportedly used more than five times as many DU bombs and shells as the total number used during the 1991 war.
While the use of DU weapons and their effect on human health and the environment are subjects of extreme importance, the Pentagon is noticeably reluctant to discuss these weapons. Despite numerous calls to specific individuals identified as being the appointed spokesmen on the subject, not one would answer their phone during normal business hours for the purpose of this article.
(Dr. Doug Rokke, photo by Paul Goettlich)
Dr. Doug Rokke, [more on Doug Rokke https://archive.today/NWMss] on the other hand, former director of the U.S. Army’s Depleted Uranium Project, is very willing to talk about the effects of DU. Rokke was involved in the “clean up” of 34 Abrams tanks and Bradley armored vehicles erroneously hit by U.S. projectiles during the 1991 gulf war. Today he suffers from the ill effects of DU in his body.
Rokke told American Free Press that the Pentagon uses DU weapons because they are the most effective at killing and destroying everything they hit. The highest level of the U.S. and British governments have “totally disregarded the consequences” of the use of DU weapons, Rokke said.
The first gulf war had the largest “friendly fire” disasters in the history of American warfare, Rokke says. “The majority of the casualties were the result of friendly fire,” he told AFP.
DU is used in many forms of ammunition as an armor penetrator because of its extreme density. The uranium used in these missiles and bombs is a by-product of the nuclear enrichment process. Experts say the Department of Energy has 100 million tons of DU and using it in weapons saves the government great sums to safely dispose of it.
This is why DU is shaped into penetrator rods used in the billions of rounds being fired in Iraq and Afghanistan. The radioactive waste from the U.S. nuclear weapons industry has, in effect, been exported and spread in Iraq, Afghanistan, the former Yugoslavia, Puerto Rico and elsewhere.
THE REAL “DIRTY BOMBS” -
“A flying rod of solid uranium 18 inches long and three-quarters of an inch in diameter” is what becomes of a DU tank round after it is fired, Rokke said. Because uranium-238 is pyrophoric, meaning it burns on contact with air, DU rounds are burning as they fly.
When the DU penetrator hits an object it breaks up and causes secondary explosions, Rokke said. “It’s way beyond a dirty bomb,” Rokke said, referring to the terror weapon that uses conventional explosives to spread radioactive material.
Some of the uranium used with DU weapons vaporizes into extremely small particles, which are dispersed into the atmosphere, where they remain until they fall to the ground with the rain. As a gas, the chemically toxic and radioactive uranium can easily enter the body through the skin or the lungs and be carried around the world until it falls to earth with the rain.
AFP asked Marion Falk, a retired chemical physicist who built nuclear bombs for more than 20 years at Lawrence Livermore lab, if he thought that DU weapons operate in a similar manner as a dirty bomb. “That’s exactly what they are,” Falk said. “They fit the description of a dirty bomb in every way.”
According to Falk, more than 30 percent of the DU fired from the cannons of U.S. tanks is reduced to particles one-tenth of a micron (one millionth of a meter) in size or smaller on impact.
“The larger the bang” the greater the amount of DU that is dispersed into the atmosphere, Falk said. With the larger missiles and bombs, nearly 100 percent of the DU is reduced to radioactive dust particles of the “micron size” or smaller, he said.
While the Pentagon officially denies the dangers of DU weapons, since at least 1943 the military has been aware of the extreme toxicity of uranium dispersed as a gas. A declassified memo written by James B. Conant and two other physicists working on the U.S. nuclear project during World War II and sent to Brig. Gen. L.R. Groves on October 30, 1943, provides the evidence:
“As a gas warfare instrument the [radioactive] material would be ground into particles of microscopic size to form dust and smoke and distributed by a ground-fired projectile, land vehicles or aerial bombs,” the 1943 memo reads. “In this form it would be inhaled by personnel. The amount necessary to cause death to a person inhaling the material is extremely small. It has been estimated that one millionth of a gram accumulation in a person’s body would be fatal. There are no known methods of treatment for such a casualty.”
The use of radioactive materials “as a terrain contaminant” to “deny terrain to either side except at the expense of exposing personnel to harmful radiation” is also discussed in the Groves memo of 1943.
“Anybody, civilian or soldier, who breathes these particles has a permanent dose, and it’s not going to decrease very much over time,” Leonard Dietz, a retired nuclear physicist with 33 years experience, told The New York Daily News. “In the long run … veterans exposed to ceramic uranium oxide have a major problem.”
Inhaled particles of radioactive uranium oxide dust will either lodge in the lungs or travel through the body, depending on their size. The smallest particles can be carried through cell walls and “affect the master code—the expression of the DNA,” Falk told AFP.
Inhaled, it “affects the body in so many ways and there are so many different symptoms that they want to give it different names,” Falk said about the wide variety of ailments afflicting gulf war veterans.
Today, more than one out of every three veterans from the first gulf war are permanently disabled. Terry Jemison of the Department of Veterans Affairs said that of the 592,561 discharged veterans from the 1991 war in Iraq, 179,310 are receiving disability compensation, and another 24,763 cases are pending.
The “epigenetic damage” done by DU has resulted in many grossly deformed children born in areas such as southern Iraq, where tons of DU have contaminated the environment and local population. An untold number of American babies have also been born with severe birth defects as a result of DU contamination.
The New York Daily News conducted a study on nine recently returned soldiers from the New York National Guard. Four of the nine were found to have “almost certainly” inhaled radioactive dust from exploded DU shells.
Laboratory tests revealed two manmade forms of uranium in urine samples from four of the nine soldiers. The four soldiers are the first confirmed cases of inhaled DU from the current Iraq war.
“These are amazing results, especially since these soldiers were military police not exposed to the heat of battle,” said Dr. Asaf Duracovic, who examined the soldiers and performed the testing. “Other American soldiers, who were in combat, must have more DU exposure,” Duracovic said. Duracovic is a colonel in the Army reserves and served in the 1991 gulf war.
The test results showing that four of nine New York guardsmen test positive for DU “suggest the potential for more extensive radiation exposure among coalition troops and Iraqi civilians,” Daily News reported.
“A large number of American soldiers [in Iraq] may have had significant exposure to uranium oxide dust,” Dr. Thomas Fasey, a pathologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center and an expert on depleted uranium, said, “And the health impact is worrisome for the future.”
HOTTER THAN HELL -
“I’m hotter than hell,” Rokke told AFP. The Department of Energy tested Rokke in 1994 and found that he was excreting more than 5,000 times the permissible level of depleted uranium. Rokke, however, was not informed of the results until 1996.
As director of the Depleted Uranium Project in 1994-95, Rokke said his task was three-fold: determine how to provide medical care for DU victims, how to clean it up and how to educate and train personnel using DU weapons.
Today, Rokke says that DU cannot be cleaned up and there is no medical care. “Once you’re zapped—you’re zapped,” Rokke said. Among the health problems Rokke is suffering, as a result of DU contamination, is brittle teeth. He said that he just paid out $400 for an operation for teeth that have broken off. “The uranium replaces the calcium in your teeth and bones,” Rokke said.
“You fight for medical care every day of your life,” he said.
“There are over 30,000 casualties from this Iraq war,” Rokke said.
The three tasks set out for the Depleted Uranium Project have all failed, Rokke said. He wants to know why medical care is not being provided for all the victims of DU and why the environment is not being cleaned up.
“They have to be held accountable,” Rokke said, naming President George W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. They chose to use DU weapons and “totally disregarded the consequences.”
"Cancer Epidemic Caused by U.S. WMD; M.D. Says Depleted Uranium Definitively Linked" 2004-09-01 by Christopher Bollyn for "American Free Press" [http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/cancer_epidemic_.html] [archive.org]:
A growing number of U.S. military personnel who are serving, or have served, in Iraq or Afghanistan has become sick and disabled from a variety of symptoms commonly known as Gulf War Syndrome. Depleted uranium (DU) weapons have been blamed for many of the symptoms.
“Gulf war vets are coming down with these symptoms at twice the rate of vets from previous conflicts,” said Barbara A. Goodno from the Department of Defense’s Deployment Health Support Directorate.
A recent discovery by American Free Press that nearly half the soldiers in one returned unit have malignant growths has provided the scientific community with “critical evidence,” experts say, to help understand exactly how DU affects humans.
One of the first published researchers of Gulf War Syndrome, Dr. András Korényi-Both, told AFP that 27 percent to 28 percent of Gulf War veterans have suffered chronic health problems, more than five times the rate of Viet Nam vets and four times the rate of Korean War vets.
Korényi-Both said his son had recently returned from Iraq, where he had been part of the initial Gulf War II assault from Kuwait to Baghdad. From his unit of 20 men, eight now have “malignant growths,” Korényi-Both said.
Korényi-Both is not an expert on DU but has written extensively about how the fine desert sand blowing around Iraq and the Arabian peninsula provides an ideal vehicle for toxins, increasing the range and effect of atomic, biological and chemical (ABC) agents, such as DU, that attach themselves to the particles.
Korényi-Both described how, during the 1991 Gulf War, he and others had inhaled large quantities of sand dust that could have been laden with ABC agents. The dust “destroyed our immune systems,” he said.
FULK’S THEORY -
Marion Fulk, a former nuclear chemical physicist at the Lawrence Livermore lab, is investigating how DU affects the human body. Fulk said that eight malignancies out of 20, in 16 months, “is spectacular—and of serious concern.”
The high malignancy rate found in this unit appears to have been caused by battlefield exposure to DU weapons.
According to Fulk, when DU, consisting mainly of uranium-238, decays, it transforms into two short-lived and “very hot” isotopes of thorium and protactinium, then undergoes further decay to another uranium isotope, giving off high-energy radiation at each stage of the process.
Scientist Leuren Moret said: “We can expect to see multiple cancers in one person. These multiple unrelated cancers in the same individual have been reported in Yugoslavia and Iraq in families that had no history of any cancer. This is unknown in the previous studies of cancer,” she said, “a new phenomenon.”
Goodno questioned Korényi-Both’s report that eight of 20 recently returned soldiers from one unit had experienced malignant growths. Goodno and Korényi-Both did agree, however, that Iraqi ABC agents had not played a role in the 2003 invasion.
This is significant because three factors have generally been blamed for causing Gulf War Syndrome: Iraqi chemical and biological weapons, the cocktail of vaccinations given to coalition soldiers and DU. The absence of any detectable Iraqi ABC agents during the 2003 invasion of Iraq narrows the potential factors for delayed illness or disability among veterans to prewar vaccinations and DU.
While the number of disabled vets from previous wars is decreasing by about 35,000 per year, since the “war on terror” began in 2001, the total number of disabled vets has grown to some 2.5 million—“more than ever before,” Brad Flohr of the Department of Veterans Affairs said. Asked if there are more disabled vets now than after World War II, Flohr said he believed so.
Terry Jemison of the Department of Veterans Affairs told AFP that current statistics indicate that more than half a million veterans of the 14-year-old Gulf War I era are now receiving disability compensation. During this period, some 7,035 soldiers are reported having been wounded in Iraq.
With 518,739 disabled “Gulf War I era veterans” currently receiving disability compensation, according to Jemison, the number of veterans disabled after the war is more than 73 times the number of wounded, in and out of combat, from the entire 14-year conflict with Iraq.
DEPLETED URANIUM WEAPONS -
Last December, Dr. Asaf Durakoviae, a nuclear medicine expert who has conducted extensive research on depleted uranium, examined nine soldiers from the 442nd Military Police Company of New York and found that four of the men had absorbed or inhaled DU.
Several of the men had traces of another isotope, U-236, which is only produced in a nuclear reactor.
“These men were almost certainly exposed to radioactive weapons on the battlefield,” Durakovae said.
“Due to the current proliferation of DU weaponry, the battlefields of the future will be unlike any battlefields in history,” Durakovae, then chief of Nuclear Medicine for the Veterans Administration, said after Gulf War I, in which he served.
Since 1991, the U.S. military has used DU in munitions as penetrating rods, which destroy enemy tanks and their occupants, and as armor plating on U.S. tanks. When DU penetrating rods strike a hard target some of the radioactive and toxic uranium is vaporized into ultra-fine particles that are easily inhaled or absorbed through the skin.
According to a survey of 10,051 Gulf War I veterans, conducted between 1991 and 1995 by Vic Sylvester and the Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm Association, 82 percent of veterans reported having entered captured Iraqi vehicles. “This would suggest that 123,000 soldiers have been directly exposed to DU,” Durakovae said.
“Since the effects of contamination by uranium cannot be directed or contained, uranium’s chemical and radiological toxicity will create environments that are hostile not only to the health of enemy forces but of one’s own forces as well,” Durakovae said.
“Because of the chemical and radiological toxicity of DU, the small number of particles trapped in the lungs, kidneys and bone greatly increase the risk of cancer and all other illnesses over time,” said Durakovae, an expert of internal contamination of radioisotopes.
According to Durakovae, other symptoms associated with DU poisoning are: emotional and mental deterioration, fatigue, loss of bowel and bladder control, and numerous forms of cancer. Such symptoms are increasingly showing up in Iraq’s children and among Gulf War I veterans and their offspring, he said.
“Although I personally served in Operation Desert Shield as unit commander,” Durakovae said, “my expertise of internal contamination was never used because we were never informed of the intended use of DU prior to or during the war.”
“The numbers are overwhelming, but the potential horrors only get worse,” Robert C. Koehler of the Chicago-based Tribune Media Services wrote in his March 25 article on DU weapons, “Silent Genocide.”
“DU dust does more than wreak havoc on the immune systems of those who breathe it or touch it; the substance also alters one’s genetic code,” Koehler wrote. “The Pentagon’s response to such charges is denial, denial, denial. And the American media is its moral co-conspirator.”
Thursday, May 29, 2003
"Another US war crime: the use of depleted uranium munitions in Iraq"
Ban Depleted Uranium Weapons! [link]
2003-05-29 by Ben Nichols and Joe Lopez for "WSWS.org" [http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/may2003/depu-m29.shtml] [archive.org]:
One of the war crimes for which the Bush administration should be prosecuted is the US military’s extensive use of weapons tipped with depleted uranium (DU) during the war against Iraq.
The Pentagon has repeatedly dismissed warnings from a variety of scientific and other bodies about the potential dangers of such weaponry. In the aftermath of the war, Washington has refused to clean up the residue left behind or allow UN experts into the country to assess the potential long-term environmental and health hazards caused by depleted uranium.
In its use of DU weapons, the Bush administration has acted with complete indifference to international law and convention. In January 2001, the European Parliament voted in favor of a resolution that took the modest step of imposing a ban on the use of DU munitions while investigations were carried out into the links between DU and cancer.
In August 2002, the UN published a report which cited a series of international laws and conventions breached by the use of DU weapons, including: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the UN Charter; the UN Genocide Convention; the Convention Against Torture; the four Geneva Conventions of 1949; the Conventional Weapons Convention of 1980; and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 which all forbid the deployment of “poison or poisoned weapons” and “arms, projectiles or materials calculated to cause unnecessary suffering”.
According to a recent CNN report, Pentagon and UN experts have estimated that US-led military forces used between 1,100 and 2,200 tonnes of depleted uranium during the invasion of Iraq. The amount far exceeds the 300 tonnes of depleted uranium used in the 1991 Gulf War and the 10 tonnes used by NATO forces during the bombing of Serbia in 1999.
Depleted uranium is a radioactive heavy metal, which is also chemically toxic. It is the waste product left over after the isotope uranium-235—used in nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons—has been extracted from naturally occurring uranium. What remains—depleted uranium—is composed almost entirely—99.7 percent—of the isotope uranium-238. While less radioactive than enriched or even naturally occurring uranium, DU is still toxic and its long-term affects on health are unknown.
The Pentagon has insisted on using DU munitions because they confer a significant military advantage. DU is 2.5 times denser than steel and 1.7 times the density of lead, enabling shells and bullets tipped with the substance to easily pierce most armour and concrete structures. It is also relatively cheap to manufacture—essentially being a waste product from the US nuclear industry and weapons program. DU bullets and shells emit almost no radiation prior to firing, but burn in mid air and vaporise after impact, spreading a layer of fine dust across a large area. Each DU tank shell is said to contain about five kilograms of depleted uranium.
Just days before the invasion of Iraq, Colonel James Naughton crudely summed up the reasons for using DU munitions and accused those warning of its dangers of falling for Iraqi propaganda. “The Iraqis tell us terrible things happened to our people because you used it last time. Why do they want it to go away? They want it to go away because we kicked the crap out of them—okay? I mean, there’s no doubt that DU gave us a huge advantage over their tanks. They lost a lot of tanks.”
Equally cynical was the response of Lieutenant Colonel Michael Sigmon, the deputy surgeon for the US Army’s V Corps. Asked about the health risks of DU, he declared: “There is not really any danger, at least that we know about, for the people of Iraq.” He claimed that children playing with expended DU tank shells would have to eat and practically suffocate on the depleted uranium residue before incurring any health problems.
These comments fly in the face of considerable anecdotal evidence from battlefields where DU munitions have been used—including in Iraq during the first Gulf War, in the Balkans and at the US bombing range on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques. In each case, significant increases in cancer rates, birth deformities and long-term health problems have been recorded.
A leading Iraqi specialist, Dr Salma Haddad, told reporters that several years after the 1991 Gulf War she began to encounter more and more children at Baghdad’s Al Mansur Hospital with an aggressive form of cancer.
Haddad said she was particularly alarmed since the disease—acute myeloblastic leukemia—is closely associated with radiation exposure and her suspicions pointed to DU munitions. She went on to explain that the number of cancer cases admitted to her hospital was five times higher than in 1991.
Vested interests -
But Pentagon officials continue to play down the dangers. Last month, spokesman Colonel David Lapan claimed that recent studies had demonstrated that DU was safe. Since 1990, he told the BBC “there’ve been a number of studies by the UK’s Royal Society and the World Health Organisation, for example—into the health risks of DU, or lack of them. It’s fair to say the 1990 study has been overtaken by them. One thing we have found in these various studies is that there are no long-term effects from DU.”
In fact, the Royal Society report entitled “The health hazards of depleted uranium munitions” says nothing of the sort. The body has been one of the most vociferous in calling for a cleanup of depleted uranium and for more comprehensive tests into its health and environmental effects. It recently called on the British government to carry out health tests on troops returning from Iraq.
The study does state that the known risks of cancer are low and may only be twice as probable for people exposed to DU in the worst-case battlefield scenarios. But it also points to the need for further research. Far from being harmless, the Royal Society report explains: “DU is radioactive and poisonous. Exposure to sufficiently high levels might be expected to increase the incidence of some cancers, notably lung cancer, possibly leukemia and may damage the kidneys.
“The key question is whether exposures to DU on the battlefield are such that the increased incidence of cancer, or the likelihood of kidney damage, are insignificant or are high enough to cause concern. This is a very difficult question to answer given the lack of good quality data on some of the parameters that determine the extent of the exposure or the subsequent risk of disease.”
Royal Society spokesperson Professor Brian Spratt commented last month: “The coalition needs to make clear where and how much depleted uranium was used in the recent conflict in Iraq. Although there are more pressing problems in Iraq ... the coalition needs to acknowledge that depleted uranium is a potential hazard and make inroads into tackling it by being open about where and how much depleted uranium has been deployed.”
But neither Washington nor London has shown the slightest willingness to provide the necessary information, let alone acknowledge the dangers. When the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) asked to be allowed to send a team to Iraq to make an assessment of the environmental and health threats posed to the Iraqi population, the Bush administration refused.
Previous UNEP studies on depleted uranium have indicated that the substance can attack the kidneys if ingested most likely through contaminated water or cause lung cancer if the dust is inhaled.
Further evidence of the dangers of DU munitions has been provided by Major Doug Rokke, a Vietnam and Gulf War combat veteran. Rokke has specialised in hazardous materials and emergency medicine for over 20 years and has campaigned in recent years against the use of DU. He was assigned to clean up depleted uranium after the 1991 Gulf War in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
In a speech in January published by the magazine In These Times, Rokke denounced the use of DU munitions declaring: “We have willfully spread it all over the place. We’ve refused to clean up the mess; we’ve refused to provide medical care; not only to the American ‘friendly fire’ casualties who survived, but also to the DU cleanup teams; and we’ve refused to supply medical care to all the thousands and thousands of other people, including women and children—which makes it an indiscriminate weapon.”
Rokke explained that indiscriminate weapons are banned by international law and that UN has issued several calls for a ban on the use of DU—which the US has rejected. Speaking from his experience in the first Gulf War, he warned: “When you leave all the contamination there, people are going to continue to get sick from just the uranium munitions alone... The army knows it’s a problem, and they just don’t care. They’re going to use DU... When you go to war, you use the best weapon you have, and you will not ever give it up.”
Washington also has other interests at stake. If DU is proven to have a long-term health impact, the US faces charges of criminal negligence and claims for compensation, not only from civilians in the Middle East and the Balkans, but from thousands of US veterans who have suffered debilitating illnesses.
Moreover, any cleanup of DU residue in Iraq and elsewhere would involve huge costs. According to an article in the US publication Newsday last month, the estimated cost of clearing a closed 500-acre military facility—the Jefferson Proving Ground in Indiana—was between $4 billion and $5 billion. The firing range was thought to contain about one fifth the amount of depleted uranium used during the 1991 Gulf War and many times less than the tonnage used this year on Iraq.
2003-05-29 by Ben Nichols and Joe Lopez for "WSWS.org" [http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/may2003/depu-m29.shtml] [archive.org]:
One of the war crimes for which the Bush administration should be prosecuted is the US military’s extensive use of weapons tipped with depleted uranium (DU) during the war against Iraq.
The Pentagon has repeatedly dismissed warnings from a variety of scientific and other bodies about the potential dangers of such weaponry. In the aftermath of the war, Washington has refused to clean up the residue left behind or allow UN experts into the country to assess the potential long-term environmental and health hazards caused by depleted uranium.
In its use of DU weapons, the Bush administration has acted with complete indifference to international law and convention. In January 2001, the European Parliament voted in favor of a resolution that took the modest step of imposing a ban on the use of DU munitions while investigations were carried out into the links between DU and cancer.
In August 2002, the UN published a report which cited a series of international laws and conventions breached by the use of DU weapons, including: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the UN Charter; the UN Genocide Convention; the Convention Against Torture; the four Geneva Conventions of 1949; the Conventional Weapons Convention of 1980; and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 which all forbid the deployment of “poison or poisoned weapons” and “arms, projectiles or materials calculated to cause unnecessary suffering”.
According to a recent CNN report, Pentagon and UN experts have estimated that US-led military forces used between 1,100 and 2,200 tonnes of depleted uranium during the invasion of Iraq. The amount far exceeds the 300 tonnes of depleted uranium used in the 1991 Gulf War and the 10 tonnes used by NATO forces during the bombing of Serbia in 1999.
Depleted uranium is a radioactive heavy metal, which is also chemically toxic. It is the waste product left over after the isotope uranium-235—used in nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons—has been extracted from naturally occurring uranium. What remains—depleted uranium—is composed almost entirely—99.7 percent—of the isotope uranium-238. While less radioactive than enriched or even naturally occurring uranium, DU is still toxic and its long-term affects on health are unknown.
The Pentagon has insisted on using DU munitions because they confer a significant military advantage. DU is 2.5 times denser than steel and 1.7 times the density of lead, enabling shells and bullets tipped with the substance to easily pierce most armour and concrete structures. It is also relatively cheap to manufacture—essentially being a waste product from the US nuclear industry and weapons program. DU bullets and shells emit almost no radiation prior to firing, but burn in mid air and vaporise after impact, spreading a layer of fine dust across a large area. Each DU tank shell is said to contain about five kilograms of depleted uranium.
Just days before the invasion of Iraq, Colonel James Naughton crudely summed up the reasons for using DU munitions and accused those warning of its dangers of falling for Iraqi propaganda. “The Iraqis tell us terrible things happened to our people because you used it last time. Why do they want it to go away? They want it to go away because we kicked the crap out of them—okay? I mean, there’s no doubt that DU gave us a huge advantage over their tanks. They lost a lot of tanks.”
Equally cynical was the response of Lieutenant Colonel Michael Sigmon, the deputy surgeon for the US Army’s V Corps. Asked about the health risks of DU, he declared: “There is not really any danger, at least that we know about, for the people of Iraq.” He claimed that children playing with expended DU tank shells would have to eat and practically suffocate on the depleted uranium residue before incurring any health problems.
These comments fly in the face of considerable anecdotal evidence from battlefields where DU munitions have been used—including in Iraq during the first Gulf War, in the Balkans and at the US bombing range on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques. In each case, significant increases in cancer rates, birth deformities and long-term health problems have been recorded.
A leading Iraqi specialist, Dr Salma Haddad, told reporters that several years after the 1991 Gulf War she began to encounter more and more children at Baghdad’s Al Mansur Hospital with an aggressive form of cancer.
Haddad said she was particularly alarmed since the disease—acute myeloblastic leukemia—is closely associated with radiation exposure and her suspicions pointed to DU munitions. She went on to explain that the number of cancer cases admitted to her hospital was five times higher than in 1991.
Vested interests -
But Pentagon officials continue to play down the dangers. Last month, spokesman Colonel David Lapan claimed that recent studies had demonstrated that DU was safe. Since 1990, he told the BBC “there’ve been a number of studies by the UK’s Royal Society and the World Health Organisation, for example—into the health risks of DU, or lack of them. It’s fair to say the 1990 study has been overtaken by them. One thing we have found in these various studies is that there are no long-term effects from DU.”
In fact, the Royal Society report entitled “The health hazards of depleted uranium munitions” says nothing of the sort. The body has been one of the most vociferous in calling for a cleanup of depleted uranium and for more comprehensive tests into its health and environmental effects. It recently called on the British government to carry out health tests on troops returning from Iraq.
The study does state that the known risks of cancer are low and may only be twice as probable for people exposed to DU in the worst-case battlefield scenarios. But it also points to the need for further research. Far from being harmless, the Royal Society report explains: “DU is radioactive and poisonous. Exposure to sufficiently high levels might be expected to increase the incidence of some cancers, notably lung cancer, possibly leukemia and may damage the kidneys.
“The key question is whether exposures to DU on the battlefield are such that the increased incidence of cancer, or the likelihood of kidney damage, are insignificant or are high enough to cause concern. This is a very difficult question to answer given the lack of good quality data on some of the parameters that determine the extent of the exposure or the subsequent risk of disease.”
Royal Society spokesperson Professor Brian Spratt commented last month: “The coalition needs to make clear where and how much depleted uranium was used in the recent conflict in Iraq. Although there are more pressing problems in Iraq ... the coalition needs to acknowledge that depleted uranium is a potential hazard and make inroads into tackling it by being open about where and how much depleted uranium has been deployed.”
But neither Washington nor London has shown the slightest willingness to provide the necessary information, let alone acknowledge the dangers. When the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) asked to be allowed to send a team to Iraq to make an assessment of the environmental and health threats posed to the Iraqi population, the Bush administration refused.
Previous UNEP studies on depleted uranium have indicated that the substance can attack the kidneys if ingested most likely through contaminated water or cause lung cancer if the dust is inhaled.
Further evidence of the dangers of DU munitions has been provided by Major Doug Rokke, a Vietnam and Gulf War combat veteran. Rokke has specialised in hazardous materials and emergency medicine for over 20 years and has campaigned in recent years against the use of DU. He was assigned to clean up depleted uranium after the 1991 Gulf War in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
In a speech in January published by the magazine In These Times, Rokke denounced the use of DU munitions declaring: “We have willfully spread it all over the place. We’ve refused to clean up the mess; we’ve refused to provide medical care; not only to the American ‘friendly fire’ casualties who survived, but also to the DU cleanup teams; and we’ve refused to supply medical care to all the thousands and thousands of other people, including women and children—which makes it an indiscriminate weapon.”
Rokke explained that indiscriminate weapons are banned by international law and that UN has issued several calls for a ban on the use of DU—which the US has rejected. Speaking from his experience in the first Gulf War, he warned: “When you leave all the contamination there, people are going to continue to get sick from just the uranium munitions alone... The army knows it’s a problem, and they just don’t care. They’re going to use DU... When you go to war, you use the best weapon you have, and you will not ever give it up.”
Washington also has other interests at stake. If DU is proven to have a long-term health impact, the US faces charges of criminal negligence and claims for compensation, not only from civilians in the Middle East and the Balkans, but from thousands of US veterans who have suffered debilitating illnesses.
Moreover, any cleanup of DU residue in Iraq and elsewhere would involve huge costs. According to an article in the US publication Newsday last month, the estimated cost of clearing a closed 500-acre military facility—the Jefferson Proving Ground in Indiana—was between $4 billion and $5 billion. The firing range was thought to contain about one fifth the amount of depleted uranium used during the 1991 Gulf War and many times less than the tonnage used this year on Iraq.
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