Kenhunt wrote:
<quoted text>
At extreme temperatures, DU gives off Alpha particles which have to be ingested or inhaled in rather large quantities to do harm;
False. Depleted uranium emits alpha particles as part of its decay process ALL THE TIME. Temperatures don't have to be extreme. Uranium will ignite on impact with a hard target (it is "pyrophoric"), and the resulting radioactive ash and dust is the most dangerous because it can be inhaled and ingested, where it lodges in soft tissue. Human skin is a pretty good shield against relatively large, slow alpha radiation. Lung tissue, etc., is not. It only takes one well-placed alpha particle to break up DNA. If you have a grain of constant alpha particle emitters lodged in your lung tissue, the tissue will continue to be bombarded until all the uranium has decayed into daughter products... which in this case also give off ionizing radiation...
Kenhunt wrote:
DU does not emit radiation in the sense of a nuclear device.
... which is why I used the term "radiological." But like any "weapon of mass destruction," DU is indiscriminate. It affects combatants ON BOTH SIDES (see Gulf War Syndrome among U.S. troops) as well as civilians as well as fauna in general.
Kenhunt wrote:
DU is less radio active than uranium found in the soil.
Depleted uranium (U238) is nearly identical to what is found naturally (mostly U238 with a very small amount of U235), EXCEPT that DU is often contaminated with extremely radioactive trace elements like plutonium that do not exist naturally. Also, it is unlikely that you will EVER find concentrations of uranium naturally to match the concentrations of DU in a war zone.
Kenhunt wrote:
If you want to know what drives up cancer rates in places like Bosnia, look to the environmental devastation left by the Soviets!
You could also test urine and tissue samples from affected people to find elevated levels of uranium... and compare these levels to people in other former Soviet-sphere nations that haven't been exposed to DU. You could also look at elevated rates of birth defects, spontaneous miscarriages, cancers, and other epidemiological data....
Kenhunt wrote:
DU is not used in bombs, but it is used in tank rounds, not as an explosive but as a long rod penetrator, and in the A-10s guns. No US tanks have deployed to Afghanistan using DU (as far as I know, no tanks were used there), as there were no tanks to engage there, and the A-10 was rarely used. So guess who dirtied up Afghanistan's environment, your old pals, the Soviets/Russia.
Apaches and Bradley vehicles also use DU munitions. Researchers in Afghanistan have found uranium in urine samples that are between 300% to 2000% above normal levels. These correlate with spikes in various cancers, birth defects, etc.
Contamination is much more serious in Iraq, and the rate of illness/death from exposure to DU is considerably higher there.
Kenhunt wrote:
As for unexploded ordnance, it can be found all over this globe, left over from any number of terrible wars dating back to the first World War and earlier. Yes, US ordnance is part of that. But so is ordnance from the Soviets, Germans, French, Chinese, Japanese, and other countries.
Yes, but it was the U.S. that has made the MOST use by far of cluster bombs, and a significant percentage of bomblets do not explode on impact, effectively creating minefields that are indiscriminately lethal for decades. In Laos, the U.S. dropped more ordnance on this tiny country than was dropped in all of World War II. The London Guardian reported that Laos was hit by an average of one B-52 bombload every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, between 1964 and 1973.
(Recall that Laos was a 'secret war', relatively unknown to the American people at the time... or even now).
Virgo
