i first found out about this through a Japanese documentary... i literally had no idea this was going on in Iraq.

Does anyone remember there being any news reports about this, in Britain or America?!?

It's had a significant effect on the population and children through contamination with cancers, and genetic mutations.

(edited out documentary, because it wasn't actually good, and a bit misleading when i watched it)

i'm shocked...

EDIT: that documentary is fairly old, and focuses mainly on effects from the previous iraq war though. Have they been using it in this one? If not, nm...

EDIT2: apparently they did:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium#History

and the consequences:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_ur...population

I don't remember it being in the news but on the other hand I don't think I read the news much at that time. I found this article by the BBC dated 18th March 2003 so it must have been reported on.

This is old but interesting: The Use of Depleted Uranium in the 2003 Iraq War

I thought it was still considered inconclusive? As in, every time someone actually tests for the health effects of DU in a controlled study, they find nothing. The only indication it causes health problems is that cancer rates/birth defects in areas where it was used have spiked. Which is being blamed on DU, but has anyone proved the link? Lots of stuff happened to Iraq at the time of the gulf war. Maybe there was a lot of lead paint in all the buildings that were destroyed etc?

DU isn't some highly radioactive menace. It's less radioactive than the natural uranium they dig out of the ground (which isn't particularly radioactive). It's used as a replacement for lead in armour piercing rounds because it's more dense. The toxicity of it mostly comes from it being a heavy metal. Nothing in that region of the periodic table is particularly good for you. I'm not sure if i'd rather ingest DU or lead, probably best to avoid both if you want to live a long, healthy life.

I wonder how much of this comes from kids being kids? Ie, are they licking the damn things?

Here's an even older article from 2000 http://www.washington-report.org/compone...-iraq.html

I think it's interesting because it portrays an overburdened medical community filled with hopelessness, and that was back in 2000. Also it mentions how a lot of the talk about the role of depleted uranium stems from not-so-objective speculation among the Iraqi population. It doesn't mean that they are mistaken of course, but there's a risk that other causes are given less attention because they don't sound/seem as threatening as "depleted uranium".

Here's a more recent article from last year http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201...173122.htm
Here's the abstract of the scientific report they talk about
http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/con...100/6/1081

The final paragraph of the science daily article is the most interesting,

"The researchers now seek to understand the cause of Iraq's increased rate of child leukemia by conducting a case-control study to compare children who got leukemia with those who did not. That sort of study allows researchers to see if there were differences in exposures between the cases and the controls. Some increased exposures related to child leukemia could include the byproducts of regional petroleum fires and benzene, which comes from gasoline sold by children at the side of the road as a result of disrupted fuel supplies, war-related nerve agents and pesticides, and the widespread use of depleted uranium munitions."

so, it seems that while the researchers think DU is likely to be playing a role they don't think that its necessarily the most major factor in the rise of leukemia cases.

As an aside, I tried getting some statistics of changes in health over the years in Iraq through the WHO site. IT SUCKS. Really, it's just incredibly confusing trying to use WHO's statistics database because it keeps linking you away from the database and has no coherent structure, or at least not one that I could figure out. An altogether fruitless, incredibly frustrating experience.

well, this was linked from the Wikipedia article i linked to earlier:
http://www.afrri.usuhs.mil/www/outreach/...O_2005.pdf

Note that AFRRI is part of the American military:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFRRI

and this: http://www.ehjournal.net/content/4/1/17
on congential malformations.

Depleted uranium isn't highly radioactive, so as long as it remains external to the body, it's unlikely to have much of an impact. But if ingested, it will irradiate surrounding cells.
i don't know how many of the worst effects come from radiation though... Uranium is a toxic metal by itself, and highly poisonous to the body if ingested.

It seems there's plenty of ways it can get ingested as well... inhaling particles with dust, as well as through the skin by touching it.

While there seems to be few if any human studies that could conclusively proove a lot of the suppositions, what evidence there is from animal studies appears to point heavily to that being one probable factor in the significant increases of both Leukemia and genetic mutations.

Although, Benzene does also look highly plausible as a cause: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzene#Health_effects certainly of the leukemia, and possibly for genetic mutations.

The study Surreal pointed to is interesting, because it does talk about an increase in Leukemias in the population (per 100,000) rather than an increase in deaths from Leukemia (which yeah, can be attributed to poor health service), or just population growth leading to more incidences, though they did have to estimate some numbers.

I'm really quite surprised that at least the anti-war media didn't pick up this story and comment on it so much... although they seem to have a bit after the gulf war, during this war they hardly seem to have at all, despite the fact that British and American troops were still using them...

(I started writing/looking up things for this post but then I started writing the one in the 'nuclear crisis' thread in parallel and ran out of time for this one. Part of the point it's making was already made by Icecream in that thread but I'll leave the earlier text as it was)

... Well I just started reading http://www.ehjournal.net/content/4/1/17 from the previous post and I'd just like to point out something.

In its "background" section it says: "As a projectile, a DU penetrator ignites on impact under high temperature; it has a low melting point. Further, DU sharpens as it melts making it easier to pierce heavy armor. As the projectile pierces, it leaves behind its jacket dispersing DU dust into the environment during impact. The quantity of aerosol production is directly proportional to the hardness of the armor. Normally 10–35% and up to 70% of the DU is estimated to be aerosolized on impact or when DU catches fire [2]. Most of the dust particles are reported to be smaller than 5 μm in size, i.e., of a size to be inhaled or ingested by humans [3,4]. They usually remain windborne for an extended time. There is empirical documentation that DU aerosols can travel up to 26 miles and theoretical documentation that they can travel further [5]. Once deposited on the ground the aerosols settle as partially oxidized DU dust. Potential contamination of ground water is another possibility – weathering could mobilize the metal into additional media. "

Couple this with, from http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2003/apr/25....armstrade "Experts have calculated that from all sources between 1,000 and 2,000 tonnes of depleted uranium were used by the coalition in the three-week conflict [at the beginning of the 2003 invasion of Iraq]."

At the very minimum, 100 tons of aerosolized heavy metal were dispersed into Iraqi air during just a short period of the beginning of the war. I don't know how much aerosol formation there is when non-DU shells are used, but uh, it really doesn't sound so good.

Now add, from the environmental health text again "Accumulated knowledge of heavy metal teratology is quite extensive; animal teratogenesis by a variety of heavy metals, and human teratogenesis by, at minimum, lead and mercury, are long established [34]."

So, even if one supposed that radioactivity isn't that much of a deal with DU, there are still some pretty significant risks that need(ed) to be considered.


I haven't been able to find anything on birth defect registries in non-DU-shelled Iraqi cities to complement the Basra registry, like the Environmental Health asks for, which is a shame...

Anyway, I'll finish the post with this quote - the guy speaking is a researcher in a team that carried out a study cited as one of the main reasons it is thought that DU is not that much to worry about - which I find quite ironic and harrowing:

"The findings might be reassuring, but the DU issue will not be laid to rest. UNEP is organizing a sampling mission in Sarajevo next month, where 3 tons of DU was dropped during the Balkans war, and Iraqi officials have called for investigations into DU on their territory. Nevertheless, maintains Testa, “for me this is a false problem. We could be spending money on more urgent problems”—toxic solvents, heavy metals, and organic pollutants, to name a few, he says. "
(New Findings Allay Concerns Over Depleted Uranium, Richard Stone; Science 13 September 2002)

wow... just... wow. who is that guy?!? is he even a scientist...?

well, there are birth defect registers for various places in Iran though, although they seem to concentrate on different ethnic groups, but there isn't much overall variation it seems.
Direct comparisons are more difficult to find, but here's one for Gorgon in North Iran, that concentrates on NTDs:
http://www.ijph.ir/pdfs/15.pdf
the rate between 1998 and 2005 was 2.54 per 1000, as opposed to the study in Diwiniah, which gave 8.4 per 1000 in the year 2000.

also, here's a report that compares Gorgon to other regions in Iran, and other countries: http://www.emro.who.int/publications/emh...icle21.htm

but, the total incidence only seems higher in Iraq right at the end, and tbh i find it difficult trying to compare the tables of specific problems as they're presented so differently.
Again, it looks like Iraq's history of recording these kinds of things wasn't so good. I'd be very interested to see what more recent numbers look like.
If these numbers: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec...fects-iraq are anywhere near correct or representative, there's big problems... (though it's such a small study).

So, i was wondering if the allies have been using Depleted Uranium weapons in Libya...
once again, something i couldn't find much detail on in any of the major news sources. What i could find was a record of David Cameron saying they definately would not use them, which contradicts what the MoD has to say about it... that they have no problem using them... they do confirm that they haven't used them in Libya though.
http://counterfire.org/index.php/news/ne...s-in-libya

But, the USA do indeed appear to have been using them:
http://uwnetwork.wordpress.com/2011/03/3...-in-libya/
the only confirmed reports are on boats, but there's plenty of speculation from other sources. I hope they haven't...

Why is depleted uranium still being used, given that DU:

...when fired off in munitions, creates an aerosol of carcinogenic and mutagenic nanoparticles.
...debilitates or kills when ingested/inhaled (there being no safe exposure limit).
...exposure to unfired DU weapons can contaminate.
...renders useless the protective gear issued by the U.S. military.
...infects spouses/mothers through body fluid transfer and family members through contact with contaminated objects.
...leads to horrible birth defects in babies which will continue for generation upon generation.
...has a half life of 4.5 billion years, roughly the same time span as the age of our solar system.
...travels globally on the winds and in a place like Iraq, with its desert terrain and seasonal winds, will continuously re-contaminate the population in perpetuity(birth defects are expected to worsen over time) as the DU particles disseminate worldwide.
...cannot be cleaned up and renders the soil, water, and food unusable.
...has no known treatment for its contamination.

The answer to that question is that it's cheap and readily available.

Again, the short-sightedness and greed of the MIC, the financiers, and their handmaidens in the government overlook DU's catastrophic, long-term environmental costs as well as its irreparable damage to present and future generations. The continued use of DU means we are guilty of condemning the people in these war zones, and their unborn children, to a horrific future. It also means we are are contaminating the human gene pool for eternity. It's a permanent global contamination for which there is no cure. On top of all this insanity, we're using DU in wars that are essentially over control of resources(oil) and that are waged against Middle East dictators whose weapons caches we, the West, helped stockpile through arms sales.

"For these [DU]weapons have released deadly, carcinogenic and mutagenic, radioactive particles in such abundance that-whipped up by sandstorms and carried on trade winds - there is no corner of the globe they cannot penetrate-including Britain. For the wind has no boundaries and time is on their side: the radioactivity persists for over 4,500,000,000 years and can cause cancer, leukemia, brain damage, kidney failure, and extreme birth defects - killing millions of every age for centuries to come." - Dr. Chris Busby
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?c...va&aid=159

And it appears that the only country in the world that has banned the specific use of depleted uranium has acquiesced with its use by other countries.

A series of leaked U.S. cables has Belgium’s government assuring the U.S. that the Belgium's domestic ban on depleted uranium weapons would not apply to US shipments through Antwerp:
http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/en/docs/155.pdf

And no doubt DU has been used in Libya:
http://www.news24.pk/detail.php?nid=1562

The documentary URANIO 238 – The Pentagon´s Dirty Pool, produced by Pablo Ortega, won the prize for best short documentary in the Uranium Film Festival, which took place May 22 to 28 in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. URANIO 238 had also won best documentary in the Costa Rican Movie and Video Festival in 2009.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Depleted Uranium Weapon Use Persists, Despite Deadly Side Effects
August 26, 2011
H. Patricia Hynes, Truthout: “By 2003, reports were surfacing of cancer clusters and birth disorders in conflict areas of the Balkans and Iraq, raising fears about human exposure to depleted uranium (DU) and its fate and transport in war environments. Gulf War Syndrome, a catchall for mysterious and disabling symptoms and conditions suffered by nearly 40 percent of 540,000 veterans of the three-week ground war (which killed fewer than 200 US soldiers), remained an unyielding conundrum.”
http://masteradrian.wordpress.com/2011/0...e-effects/

Beyond Treason: The True Story of Depleted Uranium

Are there actually any serious medical studies which indicate that DU is dangerous?

Not counting getting a tank round to the face either.

And wouldn't US military personal and cities near big military bases where these weapons are used every day show an increased rate of cancer if DU was dangerous?

Why there has been no official study on the health and environmental effects of DU:

Depleted Uranium | PSR
http://www.psr.org/nuclear-weapons/deple...anium.html

The 1991 Persian Gulf War saw the use of advanced U.S. weaponry that devastated targets in Iraq while allowing the coalition forces to declare victory with limited military losses. Numerous developments in technology contributed to U.S. General Norman Schwarzkopf’s success, including the use of depleted uranium (DU). The U.S. military claims that DU used by the coalition forces secured a significant advantage over the Iraqi military. This technology has since been used in Kosovo, in Afghanistan, and again in Iraq in 2003.

Four years following the victory of the first Gulf War, the acclaim of DU evolved into controversy as thousands of U.S. and coalition forces began suffering from an array of unexplained ailments, such as impaired cognition, fatigue, muscle ache, sleep disorders, and memory loss. Critics of DU attributed the mysterious symptoms, collectively known as the Gulf War Syndrome, to the radioactivity and chemical toxicity of depleted uranium.

PSR[Physicians for Social Responsibility] has long argued that DU should not be used by the military until sufficient health and environmental studies on the use of Depleted Uranium. have been done to prove that it can be used safely by U.S. service personnel. We also call for clean-up of affected sites, both training ranges in the United States, and battlefields from Bosnia to Afghanistan, via Iraq, where DU has been used extensively.

Here PSR provides resources to learn about DU and its affects; to take action on pending legislation in Congress and to conduct follow-up research to learn about the issue in depth. PSR staff and physicians have worked to produce our new issue brief, an excellent summary of the issues surrounding the use of DU by the military, which you can read here.



Researcher Corner
http://www.psr.org/nuclear-weapons/deple...anium.html

Congressman Jim McDermott: “If Depleted Uranium is Safe, Let Them Prove It” - PSR worked with Congressman Jim McDermott to push for a study on the potential medical consequences of Depleted Uranium.

Congressional Legislation on Depleted Uranium: H R 2410 - Legislation that came as a result of work from PSR and our activists putting pressure for answers on Depleted Uranium.

World Health Organization (WHO): Depleted Uranium

Worchester Polytechnic Institute: Depleted Uranium Health Effects

Argonne National Laboratory for the DOE Office of Environmental Management: Depleted Uranium Effects

Global Security: Depleted Uranium

DU Report (PDF) - Depleted Uranium Report published by PSR to support the national push for answers on DU before expanding its use in ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If you don't have any actual evidence that DU is dangerous, like an actual medical study, please go spam some other forum.

Big bonus points if the study is in Japanese. Because that's what we do here.

You miss the point entirely. The reason there are yet no 'official' studies is because major Western countries have a vested interest in using DU for munitions in war. Sort of like the situation in Japan where the nuclear industry is in bed with the government - no real oversight, total corruption.

Just because you don't agree with my posts doesn't mean you can call it 'spam'. DU is a serious problem.

xraymike79...

IceCream Wrote:well, this was linked from the Wikipedia article i linked to earlier:
http://www.afrri.usuhs.mil/www/outreach/...O_2005.pdf

Note that AFRRI is part of the American military:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFRRI

and this: http://www.ehjournal.net/content/4/1/17
on congential malformations.

A study backed up by the AFRRI seems pretty 'official' to me, and there are other studies referred to in the Environmental Health article. If you signed up just to post in this thread, I think it would have been nice of you to at least look up what we had already linked to and discussed.

Of course, this is a proper answer to "Are there actually any serious medical studies which indicate that DU is dangerous?" too, kitakitsune. The AFRRI study definitely indicates that depleted uranium has detrimental effects on human cells in some way, even if it's not clear how it happens. One might even think that the question "is heavy metal x dangerous?" is an odd one, because if it's in a high enough quantity that gets to the wrong places, of course it will be dangerous. If the info on how much of the depleted uranium is aerosolized during battles is correct, it seems to be at the least irresponsible to say that it's entirely safe and then use it in the massive quantities it seems to have been used in by armies (especially the American army).

xraymike79: While we strayed from this a few times, we tried to link as directly to the original source as possible through most of this thread... While documentaries, activists' news sites etc. can be good at grabbing people's attention, they often muddle the information quite a bit, instead focusing on their own 'spin' of stories. Considering what had already been posted and the nature of it, I don't think your posts contributed that much, sorry. Thanks for trying, though.

About Christopher Busby, who wrote one of the articles you linked: I didn't say anything earlier when Icecream linked a couple of his articles because they didn't go thaaat far, but the one you linked made me want to point out that he's apparently (found this through wikipedia)a guy who likes controversy and being sensational. http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/03/28/d...r-experts/
"Stupid physicists? Make no mistake, physicists are stupid. They make themselves stupid by a kind of religious belief in mathematical modelling. The old Bertie Russell logical positivist trap. And whilst this may be appropriate for examining the stresses in metals, or looking at the Universe (note that they seem to have lost 90% of the matter in the Universe, so-called “dark matter”) it is not appropriate for, and is even scarily incorrect when, examining stresses in humans or other lifeforms."
This doesn't sound like anything remotely close to constructive, it's more akin to a forum troll. That doesn't mean he can't do research at all and I think what Icecream linked was at an acceptable level, but he likes exaggerating and should be taken with a good chunk of salt.

Of course there have been studies, but none that the military will 'officially' recognize publicly. The U.S. military has done studies and they know what the deleterious effects of DU are. I would refer you to Dr. Doug Rokke, former head of the Pentagon's Depleted Uranium Project, who was featured in some of the videos I posted.

Conspiracy to hide damaging facts isn't muddling the facts. It is what it is--- corruption.

The linked study by the AFRRI, which you mentioned again, is cursory and not a long-term study on the troops/civilian population.

... There's really nothing I can say other than please read what others have written carefully.

@kitakitsune: yes, there are. Please actually read the thread.

@xraymike:

The US Military funded the study quoted above, and from what i've read, it was one of a number of studies they did to try to establish the risk posed from DU.

The problem with long term studies on civilians and populations is that it can only show correlations. There are many factors that can cause disease in a war time population. So, in a way, the studies done that have been linked above are much more effective in showing that DU can be harmful to health.

i don't think there's any conspiracy here, it's just that the militaries think that the use of these weapons give them too much of a benefit over their opponents to give them up. Obviously, i agree that that's the wrong decision.

I also found many smaller news agencies conjecturing about the use of DU in Libya by American troops. But i think it's much better to post more concrete things, so we don't get bogged down by conspiracy theorys in this thread. I think that's important, because conspiracy theories end up with people rolling their eyes and passing over the real issues. It's also why i deleted the documentary from my original post.

@Surreal: Yeah, i also have my doubts about Chris Busby... that's why i made that "edit" post in the nuclear situation thread. But, since i could find very little else on the link between this subject and the fukushima incident, i thought it could be worth posting anyway. Unfortunately, i don't understand enough to know whether the criticism given under the "summary" link i posted is valid or not. I was hoping someone with more knowledge would comment, but...

on Fukushima:
https://www4.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-c...513-e.html

i just found this. So, it seems that tepco are saying that these Uranium levels are normal ones... good!!! (i don't understand these numbers for myself...)

although, http://onihutari.blog60.fc2.com/blog-entry-44.html

evidence seems somewhat (or, completely) contradictory...

man, i'm confused.

IceCream said:
"i don't think there's any conspiracy here, it's just that the militaries think that the use of these weapons give them too much of a benefit over their opponents to give them up. Obviously, i agree that that's the wrong decision."

Yes, the wrong decision. If you watch the videos I posted, there is nothing 'conspiratorial'(i.e.'tin foil hat'), about them. One is also from the Physicians for Social Responsibility. They certainly helped me understand the situation. "Willful neglect' would be the more politically correct term to use, I suppose. Depleted Uranium is a cheap, readily available, effective weapon material that the military is loathe to give up, despite its toxicity.

Can anyone give the name of a single person who is known to be suffering from detrimental health effects caused by DU munitions?

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs257/en/

@kitakitsune: um, what? well, i don't know anyone personally. But why don't you read the studies referenced above?
EDIT: here's a person http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/3456433.stm who according to the British Courts, suffered from depleted uranium poisoning. Is that what you meant?

xraymike79 Wrote:IceCream said:
"i don't think there's any conspiracy here, it's just that the militaries think that the use of these weapons give them too much of a benefit over their opponents to give them up. Obviously, i agree that that's the wrong decision."

Yes, the wrong decision. If you watch the videos I posted, there is nothing 'conspiratorial'(i.e.'tin foil hat'), about them. One is also from the Physicians for Social Responsibility. They certainly helped me understand the situation. "Willful neglect' would be the more politically correct term to use, I suppose. Depleted Uranium is a cheap, readily available, effective weapon material that the military is loathe to give up, despite its toxicity.

ah, sorry, i guess i misread your post. i will watch the videos, i haven't had time yet...

IceCream Wrote:on Fukushima:
https://www4.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-c...513-e.html

i just found this. So, it seems that tepco are saying that these Uranium levels are normal ones... good!!! (i don't understand these numbers for myself...)

Hooray!

IceCream Wrote:although, http://onihutari.blog60.fc2.com/blog-entry-44.html
evidence seems somewhat (or, completely) contradictory...
man, i'm confused.

I'm not sure how relevant that is though as that blog entry is dated 29th April.

pudding cat Wrote:

IceCream Wrote:on Fukushima:
https://www4.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-c...513-e.html

i just found this. So, it seems that tepco are saying that these Uranium levels are normal ones... good!!! (i don't understand these numbers for myself...)

Hooray!

IceCream Wrote:although, http://onihutari.blog60.fc2.com/blog-entry-44.html
evidence seems somewhat (or, completely) contradictory...
man, i'm confused.

I'm not sure how relevant that is though as that blog entry is dated 29th April.

hmm, well, like i said, i don't understand the numbers. But the below one is numbers for the air over the pacific just after the accident, while the first one is the soil around fukushima. i don't really understand why the TEPCO one is at normal levels while the other is clearly much higher though. I guess it means that very few particles settled in the dust in Fukushima, which is great!! but i wonder where it did settle then? Or did it all disperse??

ah, i wish i understood this subject properly...