Depleated Uranium

[Tecknowledgy]

Lowry unrealistic about depleted uranium

By ROGER LONGLEY
GUEST COLUMNIST

The Jan. 28 column by Rich Lowry on the hazards of depleted uranium tops my list for disinformation ("Depleted uranium effective but not politically incorrect"). He is in the ballpark when he says 300 tons of depleted uranium was used in the first Gulf War, but he is confusing the issue, and perhaps himself, when he says DU is depleted.

Most of the radiation in natural uranium comes from Uranium 238 (U-238). What largely remains in DU is U-238, its decay products and other contaminants from irradiation of uranium. Gamma radiation from this mix can be dangerous when a large quantity of DU is finely divided, even without ingesting or inhaling it.

It is highly misleading to say that living next to a ton of U-238 is harmless because the issue is not the hazard of DU as a metal but its effect as a gaseous, dispersed oxidized material after it has been used as an armor piercing weapon. DU burns as it passes through armor.

Lowry further confuses the issue when he says no adverse health effects have been found for DU. There have been no studies where DU has been used as a weapon so this statement is meaningless.

A decaying U-238 atom presents the same danger as a decaying Plutonium 239 (Pu-239) atom but U-238 is considered harmless because it decays about 200,000 times slower than Pu-239. Where Pu-239 is dangerous if you ingest a fraction of a millionth of a gram, you have to consume about 0.025 grams of U-238 to produce the same hazard.

Possibly 100 tons of the 300 tons of DU used in Iraq were converted on impact into gaseous uranium oxide or a finely divided uranium powder. Both the oxide and the powder will settle out on the ground locally or drift in the wind. In terms of grams, this is 100,000,000 grams, enough to be harmful to hundreds of millions of people if it is ingested.

Inhalation of U-238 into your lungs is much more serious than ingestion. Inhalation is considered dangerous if the air concentration of U-238 is greater than a millionth of a gram per cubic meter. If 100 million grams of U-238 oxide and finely divided U-238 particles were spread out on the ground and stirred into the air up to a height of 1 meter, it would cover more than 10 million square miles at this concentration.

In fact DU is not spread that far in Iraq and exists locally in much higher, more dangerous concentrations. Even today one can measure gamma radiation levels up to 3.5 millirad/hour around the tanks on the "Highway of Death," a separate hazard from inhaling or ingesting DU.

Defenders of DU like to say uranium is everywhere, that we all have a little uranium in us. This is true. There is a lot of uranium in the ocean, but you would have to drink about 25 tons of seawater before you would need to worry. If you dug up all the dirt in your back yard, it's doubtful you would be able to detect any uranium.

The issue with DU as a weapon is all about concentration. We should understand from such places as Hanford, it is the localized concentration of radioactive materials that presents problems. Even though DU is weakly radioactive, its use as a weapon in multi-ton quantities raises the level of radioactivity in the area of use to dangerous levels.

This use of DU in armor-piercing ammunition effectively puts us in the same class as someone who would use a "dirty" bomb to contaminate an area with radioactivity. The difference is that we do it, and have done it, on a much grander scale than a terrorist could possibly realize.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/107382_uranium06.shtml

[HexRei]

Nuclear Genocide?

Piercing through the depleted uranium myths

By Ronald Bailey

"The United States has conducted two nuclear wars. The first is against Japan in 1945, the second in Kuwait and Iraq in 1991." So declares activist Helen Caldicott in a half-page ad placed by a Japanese anti-nuclear group in the March 24 New York Times. If you didn't hear about the Persian Gulf Hiroshima, it's because she's actually referring to depleted uranium (DU) munitions. Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark says that these "are an unacceptable threat to life, a violation of international law and an assault on human dignity." Using them results in a "deterioration of genetic health" and "genocide," declares anti-nuke activist Tim Judson. The Green Party claims that they are "the likely cause of numerous health problems in thousands of Gulf War veterans and their families, including cancer, leukemia, tumors, and high rates of birth defects because of genetic damage."

DU is 1.7 times denser than lead, and munitions encased in it are self-sharpening, enabling them to drill 25 percent further through armor. (Armor-piercing tungsten alloy munitions, by contrast, blunt and mushroom when they hit.) This self-sharpening process produces DU dust, most of which falls to the ground within 50 yards of its impact.

Such weapons are used most frequently against enemy tanks. DU is also used to clad many U.S. armored vehicles, thus making them largely impenetrable to conventional anti-tank munitions. It is also used for counterweights in airplanes to help keep them level, and as radiation shielding to protect health care workers from exposure to medical X-rays.

DU is a by-product—activists would say a waste product—of the process of separating the highly fissionable U-235 isotope out of uranium to produce fuel for nuclear reactors. It is called "depleted" because most of the lighter uranium isotopes, U-234 and U-235, are removed from natural uranium, leaving behind uranium consisting of 99.8 percent of U-238. The result is 40 percent less radioactive than natural uranium.

Is it as dangerous as Caldicott and Clark claim? A Department of Defense-sponsored review of the scientific literature by the RAND think tank concluded that "there are no peer reviewed published reports of detectable increases of cancer or other negative health effects from radiation exposure to inhaled or ingested natural uranium at levels far exceeding those likely in the Gulf." One need not be a conspiracy theorist to believe that the Defense Department's analysis and reporting on the substance's health and environmental consequences might be biased. But many independent organizations and scientists find little to worry about either.

What happens to DU if someone eats it? According to a European Union study released in 2001, "most of the ingested DU (between 98% and 99.8%, depending on the solubility of the uranium compound) will be rapidly eliminated in the faeces." The vast majority of any remaining uranium will be "rapidly cleared from the blood" in a few weeks. Similarly, the majority of inhaled DU dust will also be cleared via the bloodstream and kidneys. The EU report concluded that "exposure to DU could not produce any detectable health effects under realistic assumptions of the doses that would be received."

That said, DU is a heavy metal; and like lead, nickel, and other heavy metals, it is chemically toxic when consumed in large quantities, especially harming the kidneys. However, studies looking at likely exposures to DU during and after battles have found that its effects on the kidneys of soldiers and civilians are mild and transient.

Another 2001 report to the European Parliament compared exposures to DU to those experienced by uranium miners and concluded, "The fact that there is no evidence of an association between exposures—sometimes high and lasting since the beginning of the uranium industry—and health damages such as bone cancer, lymphatic or other forms of leukemia shows that these diseases as a consequence of an uranium exposure are either not present or very exceptional."

The World Health Organization agrees that DU is not a great health risk. Its 2003 fact sheet on the topic declares that "because DU is only weakly radioactive, very large amounts of dust (on the order of grams) would have to be inhaled for the additional risk of lung cancer to be detectable in an exposed group. Risks for other radiation-induced cancers, including leukaemia, are considered to be very much lower than for lung cancer." Another WHO report found, "The radiological hazard is likely to be very small. No increase of leukemia or other cancers has been established following exposure to uranium or DU."

What about those military reports? Dan Fahey, a former naval officer who served in the first Gulf War and is a long-time anti-DU activist, asserts that Defense Department spokespeople "have lied about the health of US Gulf War veterans exposed to DU and exaggerated the importance of DU rounds." What was the alleged lie? The Pentagon has said that no veterans in a small follow-up study of Gulf War soldiers who had been exposed to DU have contracted cancer. Fahey cites a memo that states that one veteran who had been recently added to the study has had lymphatic cancer. Fahey does acknowledge that "it is possible that this veteran's cancer is not linked to his confirmed exposure to DU."

Fahey thinks the Pentagon exaggerates the importance of DU munitions and points out that DU rounds probably took out only one-seventh of the Iraqi tanks destroyed during the first Gulf War. But Fahey also admits that there is very little evidence that DU is severely toxic. He also refutes other activists' alarmist claims that civilians have been severely harmed by depleted uranium. "There are no credible studies linking exposure to DU with any cancers or illnesses among people in Iraq, the Balkans, or Afghanistan," he declares.

If DU is not notably harmful to human health or the environment, why the fierce opposition to it? A lot of it has to do with conventional anti-nuclear activism: Some people automatically object to anything that hints of nuclear radiation. Second, some of the opposition is the result of a successful Iraqi disinformation campaign claiming that exposure to DU had caused thousands of cancers and birth defects to innocent civilians. When the WHO offered to investigate the claims, Iraqi officials flatly refused the offer. Other than trying to gain international sympathy, Pentagon officials argue that one of the real aims of the Iraqi campaign was to get DU munitions outlawed internationally so they would not have to face them again.

In addition, many U.S. veterans who returned from the Gulf War believe that they are suffering from "Gulf War Syndrome," a constellation of disparate medical problems that they think can be traced to their service in that war. One suggested explanation for their problems might be exposure to DU dust. But as we've seen, no credible studies show that exposure to DU is likely to be causing their problems.

Finally, there is always a claque of activists who simply will pick up any stick with which to beat and demonize the United States. For them, the myth of severe DU toxicity is just another handy stick.

http://www.reason.com/rb/rb032603.shtml

[Ram]

I don't believe depleted uranium is significantly radioactive.

I do believe if we are so paranoid about lead-based paint (and there is indeed a ton of research on this, leading to all the warnings you see when you buy a house that has lead-based pain in it), then we should be equally, if not more, paranoid about depleted uranium. The problem here in general is with heavy metals, not with radioactivity.

--Ram