Hello Folks,

It looks like Doug Rokke and others raising the red flag on DU have been
right all along, and the UK's top researchers agree.

The Pentagon Staff and national labs types that support these falsehoods
are the real problem.

They have not even gotten into the metal oxides and lymph node effects
setting up long term immune system cytokine actvation, combined with other
synergisms.

News item follows-----
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When the dust settles

Depleted uranium may be far more dangerous than previously thought - and we
could be dealing with the fallout for many generations to come. Ian Sample
and Nic Fleming report.

Thursday April 17, 2003
The Guardian

The change in wording seems innocuous at first. During the 1991 Gulf war, US
army guidelines recommended surgeons do their best to remove fragments of
depleted uranium (DU) shrapnel from soldiers struck by flying chunks of metal
from armour-piercing shells. In practice, that meant smaller bits of shrapnel
were rarely removed. Getting those out just caused more damage to surrounding
muscle and other tissue. Today, the guidelines are different: surgeons should
be "aggressive" in removing any fragments of depleted uranium.
The small change betrays a big leap in understanding the threat posed by
depleted uranium. Evidence is building that DU causes more genetic damage
than scientists suspected - even at levels deemed so low as to be non-toxic.

Depleted uranium shells are designed to be lethal: the metal is so dense it
can crash through the heavy armour of a modern battle tank. But those who
escape the intended effect face other risks. When the depleted uranium rod
inside an armour-piercing shell disintegrates, it showers toxic and weakly
radioactive dust and fragments over a wide area.

It is not just soldiers who risk exposure. In Iraq, land where people once
lived, and will doubtless return to, is now littered with the stuff. In 1991,
armour-piercing shells containing around 340 tonnes of DU were fired at
targets too tough to take out with standard shells. Hundreds more tonnes have
been added to that during the past four weeks. People returning to places
where the shells were used breathe in the dust as it is churned up by wind
and traffic. The metal can also seep into water supplies, contaminating them
for years.

Alexandra Miller at the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute in
Bethesda, Maryland, is due to complete an investigation into DU for the US
department of defence next year. Already she has some insight into the damage
it can do. Last year she showed that depleted uranium from pellets implanted
in rats dispersed all over the animals' bodies, turning up in bones, muscles,
kidneys and liver. Rats breeding six months later had fewer offspring than
normal.

Her latest study reveals something even more unusual. When human bone cells
are exposed to DU, some suffer immediate genetic damage. The type of damage
varies but often fragments break off chromosomes, the strings of genes in
almost every cell, and form tiny rings of genetic material. This much was
expected. But as other cells evidently undamaged by the depleted uranium
started to divide, creating new cells, Miller noticed the genes in some of
these new cells were damaged. More than a month after the DU was removed, new
cells were forming with broken chromosomes or other genetic damage. The DU
was having a delayed effect.

More intriguing still is Miller's latest suspicion that DU punches above its
weight in terms of the damage it does to genes. She knew that depleted
uranium could damage genes not only by emitting radiation, but by its
chemical make up - like nickel, it can switch on cancer genes by its sheer
toxicity. But she found that tiny amounts of DU, too small to be toxic and
only mildly radioactive, cause more genetic damage in cells than either the
toxicity or radiation could explain. Her latest results suggest that the
toxicity and radioactivity of DU reinforce one another, causing more damage
than the two just added together. It's no small difference either. "You can
get more than an eight-fold greater effect than you'd expect," she says. In
other words, more than eight times as many cells suffer genetic damage than
predicted. Without taking the effect into account, the health risk of DU
could be grossly underestimated.

"People have always assumed low doses are not much of a problem, but they
can cause more damage than people think," says Miller. It may be some time
before the risk of DU is revised though. "None of these studies has yet
impacted on the regulations."

Opinion among scientists is divided about the dangers of the genetic damage
caused by DU. "There's a debate in the field. It looks like DNA damage in
cells will make them weaker and more susceptible to becoming cancerous. But
some say this could just be the cells adapting to the radiation," says
Miller.

One person who is convinced DU-induced genetic damage causes real health
problems is Albrecht Schott, a biochemist who recently retired from the Free
University of Berlin. The day before the start of this Gulf war, he published
a study carried out with scientists at the University of Bremen. The study,
the first of its kind, looked at genetic damage in the white blood cells of
16 former soldiers who believed they had been exposed to DU in the 1991 Gulf
war or in the Balkans. They found that damage to chromosomes in the white
blood cells was on average five-and-a-half times higher in the veterans than
the rest of the population.

Kenny Duncan, one of the soldiers tested, was 21 when he served with the
Royal Corps of Transport, helping to shift Iraqi tanks destroyed by DU shells
in the 1991 Gulf war. He believes his exposure to DU has left his family with
a painful legacy. His eight-year-old son suffers constant headaches and has
deformed ears and toes. His two other children also have deformed toes and
both suffer bowel and bladder problems. One is also partially deaf.

The reason is likely to be down to DU, says Schott. "The high levels of
genetic damage we observed do not occur naturally. I believe alpha radiation
from DU to be the cause of these chromosome aberrations.

"Uranium molecules in the blood can travel to every part of the body,
including the areas where sperm and eggs are. This, and the presence of
chromosome aberrations, increases the probability of cancer and other genetic
conditions significantly. They lead to a higher probability of genetic damage
in the person's babies and then damage can be passed on to the children's
children."

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence dismisses the study. "We consider
the tests undertaken in Germany neither well thought out nor scientifically
sound," he says.

Miller also has doubts about the Bremen study. The soldiers suspected they
had been exposed to DU, but how could they be sure? "How do they know they
weren't exposed to something else, like weapons cleaning fluid?" she asks.

Virginia Murray who heads the chemical incident response service at Guy's
hospital, London, and contributed to the Royal Society's investi gation into
DU last year says the effects of DU on people can only be assessed accurately
if the amount they were exposed to is known precisely. The society's report
recommended that in any future conflict when DU was used, levels of uranium
should be regularly monitored in soldiers exposed to the metal and their
kidney function checked to ensure it is not impaired.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence says soldiers who believe they
have been exposed to DU in Iraq can have their urine tested on their return.
If they test positive for DU, they can have follow-up checks on their
kidneys.

Next week, the United Nations environment programme will publish a study
into the environmental dangers posed by the war on Iraq, including those from
DU. Pekka Haavisto, chair of Unep's Iraq task force said scientists would
take soil, water and air samples and test them for traces of DU. "Based on
previous experience, we have seen that in targeted areas, this type of
ammunition poses possible environmental and health risks. We found that DU
can corrode in the soil and exist for a long time in the dust." Without a
clean up, and the Pentagon says they have no plans for one, people returning
to DU hotspots might find themselves unwitting volunteers in testing just
what effects depleted uranium really has.



Further reading

The health hazards of depleted uranium munitions: Part 1, Royal Society, May
2001 ISBN: 0854033540

The health hazards of depleted uranium munitions: Part 2, Royal Society
March 2002 ISBN: 0854035745

Royal Society report http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/policy/cur_du.htm

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