Depleted Uranium is used in shells for its armor penetration and destructive power. When a round of Depleted Uranium hits a target up to 70% of the round can burn up during impact and penetration. This creates a firestorm of Depleted Uranium oxide particles of extremely fine ceramic uranium dust (some finer than military gas mask filters) that is spread by the wind, inhaled and absorbed into the human and animal bodies and is taken up by plants and animals, becoming part of the food chain. According to the United Nations Environmental Program any portion of the round leftover in the soil can can pollute the environment and create up to a hundredfold increase in uranium levels in ground water. The Journal of Environmental Radioactivity reported, Children playing with soil may be identified as the critical population group, with inhalation and/or ingestion of contaminated soil as the critical pathway. In May-June 2003 issue of E: The Environmental Magazine Ed Ericson wrote "the Pentagon has cashiered or attempted to discredit its own experts, ignored their advice, impeached scientific research into DUs health effects and assembled a disinformation campaign to confuse the isssue. Soldiers in the US and Brittan who handle Depleted Uranium ammunition are required by military regulations to wear gloves and masks. DU is certainly a weapon of mass destruction (WMD).

Some 300 tons of Depleted Uranium were used by coalition forces in southern Iraq in 1991. Ten years after the war, DU shell holes are still 1,000 times more radioactive than the normal level of background radiation and the areas around the shell holes are still 100 times more radioactive. Experts say that the fine uranium dust produced by the shells has spread by the wind, contaminating large areas of the surrounding region, including the city of Basra, which is 200 kilometres away from sites where large numbers of DU shells were fired.

Between 1,000 and 3,000 tons of Depleted Uranium was used during the three-week war in Iraq in 2003 with a considerable part of it used in the cities. There was wholesale bombardment of targets inside densely-populated areas. Journalist Scott Peterson from the Christian Science Monitor used a simple Geiger counter to measure levels that at times reached 1,900 times the normal background rate in parts of Baghdad in May 2003. The city has a population of six million. It took 2 to 4 years for the rise in cancers in Iraq to become evident after Gulf War 1. By the end of the decade there will be an explosion of cancers in the Iraqi population with children, who play in the dirt, making up a significant number of those to die of cancer.

One in four of the American personnel who fought in Gulf War 1, more than 150,000 soldiers, are suffering a range of medical disorders including lymphomas, leukemia, and lung, brain, gastrointestinal, bone and liver cancers collectively described as "Gulf War Syndrome". We have killed more of our own people than they have.

These numbers will be repeated among those returning home from the current Iraqi war. Health costs from Depleted Uranium wil be a considerable expense to the government if the properly take care of the vets.

Depleted Uranium Babies and Links for Research and Information

SPECIAL REPORT

<<<<<>>>>>

THE TINY VICTIMS OF DESERT STORM

<<<<<>>>>>

DENNIS KYNE (click)

GULF WAR VETS

BALKANS, GULF WAR VETS

DEPLETED URANIUM BURNING, AN ETERNAL MEDICAL DISASTER

In Volume 2 of the Encyclopaedia of Occupational Health, under uranium alloys and compounds, page 2238, it reads:

"Uranium poisoning is characterized by generalized health impairment. The element and its compounds produce changes in the kidneys, liver, lungs and cardiovascular, nervous and haemopoietic systems, and cause disorders of protein and carbohydrate metabolism.......

Chronic poisoning results from prolonged exposure to low concentrations of insoluble compounds and presents a clinical picture different from that of acute poisoning. The outstanding signs and symptoms are pulmonary fibrosis, pneumoconiosis, and blood changes with a fall in red blood count; haemoglobin, erythrocyte and reticulocyte levels in the peripheral blood are reduced. Leucopenia may be observed with leucocyte disorders (cytolysis, pyknosis, and hypersegmentosis).

There may be damage to the nervous system. Morphological changes in the lungs, liver, spleen, intestines and other organs and tissues may be found, and it is reported that uranium exposure inhibits reproductive activity and affects uterine and extra-uterine development in experimental animals. Insoluble compounds tend to be retained in tissues and organs for long periods."

(from) http://www.ccnr.org/du_hague.html

PENTAGON POISON

"When the 1991 war started, Dr. Doug Rokke, a Vietnam veteran, forensic scientist and retired army major, was recalled from academia and sent to the Gulf as part of the army's Depleted Uranium Assessment team. "The US Army made me their expert," he says. "I went into the project with the total intent to ensure they could use uranium munitions in war, because I'm a warrior. What I saw as director of the project led me to one conclusion: uranium munitions must be banned from the planet, for eternity, and medical care must be provided for everyone" - those on the firing end and those on the receiving end.

Many in Rokke's Gulf team are now dead. He himself suffers from serious health problems including brain lesions and lung and kidney damage. When government doctors finally agreed to test him in November 1994, three-and-a-half years after he fell ill, while he was director of the Pentagon's Depleted Uranium Project, he was found to have 5,000 times the permissible level of radiation in his body - enough to light up a small village.

DU, he says, is the stuff of nightmares."

Iraqi cancers, birth defects blamed on US depleted uranium