Talk:Depleted uranium/Archive 2

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"Allies" is not a neutral term

This article is currently littered with "Allied" this and "Allied" that. As our article on Allies notes, When spelt with a capital A, Allies usually denotes the countries that fought together against the Central Powers in World War I and against the Axis powers in World War II. The term is generally used in the generic sense of "all who opposed the enemy". In addition, it is usually used in a strict dichotomy of them vs. us, reflecting wartime propaganda, with no account taken of nuances of countries that were occupied as neutrals, changed sides or participated in concurrent wars.

There are obviously terms we can use that are far more neutral than this. —Christiaan 22:39, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Who exactly fired 944,000 DU rounds?

At the moment this article says, "In 1991, the Allies fired 944,000 DU rounds or some 2700 tons of DU tipped bombs." But who exactly fired these rounds? Were there any countries besides the U.S.? —Christiaan 22:39, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

yeah, it was an international (UN-backed) coalition i believe. Bonus Onus 03:03, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

No, that is not who "exactly" fired the rounds. As far as I know it was just U.S. and British troops, although it may only have been U.S. troops. It's worth noting the importance of accuracy here considering the potential for war crimes prosecutions. —Christiaan 10:10, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm, I can't see why French troops would not have used these sort of ammunition too. As far as I know, the AMX-30, which was used then, is capable of using this device, and I don't see why they would have refrained from using it. Rama 10:34, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

No neither do I, so how do we go about finding this sort of thing out? The U.S. also fired 10,800 rounds against Serb forces in Bosnia in 1999, with 31,000 rounds fired during the Kosovo conflict. [1] —Christiaan 10:39, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Though it would seen that modern French forces use Tungsten rounds, not Uranium; I don't know how it was in 1991. Rama 11:08, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Tungsten rounds have their own health effects. "Shrapnel wounds caused by weapons grade tungsten alloy triggers aggressive tumors in rats, according to military researchers." SOURCE: Environmental Heath Perspectives, February 2005[2].--Silverback 12:50, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Both tungsten rounds and depleted uranium rounds are capable of killing people. This seems like a bit of a silly discussion to me. War crimes? It is doubtful, especially when the UN sponsors the military action. Bonus Onus 23:18, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

Silverback, why on Earth did you post this here ? Rama 23:51, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Because User:Rama, you posted that the French use Tungsten rounds and Christiaan is posting information about depleted Uraniums health effects. A lot of the what is has been alleged about DU toxicity is based on excess incidences of certain conditions or birth defects. You were right to point out there were other toxic substances in the area and I just substantiated your claim a little further with some recent evidence on Tungsten toxicity I had run across in my everyday reading. Of course in the same area with the DU, there was also all of Saddam's environmental attrocities, the burning of the oil fields, etc. There are lots of other chemicals put into the air when DU shells hit a target, and there is also evidence of some chemical WMD that was put into the air when it was hit during the US attack and also when attempts were made to destroy it.--Silverback 00:47, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I mentionned tungsten only to nuance my previous affirmation about the French army using Uranium rounds, about which I am not so sure anymore. This page deals about Depleted Uranium, that is, Uranium consisting mainly of U238. Depleted Uranium is used in naval industry, aeronautic industry, construction, armours and also, yes, anti-tank rounds. It is very sad that most of this article should deal with this very particular and sordid aspect of the matter, but for Heaven's sake, try to stay on topic! "Saddam's environmental attrocities", Tungsten toxicity and oil fields have very little to do with the topic. Rama 00:56, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What do apparently grossly inflated disability figures, unrelated even to Gulf war syndrome have to do with this article? If questionable attribution of health effects of DU are to be used, there alternative possible attributions of those health effects should also be included.--Silverback 17:41, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Um, can we keep this discussion on topic please. The question was who exactly fired 944,000 DU rounds? —Christiaan 11:51, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Easy way to check? Research the specific types of rounds. The major (almost exclusive) users of DU are the US and the UK. Russia's sole (and not most effective) 125mm DU tank round is the BM32. Everybody else but the US and UK uses Tungsten in their penetrators. I think you'll find that this extends beyond tanks as well, though Russia has produced DU in other calibres, to my knowledge, they've never fielded it in combat (their explanation of why is very interesting). This article's introduction explains rather well (and I have no intention of presenting this as anything more than an economic incentive, frankly, but any attempt I've personally made to place combat-effectiveness over cost-effectiveness has simply not been borne out by the facts) why the US and UK prefer to develop DU rounds over Tungsten (it's almost free, and processing is much cheaper). The current German tungsten rounds are arguably the best penetrators in the world (though the Ukranian extended 125mm is up there too, and there's a new Russian HEAT round that'll penetrate roughly 800mm RHA; for perspective, this could frontally pierce a 1991 M1A1 under the right conditions), so DU is itself (as far as I can tell) only the preferred material because it's used (and almost exclusively developed over tungsten) by the world's chief arms provider. My research suggests that it can be conclusively stated that >90% of the GW1 DU was fired by US tanks, Bradleys and aircraft. The UK simply didn't fire enough to even put a dent in the number, and AFAIK, no-one else was even using it. —Sigma-6

Clean-up

An awful lot of irrelevant, unsubstantiated/unreferenced, PoV material had crept into this article. I researched thoroughly and cleaned up accordingly. Dan100 15:21, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

The vast majority of this article seems to be based on this article. I am not familiar with the paper, as I am not from the UK, but I have a feeling it isn't exactly NPOV. Anyone want to check it out? Bonus Onus 02:01, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

The vast majority? What on earth are you talking about?—Christiaan 11:49, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

OK, maybe not the vast majority, but quite a bit of the GWS/health sections seem to be built using the content of that article as a foundation. I'm just wondering if we should be using a more NPOV source. Bonus Onus 21:55, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)

Is any of it cited? —Christiaan 23:23, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I dont think so, but from reading the article, i immediately recognized many of the points on this page. Bonus Onus 01:09, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

Disability rates

I moved this from the article:

This represents an increase over 1999 figures, when 16.1% of Gulf War era veterans were on disability, with "the number one service-connected condition claimed is impairment of the knee, followed by skeletal system disability, lumbosacral strain, arthritis due to trauma, scars, hearing loss, hypertension, intervertebral disc syndrome, tinnitus, and osteoarthritis." according to the testimony of Joseph Thompson Under Secretary for Benefits Department of Veterans Affairs, October 26, 1999[3].

This didn't seem to make any sense tagged on where it was. What was the point you were trying to make Silverback? —Christiaan 21:50, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It was meant to call into raise eyebrows about the figures stated just previous to it for the year 2000, from an authoritative source. I couldn't find official year 2000 figures, but I thought the 1999 figures might be close enough. Also, with the previous source attributing quite a bit of disability to depleted uranium, it is strange that bum knees are at the top of the list, since there doesn't appear to be an obvious depleted uranium mechanism for this injury, unless they were carrying around these heavy shells.--Silverback 22:07, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Can I suggest being a little more explicit? It doesn't read at all well as it stands. -Christiaan 08:47, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Silverback, please stop removing comments by Arthur N. Bernklau. You have still not demontrated any reason to remove them. —Christiaan 11:37, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The Bernklau quote, "Out of the 580,400 soldiers who served in GW1 (the first Gulf War), of them, 11,000 are now dead! By the year 2000, there were 325,000 on Permanent Medical Disability..." bears no relevance to the topic of Depleted Uranium, except for the fact that it cites Moret's paper. Without even an attempt to prove that these disabilities and deaths are related to DU, this quote has no place here, (and IMHO has no place in a medical journal either). Bonus Onus 22:25, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)

I removed the paragraph. Bonus Onus 21:49, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)

He's making comment about the extrordinarily high casualty rates for this war. I think the best thing to do to settle this is to get hold of Moret's paper, which I've found near impossible to track down. I happy with quote can staying out for the moment until we can track it down. —Christiaan 23:04, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I'd be interested to read Moret's paper as well. Bonus Onus 01:16, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

I think this is the document you are after: [4] Depleted 22:39, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Length of health concerns section

IMHO, the section about the link to gulf war syndrome is much too long, especially since the evidence seems pretty inconclusive. It should definately be mentioned that some people have suggested a link, but what's here is overkill. Bonus Onus

I disagree. Apart from it not being a section on "Gulf War Syndrome" (of which sickness from depleted uranium is just one apsect of) I think it needs to be expanded and far more comprehensive. I think it's pretty woeful what we have at the moment considering all the material out there, the controversial nature of the topic, and the implications.—Christiaan 10:07, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

As for the first study (UNEP), I read the section on depleted uranium, and though it does say that it has gotten into the environment (air, groundwater), it makes no specific claims of health effects, only cites "potential health risks". Therefore, I don't think this is an acceptable source for information on health effects. The study does mention that the WHO was going to address DU health effects, so perhaps we should cite that study instead. Bonus Onus 23:37, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

MAPW

Christiaan, the reason I removed your edit was: The MAPW is an organization with clear political motives. It says it in their name: "the prevention of war". It is obvious from their website that they are a leftist organization with anti-nuclear motives, and their advice is somewhat lacking in legitimacy. It doesnt really seem that relevant that some fringe group of doctors in australia told the australian government that they should not send soldiers to iraq. Had this been an actual study, I would have left it. But it isn't. It is a fact about the opinion of a certain group on the issue, and a very minor group at that. Bonus Onus 03:15, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

The use of depleted uranium is a political issue. None of your comments seem to bare any relation to the encyclopedic value of the passage. —Christiaan 20:43, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

So should we include every single thing every single group says about depleted uranium, no matter how illegitimate their claims are? If a company that makes DU says it is completely safe, should we mention that without any qualifications? --Bonus Onus 02:46, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

I find it rather interesting that you've argued to remove public comments by the MAPW but you're now wanting to include some superfluous unattributable remark by an unknown journalist. Readers will already be well aware there is no conclusive evidence in regard to sickness from depleted uranium. —Christiaan 11:26, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

And what remark would that be? Bonus Onus 21:57, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Depleted_uranium&diff=11787223&oldid=11784530 —Christiaan 23:19, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well I am in favor of the inclusion of that last sentence because i think it puts the MAPW's announcement in better context. However, I'd still rather have this paragraph removed altogether. It doesn't add anything to the topic, and offers no original information about the health effects of DU. Bonus Onus 01:19, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

Circumstantial evidence

This paragraph:

"The use of DU has also been associated (but no causal link established) with an increase in the rate of birth defects in the children of Gulf War veterans and has been suggested to be the cause of the 'worrying number of anophthalmos cases -- babies born without eyes' in Iraq. Only one in 50 million births should be anophthalmic, yet one Baghdad hospital had eight cases in just two years. Seven of the fathers had been exposed to American DU anti-tank rounds in 1991."

Is entirely circumstantial evidence, and really should have no place in an article reporting scientific facts. Let's have more definite laboratory trials and less of this inconclusive stuff. I propose removing it. Anyone disagree? --Bonus Onus 02:26, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

Yes I certainly disagree, Wikipedia is not a court room. Where is it Wikipedia policy to exclude the reporting of circmstantial evidence? —Christiaan 11:32, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

To some extent you are correct, and there may be a place for this type of evidence on certain wikipedia articles. however, when this evidence is presented as scientific fact, it can be misleading, and should not be placed in the same category as legitimate scientific studies. So perhaps we can leave it in, but with severe qualifications, such as explaining that it is not a scientific study. If possible, though, it should be replaced with more credible evidence. Bonus Onus 21:43, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)

To state the obvious, nobody is ever going to do a proper scientific experiment to investigate the health effects of DU. Unless they do, all the evidence would have to be epidemiological and hence to some extent 'circumstantial'. But the 'circumstantial' evidence would be assisted if there was some use of control groups. The basic problem with arguing from the Iraqi experience is that there were all sorts of other things going on at the same time. Most of them were not conducive to the health safety and welfare of those present,and it is not easy to work out what caused what. Two obvious questions arise:

what causal link/pathway can be postulated to link the observed effects to the alleged cause?

what is known of the effect of uranium (depleted or otherwise) away from Iraq; either as munitions (eg in the Balkans)or involved in fires (eg the Teneriffe collision)or discharged from fertiliser plants or re suspended from uranium mining tailings ?

Agent Orange is a roughly analogous case of novel war-waging technology applied by the US military and getting a bad press, but there considering the equivalent questions could rapidly dispel any suspicion that views on the ends for which the technology was used were colouring the verdict on its effects . Perhaps further work will show that the same is true here, but for the moment it is hard to see the case as proven.

Up here on the Solway Firth, we have the Windscale piles which had a major uranium fire nearly 50 years ago; we had until recently at Whitehaven a phosphoric acid plant which used to discharge every year ton quantities of uranium to the Irish Sea and a number of firing ranges which (as this (http://www.sundayherald.com/32522) article points out) have test-fired DU munitions. As far as I know there are no signs of problems similar to those being reported from Iraq. Given that we also have a controversial nuclear reprocessing plant at Sellafield discharging to the Solway I strongly suspect that if there were any such problems someone would have found them by now and ascribed it to Sellafield discharges. Therefore (it seems to me) either there is some complicating factor associated with uranium in Iraq but not in these parts, or uranium is not a major factor in the health problems of Iraq and Gulf War veterans rjccumbria May 12 2005

Is the entire Gulf War Section about a personal vendeta?

Christiaan, is this entire section about your little friend Ken? Most of the evidence cited is horseshit, and cannot be backed up. Even a cursory look at this so called evidence reveals it is full of holes (mustard agents, and GWI vets mortality). How much of this garbage are we going to allow in the article over a personal misplaced grudge? TDC 19:43, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)

Who is Ken? Bonus Onus 21:45, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)

TDC has psycological problems I wouldn't get too cuddly with him. —Christiaan 21:46, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Nah, he doesn't seem too crazy. He's just a heavy-duty republican, lol. Still don't understand the Ken thing though. Bonus Onus 01:19, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

Hehe, yeah, like I said, he has psycological problems. Ken's a good friend of mine. —Christiaan 01:30, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It seems to me as if what we have here is section of an article grossly oversized considering the marginal nature of its “evidence” and “experts”. Your simple dismissal of my statement leads me to believe that there is more to my allegation that you will admit to. Let me guess, did your Iraqi “minders” take you and lil Ken on a tour of Iraqi hospitals to tug on your heart strings, right before you went to guard the AA sites?

This section is going to get a severe trimming. TDC 16:27, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

Would you all mind stopping provoking each other like five years old ? It is really unnecessary for the discussion of the article. Rama 17:16, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sorry but I feel that personal motivations matter a great deal. TDC 17:20, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

Has anyone bothered to figure out who this mysterious naysayer is - Dr Richard Guthrie? Also, I noted when I googled some of the words some the Gulf War Syndrome section that someone has been posting that section of the wikipedia Depleted Uranium on a number of "lefty" bulletin boards with words to the effect of "see, here's the truth about DU!" I think TDC should question the motivations of adding it, as well as weigh the possiblity that the article currently gives more emphasis to the theories of one naysayer than the clinical findings of entire health organizations.

According to the Royal Society report that he is quoted in the article from:

The Royal Society concluded that exposure to DU on the battlefield may cause a doubling of the usual risk of death from lung cancer among a small group of soldiers in extreme circumstances, for example, if they inhale large amounts after their vehicle has been struck by a DU penetrator or if they have been working for long periods of time inside and around contaminated vehicles. [[5]]

And with regards to the Threat to Civilians, the report said the following: What threat does DU pose to civilians? "The Royal Society concluded that the soil around the impact sites of depleted uranium penetrators may be heavily contaminated, and could be harmful if swallowed by children for example. In addition, large numbers of corroding depleted uranium penetrators embedded in the ground might pose a long-term threat if the uranium leaches into water supplies. Localised areas of DU contamination provide a risk, particularly to young children who may for example put soil in their mouths, and areas should be cleared of visible penetrators and DU contamination should be removed from areas around known penetrator impact sites." [[6]]

Shouldn't we change the bias of the presentation of the Royal Society's report on DU? Right now it skews it to sound like there is NO recorded link between DU and Cancer. That is simply false and an eggregious misreference of the widely known and widely distributed report. Please correct this.

Decay chain

I moved the recently-deleted decay products commentary to the u-238 article, where it seems like it may have some relevance. It was asked how long it would take thorium and U-234 to reach equilibrium; each of those two questions can be answered by a fairly easy differential equation, which would be a good exercise. You would also get the exact concentrations at equilibrium, from which the rate of beta emission could be easily calculated. See the article on half life to start the problem, and feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you get stuck along the way.--Joel 16:04, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Separate Article?

Hey it seems like it would be a good idea to have a separate article on Depleted Uranium Rounds that could serve as a better exposition of the controversy surrounding them. TitaniumDreads 05:13, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

A non-political problem

In reference to thermonuclear weapons, the article contains the text "The extremely high flux of neutrons from the resulting fusion reaction causes some amount of transmutation and fission of the resulting Plutonium, which can add fission energy to the yield of the weapon."

This can't possibly be true. Plutonium is not directly formed when neutrons hit uranium, what is formed is U-239 that decays to plutonium. In the miniscule fraction of a second during the explostion, none of it will have yet decayed.

I believe the correct explanation is that the fusion reaction produces high energy neutrons. U-238 will fission with high energy neutrons, though it won't produce a chain reaction.

I have no ready information source for this, so I hope someone else can fix it. Ken Arromdee 15:36, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

This sentence is contradictory

"Critics of these latter studies point to the fact that they come primarily from either "Green" groups who are opposed to nuclear power and uses of its radioactive byproducts, or are 'linked' to the US and UK governments -- both users of weaponry which utilise DU with strong incentive to minimize negative conclusions."

"Green" groups and groups linked with national governments have directly opposite motivations for bias. This sentence needs to be cleaned up. I've changed it to;

"Critics of studies purporting to demonstrate the danger of DU point to the fact that such studies often come primarily from "Green" or left-wing groups who are opposed to nuclear power and uses of its radioactive byproducts. On the other hand, critics of studies that conclude DU has minimal negative health effects argue such studies are often commissioned by or 'linked' to the US, UK or other national governments which make use of DU weaponry, and thus may have an incentive to minimize negative conclusions."

Verifiable facts, speculative assertions, and politically motivated falsehoods.

Depleted uranium first emerged as a social, political, and scientific issue after the 1991 Gulf War. The decline of rational discourse about DU can be traced to the 1999 Kosovo conflict. At that time, the DU issue took on a more overtly political role. The Yugoslav government under Sloboban Milosevic suggested the use of DU in the Balkans would have genocidal effects, and when the U.S. government refused to release information about its use of DU following the war, activists and propagandists alike suggested that the United States was responsible for causing widespread and severe effects from its use of DU munitions. Saddam Hussein similarly blamed the United States (and DU) for a sharp increase in cancers and birth defects, and Yasser Arafat joined the chorus by accusing Israel of using DU in Palestinian territories. In the years since 1999, politicians, propagandists, and activists have intoxicated each other with heart-wrenching but extremely misleading and unsubstantiated claims about the effects of DU munitions, radicalizing the issue in a way that has had a chilling effect upon serious debate.

Ironically, U.S. propaganda fueled the uncertainty surrounding the effects of DU munitions on Iraqis, which in turn facilitated the Saddam Hussein regime’s own propaganda. A policy of “proponency” to prevent DU munitions from becoming “politically unacceptable” was recommended shortly as the war ended, and in the subsequent years, Pentagon spokesmen dismissed concerns about DU munitions in the same breath as they overstated its success in defeating the Iraqi tank corps. The hype helped create the impression that the battlefield was far more contaminated by DU dust than it probably was, thereby enabling the Iraqi government to effectively exploit an reported rise in cancers and birth defects by blaming the effects on DU munitions and, more importantly, the United States.

The scientific debate is now bogged down in confusion over the extent and severity of DU exposures, but many of the statements made by extremists have become a muddled mixture of verifiable facts, speculative assertions, and politically motivated falsehoods.

Prior to the use of DU munitions in combat, large quantities – probably on the order of thousands of tons of DU – were shot at testing ranges in the United States, United Kingdom, and as well as in the former Soviet Union and other countries. In addition to the United States, United Kingdom, and Israel, it is possible and even probable that other countries or armed forces have used DU munitions in combat. Some anti-DU activists have claimed the quantities of DU shot by U.S. forces are orders of magnitude higher than the figures released by militaries and governments. While such deception is not outside the realm of possibility, the figures released by some activists, such as the claim that the U.S. released 900,000 kg (2,000,000 lbs) of DU in Afghanistan, lack any supporting data, and in some cases are complete fabrications.

Some activists also started to advance claims based more on assertion than proof. These activists, including some with science backgrounds, started to exploit the scientific uncertainties and decry DU as a “crime against God and humanity.” Cults of personality formed around activists who spread a dire gospel based on a blend of fact and fiction as they marched forward, ever forward, in a messianic haze. A new crop of self-proclaimed DU experts emerged in the wake of the Kosovo conflict exploiting the DU issue to raise money for their organizations, and others pointed to DU as a manifestation of the evils of the United States and NATO. Some of these new activists joined forces with more seasoned experts to claim not only proof of widespread and severe effects from DU, but also to assert that these effects were an intentional consequence of the U.S.use of DU munitions. A few marginal scientists marred their professional reputations by becoming scientist-activists who made claims and interpreted data to create misleading and intellectually dishonest assessments of DU’s actual and potential effects.

The fantastic claims of well-known activists have grown progressively more extreme since 1999. Without any credible health or environmental studies in post-war Iraq on DU, activists have claimed the effects are comparable to those of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor explosion. Some prominent activists have claimed that not only has the use of DU already caused genocidal effects in Iraq, but that the US uses DU munitions to intentionally inflict genocide on populations. In some cases, one lie leads to another, such as when one activist asserted – without supporting data – that U.S. missiles and bombs contain large quantities of DU, and then a publicity-seeking, fund-raising organization calling itself the Uranium Medical Research Centre used this claim to advance its own unsupported assertion that the U.S. had spread uranium contamination across Afghanistan, resulting in severe health effects. The prize for the most outlandish claim about DU to date goes to activist Leuren Moret. Moret, who works closely with Doug Rokke and other anti-DU extremists, has uttered some of the most bizarre and uninformed statements about DU, including the following statement made in February 2004:

Anyone within 1,000 miles of Iraq; anyone within 1,000 miles of Afghanistan is potentially contaminated now. It’s not just the people [living] in the country Anyone going to Iraq or Afghanistan now will become contaminated. There’s no way to escape it.

Such certainty is the hallmark of the DU extremists. However, Moret’s most distinctive and substantial contribution to the decline of rational discourse about the effects of DU is her claim that the use of DU munitions has resulted in atmospheric pollution by radioactive dust equal to the detonation of 400,000 Nagasaki bombs. Of course, there are differences of opinion even among the most irrational and uninformed extremists another activist says the use of DU is equal to only 250,000 Nagasaki bombs.

When moderate activists raised concerns about the accuracy of the increasingly alarmist claims about DU, they became the target of character assassination campaigns. In fact, the debate over DU has declined to the point where the simple act of questioning a claim made by Doug Rokke, Asaf Durakovic, or other prominent activists is labeled a heresy by a small jury of vocal extremists who operate mainly through the Internet. Rational discourse about the use and effects of DU munitions has become increasingly difficult and rare.

As far as the people suffering from the health effects of being in combat, it would seem to me that it would be very, very hard to isolate exposure to any one material from the hazmat background in an active theater; such places are not exactly OSHA compliant to begin with.

There are many environmental hazards caused by modern munitions, singling out DU is a bit of a red herring that is leveraging peoples fear of all things nuclear. This stuff has been use in ordinance since 1958, but it wasn't till two tin-pot dictators tried using the issue to discredit NATO in general and the U.S. in particular that anyone noticed it. Never mind Iraq, why hasn't epidemiological studies been done to the populations near test ranges in the U.S., the U.K. and France? Why would anyone want to run a study under conditions where the confounding variables will make any conclusion scientifically suspect?

DV8 2XL 00:57, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Quotes from the Royal Society Report

Due to the lack of experimental data, the approach taken was to estimate the typical levels of exposure on the battlefield over a wide range of scenarios, and the worst-case exposures that individuals are unlikely to exceed. These estimated values have then been used to assess the potential health risks from radiation. The report also considers epidemiological studies of occupational exposures to uranium in other situations as an independent source of information on the risks of inhaling DU particles, although it recognises that the parallels may not be precise.

Except in extreme circumstances any extra risks of developing fatal cancers as a result of radiation from internal exposure to DU arising from battlefield conditions are likely to be so small that they would not be detectable above the general risk of dying from cancer over a normal lifetime.

The greatest exposures will apply only to a very small fraction of the soldiers in a theatre of war, for example those who survive in a vehicle struck by a DU penetrator. In such circumstances, and assuming the most unfavourable conditions, the lifetime risk of death from lung cancer is unlikely to exceed twice that in the general population.

Any extra risks of death from leukaemia, or other cancers, as a result of exposure to DU are estimated to be substantially lower than the risks of death from lung cancer. Under all likely exposure scenarios the extra lifetime risks of fatal leukaemia are predicted to be too small to be observable.

Many soldiers on a battlefield may be exposed to small amounts of DU and the risks of cancer from such exposures are predicted to be very low. Even if the estimates of risk for these conditions are one hundred times too low, it is unlikely that any excess of fatal cancer would be detected within a cohort of 10,000 soldiers followed over 50 years.

This report was referenced to support this edit:

The mainstream media, however, has consistently shed light on stories of DU related illnesses and birth defects from the children of soldiers recently returning from conflicts involving Depleted Uranium. As early as September 3, 2000, CNN reported that Dr. Asaf Durakovic was treating cases of soldiers contaminated with Depleted Uranium in the First Gulf War of 1991. [7] Time Magazine has featured several articles about the growing concern over the dangers of Depleted Uranium, one about NATO soldiers on January 9th, 2001 [8] More recently, The New York Daily News' Juan Gonzalez reported in a front page article about the war's littlest victim, referring to the newborn daughter of a soldier suffering from Gulf War Syndrome who was born with three fingers missing. The soldier in question tested positive for Depleted Uranium. [9] - Moreover, a comprehensive study by The Royal Society, a fellowship of over 1400 distinguished scientists, researchers and professors, found that Depleted Uranium poses serious health risks for civilians as well as soldiers. [10]

DV8 2XL 23:32, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

What happened to the Gonzalez article?

Where did the reference to the Gonzalez article go? It's not good Wikipedian practice to delete every part of an edit just because you don't personally agree with one or more other parts. Please re-add this reference, as the story adds important context about recent investigative reporting and makes for a more well rounded article. Thanks. Badagnani 23:49, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

I went with everything else because it is full of supposition, not fact. look I said above: "As far as the people suffering from the health effects of being in combat, it would seem to me that it would be very, very hard to isolate exposure to any one material from the hazmat background in an active theater; such places are not exactly OSHA compliant to begin with." It is not investigative reporting, it is yellow journalism, something the New York Daily News is no stranger to. Suggesting that it should be quoted as a reliable source in an encyclopedia is ludicrous. DV8 2XL 00:49, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I take strong offense to your implication that my suggestion that this article be included as "ludicrous." The article states that the U.S. military (which, by the way, issues strong guidelines against exposure to exploded DU) failed to properly test this soldier; the Daily News paid for such a test, which found elevated levels of DU. Whether you like the outcome or not (or whether it reinforces your world view; it seems your mind is already made up that DU cannot be harmful in any way), the test was done, and the soldier is sick. Name calling does not bolster your position. Please re-add the Gonzalez article. Badagnani 01:10, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

NY Daily News is not a reliable source of information of this type for an encyclopedia. Even if it was it doesn't provide any facts germane to the topic at hand since it is based on supposition; it does not supply a epidemiological link between this mans toxic load and the tragedy that befell his family. It only implies it and with very flimsy evidence. If you want to take this to an RfC go ahead. The fact that 66.82.9.52 uttered an outright lie by claiming that the Royal Society's report found that Depleted Uranium poses serious health risks for civilians as well as soldiers, is not an opinion ether; just a bald fact. DV8 2XL 01:29, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Your refusal to allow even the mention of an article from a major newspaper from the United States' most major city is telling. It amounts to an ad hominem whitewash, a cleansing of the article of factual information from sources of which you do not approve. The DU test was done for the reason that the U.S. military had failed to properly test this soldier, despite their own guidelines that contact with exploded DU be scrupulously avoided. Most likely the finding of elevated DU levels in this soldier's body is disturbing to you because it would be hard to argue that this elevated level of DU is beneficial to this soldier. The article needs to reflect the current debate but your inclusion of only sources that support your POV does not help in this regard; it only reinforces your POV. This is not good Wikipedian practice. Please re-add the Gonzalez article. Badagnani 01:51, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Don't you get it? Before you can claim cause you have to have more than just correlation. Did you read what I said? You cannot isolate DU from the rest of the hazmat in a battle zone. And for heavens sake Badagnani, the check-out press in the U.S. outsells the NY Daily; are we going to start using material from the National Enquirer here now too? DV8 2XL 02:00, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Please watch your tone. I did not claim correlation, only the finding of an elevated level in a scientific test. This alone is worthy of note. The test (which the U.S. military failed to administer) found an elevated level of DU in the soldier's body. I don't know whether this is harmful or not but it is likely not beneficial, as the U.S. military, in its printed manuals, warns its own troops stringently against contact with exploded DU munitions. Would you care to comment on the military's reason for issuing such warnings? BTW I think you are confusing the Daily News with the New York Post. Please re-add mention of the Gonzalez article. Badagnani 02:12, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

No, it's not worthy of note. Not unless you can show it causes something. You can you can only hope to imply it, my touchy friend, and that's not encyclopedic. DV8 2XL 02:24, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

The Gonzalez is a bad article [11]. It reported that Matthew had 4 to 8 times the Uranium in his body as the controls. No absolute numbers, no indication of the natural variation of Uranium in people. Eight times a very small number could still be very small. No mention of how his levels compare with the army standard or any other standard for Uranium. Was his level just under the limit or way under. pstudier 02:57, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

It seems that there is an attempt to cite the New York Daily News as if it were a credible scientific source. It is not a credible source of scientific information. If this were an article about "the scandal surrounding DU", then it might be a good ref about the scandal. linas 05:32, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Gulf war material

I moved the section to the Gulf War Syndrome article. There was almost no mention of it there and the section here was growing too large for this topic. I removed no material from the section at all before or after transfer. DV8 2XL 18:05, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Thank you, I agree this is better. Nrcprm2026 06:17, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

RV'd; see below Dan100 (Talk) 14:54, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Arguments without benefit of 2001+ research

Is anyone going to mind if I take the discussions which were relevant prior to at least 2001, but aren't anymore, off of this talk page? Are there any posted criteria or guidelines for cleaning up talk pages? Nrcprm2026 07:32, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

07:52, 12 December 2005 Badagnani (rv unilateral purging of talk page under guise of "cleaning")

Moving to the existing archive is not purging. Please move the subset of discussions which you agree depend on outdated research to the archive page of your choice.

History of Knowledge of Uranium's Mutagenicity and Teratogenicity

DV8 2XL has been replacing "proven mutagen and teratogen" with "suspected mutagen and teratogen" in the Health Concerns section. The earliest authoratative assertion of teratogenicity which I recognize as proof is: Maynard, E.A., Downs, W.L. and Hodge, H.C., "Oral toxicity of uranium compounds," in Voegtlin, C. and Hodge, H.C., editors, Pharmacology and Toxicology of Uranium, Volume 3 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1953), pp. 1221-1369. I am not sure where the first incontrovertable evidence of mutagenicity was published. Any compound which catalyzes hydroxyl ions contributes to DNA breakage and is thus mutagenic.

In any case, there have been no publications in the peer-reviewed medical literacture over the past decade out of dozens on the topic I have seen that claim uranium(VI), the hexavalent uranyl oxidation state, is not both mutagenic and teratogenic. If there is any evidence anywhere supporting such a claim, I would like to see it.

From a pure technical standpoint you cannot prove a negative. The links you cited do not prove anything. The term 'proof' is used a lot less cavalierly in science than you do here. DV8 2XL 09:49, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

What is your standard of proof here? Please either justify your assertions with source material or explain your standard of proof. Nrcprm2026 17:11, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

From your own source: "There is limited available data for reproductive and teratological deficits from exposure to uranium per se, typically from oral, respiratory, or dermal exposure routes. Alternatively, there is no data available on the reproductive effects of DU embedded."(A review of the effects of uranium and depleted uranium exposure on reproduction and fetal development. Arfsten DP, Still KR, Ritchie GD., PMID 12539863 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE])

From that same source, page 186: "Degenerative changes in the testes resulting in aspermia in the testes and epididymis were observed.... (Maynard et al., 1953)." Nrcprm2026 05:32, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

From your own source: "The two most significant challenges to establishing a causal pathway between (human) parental DU exposure and the birth of offspring with defects are: i) distinguishing the role of DU from that of exposure to other potential teratogens; ii) documentation on the individual level of extent of parental DU exposure. Studies that use biomarkers, none yet reported, can help address the latter challenge."( Teratogenicity of depleted uranium aerosols: A review from an epidemiological perspective, Rita Hindin, Doug Brugge, and Bindu Panikkar, Environmental Health: A Global Access Science Source 2005, 4:17 doi:10.1186/1476-069X-4-17)

"uranium is a developmental toxicant when given orally or subcutaneously to mice. Decreased fertility, embryo/fetal toxicity including teratogenicity, and reduced growth of the offspring have been observed following uranium exposure at different gestation periods." "Reproductive and developmental toxicity of natural and depleted uranium: a review." Reprod Toxicol. 2001 Nov-Dec;15(6):603-9. Nrcprm2026 05:32, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Phrasing like that is not the language of established fact, or conformation of proof. All of these studies, while leaning towards this conclusion, is not as yet a smoking gun for human heath issues. The danger of pushing this POV is that it might well mask other causes to the detriment of the victims. Just to put my own perspective on the line here, I think any sort of military anti-personnel ordinance is a obscenity, and the people that develop them and make them criminals. Also, besides that, I think that DU used in weapons is a monumental waste of material that should be used to charge breeder reactors to make more fissionable fuel. What I am mostly interested, however is stopping the creep towards an anti DU pamphlet that this article is manifesting, it violates the rules and the spirit of this place. As a sign of good faith, I will not revert for 24hrs or until you answer. DV8 2XL 17:36, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

"waste of material that should be used to charge breeder reactors to make more fissionable fuel" ??? I hope not. Depleted Uranium is not nuclear waste, but natural Uranium which has been submitted to the opposite process than enrichement (US ammunition has been said to contain traces of U236, a sure sign that it was indeed nuclear waste since U236 is found only when U235 has captured a neutron, something which happens only in reactors). Rama 17:46, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

• Rama, that is off topic. I'll take up this matter with you on my talk page if you wish. DV8 2XL 17:54, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

I would suspect that uranium-238 in common with carbon-14 and potassium-40 might be able to cauise cancer through its radioactive properties. Due to the long half life the specific activity of uranium is jolly low. I think that before the threat to a living thing from a little bit of 'radioactive' uranium is considered fully that the dose to the animal due to the internal C14/K-40 should be considered. I once calculated that a 75Kg man will contain circa 35 KBq of K-40, and I have been advised that the best way to lower my annual radiation dose is to refrain from sleeping in the same bed as another person ! Cadmium 18:07, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I have checked a good source of data at ANL, and it is the case that uranium has some toxic effects for insatnce soluble uranium salts can damage the kidneys. I suspect that the uranium from a DU shell will be uranium oxides which are not very soluble in water. I have been told by a nuclear chemist that if swallowed well fired actinide oxides (such as MOX fuel) will pass stright through the digestive system. However if inhalled insoluble actinide oxides can cause damage to the lungs, I would expect that the uranium oxide dust will affect the lungs mainly, it might slowly dissolve with time but I expect that much of it will then be lost in urine from the body. Cadmium 18:07, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

But due to the low specific activity of uranium I would not expect to see the same effects which have been seen in monkeys which have been exposed to airbourn plutinium oxides. Cadmium 18:07, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

It has been estimated that it will be safe to injest 3 micrograms of uranum per kilo of body weight per day for a lifetime without the non cancer effects appearing in a human. Cadmium 18:07, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Moved Passage

I moved the detailed passage on odinance that uses DU to the Gulf War Syndrome page under the title 'Sources of exposure' because it is more relivent to that article than this one. DV8 2XL 17:01, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

What? That is nonsense.

Please sign your posts. Yes, this individual clearly wants this article to serve as a vehicle to rehabilitate this material in the eyes of lay readers; anything contrary to this aim gets tossed in the wastebasket or moved to other, less relevant pages, piece by piece (just see his/her user and talk pages for confirmation). Yes, it's dangerous, and not the way we do things here. This last moved passage is the clearest evidence yet, plus an added profanity from him/her in a recent talk page post. We'll have to keep a close watch on this page from now on to see that no more information is removed. Badagnani 02:53, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Ok we will go directly to an RfC on this. This article was nothing more that an anti-DU pamphlet. I have gone to great lengths to justify every change, even when they were correcting clear violations of Wikipedia policy or were out right wrong. DV8 2XL 03:24, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Go to an RFWhatever you want, just stop removing relevant information from the article, and from using profane language against other Wikipedians. By the way, using your criteria, the Cyanide article also looks an awful lot like an anti-cyanide pamphlet, as it contains information about its toxicity. Would you prefer if we removed all information about cyanide's toxicity and use as a poison to Poisons, or World War II, or some similar article? Badagnani 03:34, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

See RfC below

Split out links

Badagnani, please don't be an ass. I haven't 'purged' anything. The article was split with the support of Nrcprm2026. we have both been working all day on this and if you looked at the history of both pages you would see that between us we have made several edits. Look at the section two blocks up here in talk, Nrcprm2026 and I don't see eye-to-eye on this subject yet we manage to work together with out raising the rhetoric to the hysterical level. DV8 2XL 00:01, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Removed passages

Removed:

"* A 1997 report by The European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR) suggested that DU posed serious health risks. At that time, other studies had shown that DU ammunition had no measurable detrimental health effects in the short term. Most other teratogens cause more cancer in proportion to increased birth defects than was measured in U.S. and U.K. troops."

According to European Committee on Radiation Risk (Comité Européen sur le Risque de l’Irradiation) own website The European Committee on Radiation Risk was formed in 1997. A report on the effects of DU/U weapons is still in preparation.

"* According to the IAEA, if depleted uranium is ingested or inhaled it can be harmful because of its chemical toxicity. High concentrations can cause kidney and liver damage."

In fact it says:

Is DU a Health Hazard?

• Based on credible scientific evidence, there is no proven link between DU exposure and increases in human cancers or other significant health or environmental impacts.
• The most definitive study of DU exposure is of Gulf War veterans who have embedded DU shrapnel in their bodies that cannot be removed. To date none has developed any health abnormalities due to uranium chemical toxicity or radio toxicity.
• It is a common misconception that radioactivity is the main health hazard of DU rather than chemical toxicity. Like other heavy metals, DU is potentially poisonous. In sufficient amounts, if DU is ingested or inhaled it can be harmful because of its chemical toxicity. High concentration could cause kidney damage.
• According to the World Health Organization (WHO), very large amounts of DU dust would have to be inhaled to cause lung cancer from radio toxicity. Risks of other radiation-induced cancers, including leukemia, are considered to be very much lower still.

Request for Comments

Which version best reflects Wikipedia policy, is more factual, and is NPOV Old Version or Revised Version03:55, 15 December 2005 (UTC)? DV8 2XL 03:58, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

This may be helpful: Difference between old version (left) and new version (right), showing gutted content. Badagnani 06:44, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

• Well that's not quite true is it? You have neglected to point out that most of it was moved to Gulf War syndrome; a move that done with the agreement of at least one other editor (see above) DV8 2XL 07:25, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I prefer the revised version just because it has a more global scope and I think it speaks more to the regular user than the original does. And I'm an outsider on this. :) I'd never read either version before. --Woohookitty^{(cat scratches)} 06:32, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

There are many, many differences that don't amount to a hill of beans. Are you guys working on the same article? Can't you agree on anything? I don't have time or inclination to sort through the whole edit war history. I suggest you take one section at a time and establish an editorial concensus where you can. Where you can't, understand your differences enough to express then clearly and succintly, and then ask for outside help again. --Art Carlson 08:54, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I prefer the revised version because it does seem more international, and the gulf war syndrome stuff does belong in it's own article seperate from this one, revised health effects section is sufficient for this article. Art Carlson also makes a good point, the differences in the versions do seem relativly minor. Astaroth5 10:00, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

The revised version is considerably more polished. I cannot easily say which version is more "factually correct" or "less POV". Also agree with Art Carlson above as to how to proceed. Finally, I wish to note that it would not be unreasonable to also have extended topic articles, such as DU in munitions, Health hazards of DU, UN legal status of DU and so on, which could review these topics in greater detail than this one article can. These are all interesting topics, and are of considerable currency in the social and political climate we are in (and our grandchildren will still be in). linas 01:23, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I found the revised version the better one. Even as an ex-military reserves officer I didn't find the ammunition details very interesting. I agree with the "more global" comments. But I think some of the replaced material could be blended back in. (I will read the Discussion later today and comment further. I already see that how DU is portrayed has been an issue.) Simesa 14:31, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

• Other than the material that was moved whole to Gulf War syndrome the edits fell in to three classes: outright violations of Wikipedia policy (highly POV editorial comments appended to external links); that which was extraneous to the article (detailed descriptions of international agreements on the rule of warfare) ; and those passages that were outright error or dissemination. (Implying that certain reports had stated DU had a major health impact, when they had in fact stated the opposite.) Most of the edits were backed up here in Talk with evidence and where another editor was able to clarify the previous position, the mater was reverted or reworded. DV8 2XL 16:04, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

On the bases of the comments to date, I am reverting to the revised version of the article. DV8 2XL 23:31, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

• I've restored some deleted information. Dan100 (Talk) 14:52, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I have remove the detailed list of DU ordinance as being overmuch detail. It was not returned to the Gulf War Syndrome page. Dan this is an RfC please help us come to a consensus. DV8 2XL 15:10, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, you can't actually just delete material! Dan100 (Talk) 15:13, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

• Yes I can when it's too much detail It doesn't help the topic see comments above. also I did not remove a citation I atributied it to the proper author DV8 2XL 15:20, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

"Too much detail" seems like a very strange argument to me. That's not exactly the WP way. Based on the discussions above, it also seems clear to me that we need an article titled Health effects of depleted uranium that would be linked from this article. linas 01:09, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Response to RFC, based on the diff cited above:

• Mention of use of 90% enriched uranium should be put back into the introduction. It's of both historical significance and current significance (one of the methods of illicit bomb production is to carry out enrichment, though it's costly if you plan to produce many bombs). By all means keep the details elsewhere (enriched uranium and nuclear weapon design).
• Is DU really used for shielding? It's bad for alphas and betas (high-Z nuclei produce harder Bremsstrahlung x-rays), and is activated by neutron radiation. Gamma's about the only thing it'd be good for, and that's usually accomplished just by using lots of concrete. Even DU plating would have to be extremely thick to give useful shielding. So, source citations would be handy, along with a caveat in the text about it only being useful for x-ray and gamma radiation.

Here is a source for a uranium shielded device, it is an item of radiography equipment.http://www.ir100.com/PROD01.html , about using uranium as a shield. I think that it would be good when mixed with cement/sand to make extra dense cement. I think that the neutron activation would be not too bad unless the neutron source was very strong. If such uranium loaded concrete was used in a plant where a criticaility event occured then it might be possible to detect where the neutrons had been by a measurement of the Np-239 activity. It is common to carry objects which are easy to activate with neutrons if you enter a nuclear plant. I know that at Windscale that any person entering a reprocessing plant has to wear a 'criticaility belt' this is a blue plastic belt which contains gold and irridium metal disks. If a criticaility occurs these can be used as a neutron doseometer. Cadmium 22:02, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

• Aren't there a lot of power-producing breeder reactors in Europe? France had a couple of demonstration plants at one point. Most breeders use Thorium as feedstock, if I understand correctly, though U238 works.

I thought that U238 was more common than Th232. It is the case that U233 is fissile, but U238 is more commonly used. Cadmium 22:02, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Thorium is actually about three times as common (see Thorium and Uranium). I'd speculate that uranium would be used simply because there's an extensive refining infrastructure in place and plenty of depleted uranium produced as a byproduct of enrichment, but I don't actually know which was used in the Phenix and Superphenix reactors (I'd remembered thorium from an old article about the two, but could be misremembering). --Christopher Thomas 00:54, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

• Citation for the use of DU in race cars would be nice. It seems odd, as it would burn in a crash fire and produce heavy metal contamination.
• I'm a Comp Eng researcher, and I haven't heard of uranium oxide semiconductors. According to a quick IEEE publication search, it's occasionally used as a dopant in everything from semiconductors to superconductors to laser media, but is mostly used as an absorbing plate for pinhole-style X-ray optics, when it's used as all. This statement should be removed until suitable proof can be dredged up, and should be couched in terms that more accurately reflect the state of research, along the lines of "some researchers advocate the use of uranium oxide as a semiconductor material, claiming that (foo) (paper link)".

I do not think that any Uranium oxide semiconductor devices have reached the market yet, but the US DOX are considering making such devices. See http://web.ead.anl.gov/uranium/uses/snfwaste/polydu.cfm for details of this and other werid sounding uses of uranium.Cadmium 22:02, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

• I'd put the military applications subsection first. The vast majority of people have heard of DU in its military context (anti-armor projectiles), so that's what they'll most likely be looking for when searching.
• I prefer the original version of the "health effects" section, with the exception that most of the Gulf War Syndrome material should be at Gulf War Syndrome. The old version to me seems more clearly written.

I'm not going to jump into editing this. I'm on sabbatical, and also on a paper deadline. I hope these comments are useful. --Christopher Thomas 21:16, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Update - I've found one paper, at [12]. The research was done at Oak Ridge, which has a vested interest in promoting the use of nuclear-related technologies, but the paper seems legitimate. It was published in a "waste management" symposium, not a semiconductor technology symposium, however, so it hasn't been vetted by people in the field. They've also made a few bloopers (for a bandgap between Si and GaAs, you have all sorts of commonly available options, like InP, and everything in the GaAlInP spectrum, to start with). For solar cells, InP has a band gap of 1.34 eV, right in the range they want, and we already know how to handle and process it. The real problem is also not precisely where the bandgap is tuned, but the fact that you're using one bandgap; efficient solar cells use a multi-junction approach, absorbing high-energy photons in a high-bandgap material, which allows lower-energy photons through to be absorbed in a material with a lower bandgap, wasting less energy. I'm not in a position to talk about their ideas for thermoelectric devices. As far as integrated circuits go, the only thing they've mentioned is the dielectric constant. Nothing about electron and hole mobility, which is vital, nothing about process integration (we use silicon because we can grow an insulating native oxide easily), and handwaving about doping (mostly saying that they need to study it). What you actually need to know is not (just) how soluble the dopants are, but what dopant concentrations are required for a given type of electrical behavior, and how well the "intrinsic" material (without excess carriers of either type) acts as an insulator. In summary, I'm not impressed. As the paragraph from the DU article sounds very similar to some of the phrasing in the paper, I suspect this paper is the primary source of the claims made. If nobody else edits the paragraph, I'll change it when deadlines die down. --Christopher Thomas 21:38, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

• Uranium oxide semiconductors was once under the heading of 'Potential uses' with a ref to a DOE pdf on the topic. The forklift stuff is still in the planning stages too as licencing details get worked out. Again it was in 'Potential uses' and referenced at one point when I put it in. Lost in some edit I guess. DV8 2XL 00:30, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

My point is that I don't think that use as a semiconductor is seriously considered by industry or by experts in the field, for reasons stated above, and as a result of my (brief) literature search on it in appropriate technical databases. Any mention of this potential use should reflect the fact that it's a small minority opinion (and a rather silly one, in my opinion as a Comp Eng researcher). The article read like someone who wasn't quite an expert was doing their best to _find_ a use for UO2 as a semiconductor, as opposed to assessing it on its own merits. --Christopher Thomas 00:54, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree. I find this particularly odd in light of the fact that the main debate seems to be about health effects. The importance of the use of DU for sheilding and semiconductors absolutely pales in comparison to the health concerns. linas 01:09, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

You may want to add some information about other actinide dioxides, NpO2 is a semiconductor but PuO2 is an insulator.Cadmium 22:02, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Given what the alphas would do to the noise level, and the comments above, I have removed mention of DU in semiconductor materials. —James S. 21:02, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Gulf War syndrome

There seems to be some confusion about Gulf War syndrome - as the GWS article states, birth defects are not part of GWS. Therefore that information belongs in this article, not the GWS one. Dan100 (Talk) 15:11, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

• Your right, and no one is disputing that, however some of the material should be reported in both places while there are clams that DU exposure in the War is may be a contributing factor in GWS DV8 2XL 15:15, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Indeed - I've shifted the bit about the possible involvement of DU in GWS to the GWS article. Dan100 (Talk) 15:18, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

And then you deleted it; why? Nrcprm2026 20:12, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Removed passage

Because DU is a chemical toxicant heavy metal with nephrotoxic (kidney-damaging)[13], teratogenic (birth defect-causing)[14], and potentially carcinogenic[15] properties, there is a connection between uranium exposure and a variety of illnesses[16]. The chemical toxicological hazard posed by uranium dwarfs its radiological hazard because it is only weakly radioactive. In 2002, A.C. Miller, et al., of the U.S. Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute, found that the chemical generation of hydroxyl radicals by depleted uranium in vitro exceeds radiolytic generation by one million-fold[17]. Hydroxyl radicals damage DNA and other cellular structures, leading to cancer, immune system damage in white blood cells, birth defects in gonocytes (testes), and other serious health problems. In 2005, uranium metalworkers at a Bethlehem plant near Buffalo, New York, exposed to frequent occupational uranium inhalation risks, were found to have the same patterns of symptoms and illness as Gulf War Syndrome victims[18],[19].

A report written by an Irish petro-chemical engineer stated that in Iraq, the death rate per 1000 Iraqi children under 5 years of age increased from 2.3 in 1989 to 16.6 in 1993, and cases of lymphoblastic leukaemia more than quadrupled. (K. Rirchard (1998) Does Iraq's depleted uranium pose a health risk? The Lancet, Volume 351, Number 9103). I. Al-Sadoon, et al., writing in the Medical Journal of Basrah University, report a similar increase (see Table 1 here). (See Gulf War syndrome for more details specifically on the controversy over the use of depleted uranium in the Persian Gulf War.)

The increase in the rate of birth defects in the children of Gulf War veterans and in Iraqis may be due to depleted uranium inhalation exposure[20],[21]. A 2001 study of 15,000 February 1991 U.S. Gulf War combat veterans and 15,000 control veterans found that the Gulf War veterans were 1.8 (fathers) to 2.8 (mothers) times more likely to have children with birth defects[22]. In a study of U.K. troops, "Overall, the risk of any malformation among pregnancies reported by men was 50% higher in Gulf War Veterans (GWV) compared with Non-GWVs"[23].

Early studies of depleted uranium aerosol exposure assumed that uranium combustion product particles would quickly settle out of the air[24] and thus could not affect populations more than a few kilometers from target areas[25], and that such particles, if inhaled, would remain undissolved in the lung for a great length of time and thus could be detected in urine[26]. But those studies ignored uranium trioxide gas -- also known as uranyl oxide gas, or UO₃(g) -- which is formed during uranium combustion (R.J. Ackermann, et al., "Free Energies of Formation of Gaseous Uranium, Molybdenum, and Tungsten Trioxides," Journal of Physical Chemistry, vol. 64 (1960) pp. 350-355, "gaseous monomeric uranium trioxide is the principal species produced by the reaction of U₃O₈ with oxygen." U₃O₈ being the dominant aerosol combustion product [27].) Uranyl ion contamination has been found on and around depleted uranium targets [28]. UO₃ gas remains dissolved in the atmosphere for weeks, but as a monomolecular gas is absorbed immediately upon inhalation, leading to accumulation in tissues including gonocytes (testes [29]) and white corpuscles [30], but virtually no residual presence in urine other than what might be present from coincident particulate exposure.

I pulled this out for two reasons: One it largely repeats what is stated in the preceding paragraphs. Second while I won't argue that the use of these weapons is wrong, a wikipedia article is not the place to make an indictment. this is not a brief for a prosecutor at The Hague. DV8 2XL 22:37, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I am not sure that this is a sufficient reason to pull these paragraphs. linas 00:47, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

One man/woman's "indictment" is another's statement of fact, which needs to be aired. I agree that this text doesn't belong in Wilipedia; it does, however, belong in Wikipedia, specifically in this article. Will you claim that it isn't scientific enough, as you did with the Juan Gonzalez article (which you insisted must not even be linked here)? Please think twice about your POV before you continue in this direction; this controversy, largely surrounding your deletions, isn't really necessary. Badagnani 22:56, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

• Badagnani your endless accusations are getting tiresome. The text itself in not NPOV and the every policy of Wikipedia is behind me on every one of the edits I have done here. Perhaps you should start a topic on the DU controversy in a new article. DV8 2XL 23:08, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I fail to see what's NPOV in the above paragraphs. linas 00:47, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

That was the core of the scientific source material upon which almost all of my recent edits in the surrounding text were based. Why do you want to delete all those peer-reviewed medical and scientific source links? Replacing. Nrcprm2026 23:10, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

• It's a matter of keeping the article on track and Wikifide, Put the references in the reference section, that's where they belong. All the health section needs is a general review of the issues not a debate, to a paper on DU toxicity. Try to keep in mind that we are writing for a general audience, already the passage is rather thickly worded. Its a big issue for sure and probably needs its own article, here we should try to generalise and link out to more detail. DV8 2XL 23:21, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I think that in exceptional cases such as this, where every word and every phrase will be argued over, it might just be appropriate to link each phrase to its reference. This is the defacto style of citation in scientific literature, and is the style used in some of the more difficult WP articles. Failing to connect references to a given phrase makes fact checking much much harder, and, for contentious topics such as this, would force the editors to be domain experts. In particular, I presume that neither party here has published a peer-reviewed paper on DU toxicity, and thus neither is a domain expert. I suggest that the citations stay as written. linas 00:47, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Was my accusation that you used profanity incorrect? You have not apologized for that (nor even acknowledged it). Maybe tiresome to you, if not. You claim that you don't want the general reader to be bowled away by too much detail, but the details you remove are all of only a certain type. If, as you state, these details should be moved to an article "DU toxicity" or some such, why do you not create such an article and move the material there, instead of moving to Gulf War Syndrome where it does not belong? There are too many unanswered questions, but, in fact, you've already answered them in previous talk page postings, and on your own user page, as to why you delete what you delete. Badagnani 23:28, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

What profanity? To profane is to commit a sacrilege. Where did I do that? As for detail I could quadruple the size of this article going into exhaustive technical detail in some of the other sections, its not necessary there and its not necessary in health issues. How can you accuse me of a not having a NPOV just because I want to bring this article in line with the policies of Wikipedia? DV8 2XL 23:41, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

This is not really a joking matter. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Depleted_uranium&curid=161956&diff=31670865&oldid=31669410#Split_out_links

pro·fan·i·ty ( P ) Pronunciation Key (pr-fn-t, pr-)

n. pl. pro·fan·i·ties

1. The condition or quality of being profane.

2. Abusive, vulgar, or irreverent language.

The use of such language. Badagnani 23:59, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

• For asking you not to be a Donkey? Yes this a laughing matter. DV8 2XL 00:22, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

It is a profanity to call someone a donkey. It is hard to tell who is right and wrong in this debate, but resorting to vulgar language does not help in any way. linas 00:47, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Well that's it Badagnani wins. Apparently teenagers with flimsy egos can routinely slander me in these pages to dead silence yet something as stupid as this draws fire. This is the last straw. I will not edit Wikipdia from this point on. You don't need experts or experienced professionals as editors when you can draw on people of Badagnani's obviously superior talents. DV8 2XL 01:47, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Uranium trioxide gas

This statement But those studies ignored uranium trioxide gas -- also known as uranyl oxide gas, or UO3(g) is nonsense! According to WebElements, UO₃ is a solid which decomposes to U₃ O₈ before it melts. Unfortunately, reference [31] is down right now, so I can't check it. pstudier 00:11, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

The following additional sources beyond Ackerman et al. (1960) cited in the article support the fact that UO3(g) is a aerial combustion product of uranium (please forgive CAPS from the Science Citation Index):

• Nakajima, K; Arai, Y, "Mass-spectrometric investigation of UO{sub 3}(g)", Journal of Nuclear Materials; April 2001; vol.294, no.3, p.250-5
• GREEN, DW, "Relationship between spectroscopic data and thermodynamic functions; application to uranium, plutonium, and thorium oxide vapor species," Journal of Nuclear Materials; Jan. 1980; vol.88, no.1, p.51-63
• ACKERMAN, RJ; CHANG, AT, "THERMODYNAMIC CHARACTERIZATION OF U3O8-Z PHASE," JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL THERMODYNAMICS; 1973; v.5, no.6, p.873-890
• CHAPMAN, AT; MEADOWS, RE, "VOLATILITY OF UO2+/-X AND PHASE RELATIONS IN THE SYSTEM URANIUM OXYGEN," JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN CERAMIC SOCIETY; 1964; v.47, no.12, p.614-621
• DROWART, J; PATTORET, A; SMOES, S, "Heat of sublimation of uranium and consistency of thermodynamic data for uranium compounds," Journal of Nuclear Materials; 1964; v.12, no.3, p.319-322
• ROBERTS, LEJ; WALTER, AJ, "EQUILIBRIUM PRESSURES AND PHASE RELATIONS IN THE URANIUM OXIDE SYSTEM," JOURNAL OF INORGANIC & NUCLEAR CHEMISTRY; 1961; v.22, no.3-4, p.213-229
• WILSON, WB, "HIGH-PRESSURE HIGH-TEMPERATURE INVESTIGATION OF THE URANIUM-OXYGEN SYSTEM," JOURNAL OF INORGANIC & NUCLEAR CHEMISTRY; 1961; v.19, no.3-4, p.212-222

Nrcprm2026 17 December 2005 (UTC)

The rubber bible confirms that UO3 is a solid right up to the point where it decomposes into UO2 and oxygen. I can believe you'd get particles containing both UO2 and UO3 suspended in the air as fine dust, but even then, at the temperatures produced by DU burning, most of what you'd get would be UO2 even if UO3 was produced initially by some wierd reaction under odd conditions. UO2 is only gaseous at temperatures that will boil steel, so no matter what you start with, you'll end up with a fine dust suspension in very, very short order. This is still dangerous, of course, and potentially long-lived. How long it stays suspended depends on particle size, which I don't have information about. --Christopher Thomas 01:00, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

When the U3O8 particles, produced at the burning temperature of between 2200 and 2800 Kelvin, cool through the 1000 to 2000 Kelvin range, they react with O2 to produce monomeric UO3(g) -- not a particle. When they collide with one another, they can decompose, but read the 1960 Ackerman Phys Chem paper cited; the major product of the U3O8 (which amounts to 75% of the particulate products) is UO3(g). Solid UO3 particles with more than one molecule can decompose by giving off O2, but a single UO3 molecule is stuck because UO is electrovalently impossible. Nrcprm2026 01:07, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for the informative response. Have you considered getting a user name on Wikipedia? You seem to be someone who can usefully contribute, and contributions from registered users tend to be better-received than anonymous IP contributions. --Christopher Thomas 01:30, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Done. Thank you, too. Nrcprm2026 04:12, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

About the idea of UO₃ gas I consider that the idea of uranium burning to form a gas to be rather outlandish. I have a good source which states that the Pu metal from an A-Bomb (burst in the air) forms a solid high fired oxide even when the fireball is able to heat things up so much. As a uranium fire is less able to heat uranium and assuming that uranium behaves the same way as 'plut', it would be reasonable to dismiss the idea of UO3 gas being generated.

Radiochemsitry and nuclear chemistry (3rd Ed), G. Choppin, J.O. Liljenzin and J. Rydberg, page 649.

I would like to know what ionization mode was used in :* Nakajima, K; Arai, Y, "Mass-spectrometric investigation of UO{sub 3}(g)", Journal of Nuclear Materials; April 2001; vol.294, no.3, p.250-5. I am well aware that if a actinide oxide is bombarded with a strong laser pulse that small fragments such as UOx ions are generated, but this is very different to a metal fire.Cadmium 20:29, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

If you heat U3O8 to 1500 Kelvin in the presence of O2, UO3(g) is produced. That is a catalytic reaction, as far as I can tell, and not an ionization. The ion is uranium(VI) uranyl, UO2+. Nrcprm2026 21:27, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Plea to anon editor

Hi Anonymous editor, please create and use a login account. This is a rather controversial topic, and it would help significantly if you operated from a non-anonymous account. It would also help if you became much more familiar with Wikipedia policies and practices, since a considerable part of the controversy seems to revolve around the application of these policies. If this weren't such a controversial topic, it wouldn't be a big deal. But it is a controversial topic, so it is. linas 02:05, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Let me add that it is free, and you don't have to use your real name or tell us anything about yourself. It would just help if we knew which of these edits were from the same person. pstudier 02:11, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Okay, sure. Thank you both. Nrcprm2026 04:01, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Make article on health concerns of depleted uranium

I've been suggesting this kind of thing alot lately, but why not give health concerns of depleted uranium its own article. Right now it takes up half of this article and from the look at the initial outline you'd think it took up just a few sentences. I think the Health concerns section is more then big enough for its own article. This sort of thing helps to clean up controversial topics, just look at evolution. I think this sort of thing helps to make articles more concise. Lcolson 03:00, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Seconded. --Christopher Thomas 20:13, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Mass deletions

What the heck is going on here? An editor (today) made huge edits to the article with comment that he is restoring mass deletions, but then there are still elements that were deleted in his edits. Can you please be more careful with this data and not chop up the article in such a haphazard way? Badagnani 19:09, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Dan100 recently made similarly destructive edits to Gulf War syndrome and he is apparently either unable or unwilling to support any of his edits with sources, and has offered not a single peer-reviewed medical or scientific publication in support of himself. Reverting. Nrcprm2026 04:17, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

For some reason, that I can't see, people were moving the health effects section from here to GWS, even though GWS is an entirely different topic. DU can have health implications anywhere its used, not just in Gulf War veterans! I was moving them back. There were no "mass deletions", parts of the articles were merely being moved around. Dan100 (Talk) 10:15, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Dan, the problem was that you removed things from this page by moving them to GWS, and a few days later reverted those contributions away. Why? Nrcprm2026 01:42, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Re-arrangement

Oddly, the explanation of how DU is made and how much there is in the world was moved to the bottom of the article, which is the wrong way round. In an article such as this, you explain what something is, how it's made, how it's used, and what the effects are. Dan100 (Talk) 10:15, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Can anyone use this photo

Dr. Michael Kilpatrick Deputy Director of the Deployment Health Support Directorate Dr. Michael Kilpatrick shows a copy of a depleted uranium study done in Kosovo during a Pentagon press briefing on March 14, 2003. Kilpatrick and Army Col. James Naughton, Army Material Command, briefed reporters on the military uses of depleted uranium and its minimal impact on health and the environment. DoD photo by Helene C. Stikkel. (Released)

I found this photo on the US DOD website, while looking for an image of an A-10 thunderbolt firing its gattling gun, and uploaded it to Wiki-Commons. I though someone might be able to use it for a depleted uranium health effects article (hint, hint;).

Lcolson 03:16, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Kilpatrick isn't a great authority. Dan Fahey has a recording of a conference where he claimed that there were were no cancers observed in DU shrapnel victims, when he had been on the panel at another conference some months earlier where a few very rare cancers in the shrapnel victims were discussed. Nrcprm2026 03:35, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

If the cancers were very rare there was probably insufficient statistical evidence to link them to the use of depleted uranium. Lcolson 19:40, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

No, I mean the types of cancers were rare, with two people of the shrapnel victims suffering when just one would have been many standard deviations above the expected rate:

"On at least two occasions in 2001, DoD spokesmen falsely claimed that no veterans in the DU Program had developed cancer, in an apparent attempt to dampen controversy in Europe about the use of DU munitions in the Balkans," [Congressmen Filner and Rodriguez] wrote. "In addition, in April 2003, an Army doctor was quoted in press stories falsely claiming that no veterans in the DU Program had developed any tumors. These prevarications beg the question of whether other health effects have been observed among these veterans, but not reported."

That "army doctor" was Dr. Michael Kilpatrick of the Office of the Special Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, who is among the top-raking Pentagon officials who create military health policy. Those remarks were made at a NATO briefing.[32]

—James S. 07:23, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, the standard deviation may have been large, but the confidence in the standard deviation was likely low since there were only two people (here's an academic pictoral representation 1). The confidence that a standard deviation is right is proportional to the numbers of samples. You could get a very large standard deviation with just two samples, but the confidance that the standard deviation is correct is just ~75%. If only one person in the sample group had it, the confidence that the standard deviation was correct would be ~50% (so maybe its right, but maybe its wrong, the confidence is just not there). It is mostly because of statistics of low occuarance events that so many medical studies are later retracted. Lcolson 16:31, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

"Genetic Genocide"

I removed the following:

The pyrophoric nature of depleted uranium ignited in munitions causes it to be dispersed into a fine particulate [aerosol] smaller than 1µ [micron]. These DU oxide nanoparticles can be dispersed through any know filter. Consequently, it becomes a radioactive gas weapon whereby contamination is inevitable. After forming microscopic and submicroscopic insoluble Uranium oxide particles on the battlefield, they remain unaffected by gravity, suspended in air and travel around the earth as a radioactive component of atmospheric dust.

The half life of depleted uranium is 4 and a half billion years, but even worse, over time as the Uranium-238 decays, it transforms four times into much more radioactive daughter products or daughter isotopes and they are more radioactive than uranium-238 by millions and billions of times, so the level of radioactivity will increase over time, and that's why we call depleted uranium the Trojan Horse of Nuclear War. Depleted uranium is a nuclear weapon and it is a weapon of mass destruction under the U.S. government definition of WMDs.

Depleted uranium, after it burns, is very very insoluble. It forms oxides that will almost not dissolve. And because they will not dissolve, they will not dissolve in body fluids. And so, the body cannot excrete them through the kidneys in the urine. They go everywhere that a red blood cell or a white blood cell will go. And they stay in the body-millions and billions of them. These alpha particles tear through the cell. They tear through the membrane, which damages the immune system. They tear through the mitochondria, which is your energy system. They tear through the DNA, causing mutations. And then, the energy that they dump in the cell along that path, disturbs the hormones, the molecules in the compounds, the signaling system that helps the cells communicate with each other because they're in a cooperative system.

Use of du munitions contaminates the genetic code.

Let's see:

• Aerosols aren't as much of a problem as UO₃(g).

• "can be dispersed through any know filter"? Actually, micron resperation filters are common. Again, it's the monomolecular gas.

• Some of the oxides are moderately soluble.

• The micron particles in suspension settle out in a matter of hours; the gas doesn't

• The huge half-life length means most of the atom's won't decay in billions of years. The radioactivity isn't going to detectably increase in thousands of years.

• DU is not a nuclear weapon. The chemical toxicity is far worse than the radioactivity.

• Someone needs to open a biology book and learn what hydroxyl radicals do.

• While uranyl exposure does cause an increase in the rate of birth defects, "contaminates the genetic code" isn't the right way to say it.

—James S. 07:17, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

James - I am puzzled about why you removed the comments you listed above. See my letter to Congressman McDermott:

http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2003/Leuren-Moret-Gen-Groves21feb03.htm

for a link to the attachments listed below:

• Aerosols are most definitely a problem when they are in the submicron range. 0.1 micron diameter particles are the average particle size of atmospheric dust. See attach. 5 —Leuren Moret 29 Dec 05

Do you believe that the particulates have been responsible for more uranyl contamination than the UO₃(g), uranyl oxide gas? —James S. 20:43, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

James - When DU burns it forms different oxides that break down at higher temperatures and form other oxides which break down as the temp goes up. The temperature that the oxides form at determines which oxides form, and when quenching occurs the particles formed are mostly hollow Christmas tree balls of DU oxides which have a density of less than 1. These particles with a diamater of 0.1 microns or less have a different physical and chemical nature which follow the laws of quantum mechanics, unlike larger particles. They are much more reactive because they have a greater surface to volume ratio, the electrons have greater degrees of freedom, and other factors characteristic of nanoparticles. Even non-reactive materials such as gold and teflon become very reactive and harmful in the nanoparticle range. For instance particles of teflon larger than 0.1 micron inhaled by mice caused no damage. However when mice inhaled particles of teflon slightly smaller than 0.1 microns for 15 minutes, nearly all the mice were dead in 4 hours. The MATERIAL - whether DU, telfon or gold or whatever is not the problem as much as the size and reactivity of the nanoparticles. I am not sure what you are talking about with the UO3 gas. The DU nanoparticles are all kinds of things depending on the temperature of formation and the quenching conditions. By the time the soldiers breathe it or downwinders on the other side of the planet, it is the dust and nanoparticles that are deadly. It also goes through the skin, gas masks, protective clothing... I mean it goes through everything.

Leuren Moret

If the nanoparticles have a greater surface area, then they should be more soluble. —James S. 09:54, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

In studies of DU aerosols contracted by the US Army with Batelle/Pacific NW labs in the 1970's, 30%+ of the bulk mass of aerosols produced by DU rounds impacting targets were nano-sized particles (0.1 microns and smaller in diameter). (see attach. 3) 70% of particles in the nano range go directly into the blood when inhaled. They also go throught the skin, into the tissues. Particles in this range which are inhaled through the nose pass through the olfactory bulb directly into the brain. These nano-particles are kept aloft by convection in the atmosphere and travel around the earth and stay suspended until they are rained or snowed out of the atmosphere. Plutonium, uranium, and uranium decay products from bomb testing are still suspended in the global atmosphere. The Journal of Environmental Radioactivity had an article in 2002 reporting uranium and uranium decay products were detected on the MIR space mit which covered the sensitive electronics while the MIR was orbiting earth. Lower orbital space is even contaminated.

A good article on atmospheric dust with great NASA photos of vast dust storms is in the March 2005 issue of DISCOVER magazine, in fact its the cover story. In the back of the issue is a paid ad for depleted uranium golf clubs. —Leuren Moret 29 Dec 05

The gas is absorbed directly into the bloodstream, without accumulation in the lung. That is why the urine tests will often show no residual uranium above background levels in highly symptomatic patients. —James S. 20:43, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

James - 70% of the nanoparticles that go into the lungs go directly into the bloodstream and circulate throughout the body. They are filtered out of the blood by the tissues and transported through the cell walls into the cell by the lipids and/or cholesterol. As I said before when the particles are inhaled through the nose they pass through the olfactory bulb into the brain. They are also absorbed through the skin. Larger particles are exhaled or some stay in the lungs. Reactive airway disease is the long term effect.

Leuren Moret

What is the median mass of a nanoparticle? I'm not familiar with reactive airway disease but obvious gonocyte and ova contamination implies bloodstream contamination. —James S. 09:54, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

• Particles in the 0.1 micron range go through all air filters, including HEPA filters. see attach. 4. —Leuren Moret 29 Dec 05

Filter technology has recently advanced, and porous materials of all diameters down to the Angstrom range have been created. Some of them are not very useful in air filters. There is no way to efficiently filter a UO₃-sized particle in a portable filter, and no reports of any such filters having been issued, as far as I know. —James S. 20:43, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

James - They are giving crap to the soldiers - gas masks and protective clothing that are defective and dont do the job. They are using HEPA filters at the nuclear weapons labs that are over 25 years old. What are you talking about filter technology for that the Pentagon is sure as hell not going to spend a dime on for throwaway soldiers? They dont even have body armor or armored vehicles for many. This comment of yours is completely irrelevant.

Leuren Moret

Sorry. There's a difference between something existing and being widely available. —James S. 09:54, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

• DU ceramicized oxides formed under battlefield conditions are extremely insoluble. That is why soldiers who are exposed may not have DU detected in their urine. A negative on the urine test for DU does NOT mean they are not contaminated. The best test for internal DU contamination is the chromosome test which Heike Schroeder et al did on Kenny Duncan and other Balkans and Gulf War soldiers. After 8 years of losing in the courts using urine tests as evidence for his claim that his illness and birth defects in his two children were due to his DU exposure, on appeal he won based on the chromosome studies he was in by Schroeder - Feb. 2004 in the Scottish Courts. This was the first lawsuit ever won by any soldier claiming DU exposure caused his illness/birth defects. This is a landmark, precedent setting case. —Leuren Moret 29 Dec 05

Even UO₂ particles dissolve in lung fluid, over a period of months. Most of the exposure victims correlate well with the preliminary isotopic urine studies by Drs. Durakovic and McDiarmid. As soon as someone explains to them the details of UO₃ contamination, they will have parsymonous explanations. —James S. 20:43, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

James - I dont think you are talking about the whole picture. You have never talked about the nanoparticles of DU. Its not all UO2 or UO3. And the problem is much more with the particles that get into the body, not the ones that stay in the lungs. The cell damage is the biggest problem from DU particles acting as non-specific catalysts, radioactive damage, and the chemical effects of the Uranium. The Uranium has to dissolve in order to react as a uranyl ion. Ceramic DU is very insoluble.

Leuren Moret

I have discussed nanoparticles at length with you, the Italians, the Air Force, the NRC, and on RADSAFE. Have you discussed the solubility characteristics with Dr. Durakovic? —James S. 09:54, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

• The submicron particles do not settle out. And the Army cheated on all of the dispersion tests by using filters improperly and conducting the tests improperly. Air filters are not a proper way to collect submicron particles as was known during atmospheric testing. Special collecting apparatus had to be designed and are used today to study atmospheric dust and pollution. —Leuren Moret 29 Dec 05

According to the page you gave me from the CRC handbook, they settle out slowly. The Health Physics Society has measured this, and while you and I agree that an increasingly smaller proportion of such particles remain suspended, I have no reason to doubt that they would try to misrepresent the bulk of their research, which indicates kilometer-scale plume transits. I believe that the dispersal pattern of UO₃(g) is quite different. —James S. 20:43, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

James - the settling velocity is very slow and what is listed in the CRC handbook refers to laboratory conditions (NO AIR MOVEMENT), but convection currents prevent the particles from settling and keep the particles suspended for decades. The DU dust in the 0.1 micron range stays suspended forever or until rainout or snow remove it from the atmosphere. Smaller particles coagulate and form larger particles. If they have the same charge they repel each other. DU dust and smoke used on the battlefields is completely mixed in the entire global atmosphere in one year. We know that from identifying volcanic ash in the ice record from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, and tropical glaciers. This kilometer-scale plume is baloney. Is that how far cigarette smoke travels? Absolutely not.

Leuren Moret

Well, I'm not sure what you're getting at here. I do agree that hollow particles are going to be more boyant than solid particles of the same diameter. But still, it is so easy to reproduce the particle dispersion and test it. All of the sources I found on this were in approximate agreement about the settling rate, including the page you gave me. —James S. 09:54, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

• DU is a radioactive poison gas weapon which continues to decay in over 20 steps. Thats why I call it the Trojan Horse of nuclear war. When one decay step occurs (attach. 7 - abbreviated decay chain), it damages the cells but some repair may be possible depending on the type/energy of the particle or ray. But when the cell is repeatedly damaged especially during cell division, the damage is much greater. The decay products have very different half lives. Some are long and some are very short. Dr. Chris Busby has written extensively about this - Low Level Radiation Campaing www.llrc.org —Leuren Moret 29 Dec 05

I would say, "poison gas radioactive weapon." We are well aware of the effects of intracellular alpha decay (which usually becomes intercellular several times over.) I have shown you from the Army's own research that the chemical toxicity is a million times worse, in terms of the number of hydroxyl radicals produced. —James S. 20:43, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

James - Why did the Army talk only about the chemical toxicity and not the radioactive effect or even more - the particulate effect? They have access to the platinum plated nuclear weapons labs which have so much money and sophisticated equipment that we call them "A solution looking for a problem"? Why didnt the Army calculate the number of free radicals which are produced by an alpha particle and then apply that to actual exposure levels? One gram of DU emits 12,000 alpha particles per second. 71 residents of Basra who died after the first Gulf War had 150 micrograms of DU per kilo of tissue in their bodies. They were deader than doornails right after dust from those battlefields drifted north to Basra. Free radicals are free radicals whether it is from chemical or radiation, but radiation produces many more free radicals than chemicals.

I'm not sure that follows. If a gram emits 12,000 per second, 150 micrograms would produce 1.8 alpha/s. What does an alpha particle typically rip through 15 or 30 cells? —James S. 09:54, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

One U238 alpha particle emits 4.2 million electron volts of energy. The binding energy of the molecules that make life possible in the cell is less than 10 electron volts. One uranium atom is a nuclear bomb in the cell.

THE ARMY WANTS TO KEEP USING DU, KEEP SENDING OUR SOLDIERS OVER TO BECOME URANIUM MEAT, AND KEEP LYING TO US. THEY DONT WANT ANY RIGHT ANSWERS. THEY ARE CROOKS AND LIARS AND MICHAEL KILPATRICK IS THE BIGGEST ONE OF ALL. ALL FIELD GRADE AND FLAG OFFICERS KNEW ABOUT DU IN THE 70-90'S. THEY HAD TO TEST THE WEAPONS FIRST BEFORE MANUFACTURING AND SALES... NOT TO MENTION USING THEM IN FOUR NUCLEAR WARS: IRAQ, YUGOSLAVIA, AFGHANISTAN, IRAQ

THE US MILITARY NOW HAS 2.7 MILLION DU BOMBS IN SOUTH KOREA. IS KOREA NEXT?

Leuren Moret

How should I know? I'm just hoping they realize what they've been doing before the folks at Argonne start telling us that DU blender blades would be the very best thing for anywhere fine blenders are used. In all seriousness, I agree that there are some serious problems with the military, and I agree that it's important to be vocal about them. I'm just not sure that calling chemical weapons "nuclear" is all that smart for effeciently accomplishing the most important changes. —James S. 09:54, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Anyway, whether it is fission (nuclear bomb/nuclear reactor) or decay products (DU), the ejected energy is in the form of alpha, beta or gamma rays. The energy released along the particle/ray path is what does tremendous damage to biological systems. —Leuren Moret 29 Dec 05

Why talk about the radioactivity when the chemical toxicity is so much worse? —James S. 20:43, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

James - You dont get it.

Leuren Moret

• DU IS A NUCLEAR WEAPON - THE ENERGY COMES FROM THE NUCLEUS. In addition to the radioactive damage, the chemical heavy metal effect and the PARTICULATE EFFECT of nano-sized particles also cause tremendous damage. The particulate effect has been mentioned nowhere in this entire Wikipedia story on DU. Nano DU particles are carried by the cholesterol and/or lipids throughout the body and the cell membrane. They act as non-specific catalysts and screw up the cell functions, ESPECIALLY THE MITOCHONDRIA which provide the energy for all functions in the body and they have their own DNA and RNA. The mitochondria are inherited through the mother so exposing females will impact future generations. The synergistic effect of all three effects plus any other toxins or previous insults to the organism must be considered. —Leuren Moret 29 Dec 05

The chemical toxicity comes from the electron configuration and resulting catalytic properties. I believe both pyrophoric uranium munitions and nuclear weapons are against the law. However, I have a hard time calling incindiary projectile DU weapons, "nuclear." They certainly affect the cell nucleus, and in that sense I guess you could call them "biological nuclear weapons," if you like. —James S. 20:43, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

James - You can parse words all you want. The energy is released from the nucleus of the atom in DU and therefore it is a nuclear weapon although the process is decay rather than fission and it sometimes is referred to as a RADIOLOGICAL weapon to distinguish the difference. DU meets the definition of WMD in two out of three categories under US Federal Code. It is illegal under international law, Federal Law and Military Law. It was illegal before they ever thought of it and violates the poison gas protocol of 1925 under the Geneva or Hague conventions.

Leuren Moret

Certanly we agree that weapons which act off the battlefield and after the battle are illegal. —James S. 09:54, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

• "Free Radicals in Biology and Medicine" 3rd Edit. Halliwell and Gutteridge Oxford Univ. Press —Leuren Moret 29 Dec 05

Page numbers? —James S. 20:43, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

James - read the whole thing.

Leuren Moret

Give me a week or two. —James S. 09:54, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

• Uranium and phosphate structures have a tremendous affinity for each other in Nature. Uranium blocks the metabolic process and soldiers lose weight faster than if they were starving to death. It is a wasting disease because they must convert their own protein (muscle mass etc.) in order to produce glucose. This has also been reported in moose, deer and elk around nuclear facilities. The DNA and histone (controls expression of the DNA) are loaded with phosphate so they will be especially damaged by uranium. The phosphate stuctures in the mitochondria are also damaged by DU. The immediate effect of DU making soldiers sick within 24-48 hours of exposure is the particulate effect. —Leuren Moret 29 Dec 05

Perhaps. I am aware of the ligand problem. I have no first-hand battlefield reports. If I did, I'd pass them to Durakovic as I understand he has been missing some. —James S. 20:43, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

James - You will NEVER get any official first-hand battlefield reports. Anyway you dont need them. There are plenty of other ways to get the information.

Leuren Moret

DU is very very very nasty stuff. The blueprint for DU weapons was a 1943 memo to General Leslie Groves under the Manhattan Project. It is a recommendation to develop DU and fission products as RADIOACTIVE POISON GAS WEAPONS - dirty bombs, dirty missiles, and dirty bullets: attach. 2

The horrendous damage and harm of DU - including the small particle size - has been known in detail since 1943. Thats why they wanted to develop it as a battlefield weapon. —Leuren Moret 29 Dec 05

No argment from me there. Although, the uranyl oxide gas product wasn't published in the science literature until 1960 with the Ackermann, et al., J Phys Chem paper. Although, the way the armed forces tell it in their replies to my first NRC petition, perhaps they learned of it then. The Navy said it was speculative, the Air Force said that they didn't have any supporting documentation, and the Army explained that they needed to determine the dispersal pattern of UO₃(g) ASAP. I'm pretty sure that in 1943 there was widespread agrement that uranium was a serious poison. I wonder if you have any toxicology texts from the 20s, 30s, or 40s which mention uranium? —James S. 20:43, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

James - The US govt knew EVERYTHING including about the nanoparticles and the chemical toxicity in 1943. THE PENTAGON EITHER DID NOT KNOW INITIALLY BUT THEN COVERED IT UP WHEN INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS INFORMED THEM. CROOKS AND LIARS.

Leuren Moret

Sources would be great for this, especially the kind that we can put in the article. I know that there were some detailed toxicological profiles of uranium in Europe in the 1890s-1920s. —James S. 09:54, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

The problem with the Wikipedia DU "story" so far is that the "official" health reports and information used to construct this page are mostly from official govt. organizations of countries using DU and are automatically suspect of being biased. Also some of the editors have an obvious bias and interest in removing or moving information around which is harmful to the govt. If you were using a WMD with horrendous global liability would you write the truth about the weapon? No, of course not. You would use your own agencies to construct a false "official" body of evidence to protect govt. interests which is what the US/UK have done. —Leuren Moret 29 Dec 05

Feel free to edit back in the parts you think I shouldn't have deleted. That's what Wikipedia is all about. It's a big debate. Remember the Monty Python script about wanting an argument? That's Wikipedia. I thrive on controversy, because controversies are the best opportunities for serious improvement. —James S. 20:43, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

James - Wikipedia IS NOT ABOUT TRUTH. WIKIPEDIA IS ABOUT ENFORCEMENT OF THE CANON. The same comemierdas scamming google, yahoo, chat rooms, the internet for NSA are running Wikipedia too. Quit drinking the coolaid... and get real. The backbone of the internet was developed at the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab where I worked. All roads lead to Rome...

Leuren Moret

Well anyway, if you make edits, there's a good chance that they'll stay around for a while, or at least influence the next editor who comes along. If you look at the history of the DU article, you can see strong influences in support of proliferation from Argonne, which technically owns (the licensing of) all the DU in storage. If an Argonne scientist comes up with some way to get 1000 tons of DU used in economically rewarding situations, he or she probably gets a bonus. We've got to stop them before they start pushing the idea of DU blender blades. Or DU cars. —James S. 09:54, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Govt. reports should be used against the govt. to prove they are lying about the real hazards of DU. See "Question 11: What does the US Govt. know about DU?"

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/USknowDU

—Leuren Moret 29 Dec 05

I wonder what Groves and his staff knew about the toxicity of heavy metals. —James S. 20:43, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

James - the scientists working on the Manhattan Project knew everything. Groves just wanted the bombs so he could use them. He didnt care how they made them, he did care if they worked. The only jobs the military has are to kill people and destroy things. DU is a superb weapon because it does both and destroys the genetic future of exposed populations. IT IS ONE OF THE MOST EFFECTIVE GENOCIDAL WEAPONS KNOWN.

Leuren Moret

Do you have any stats on 2nd generation birth defects? —James S. 09:54, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I have provided some powerful govt evidence from various sources which cannot be discredited. I got those sources from Marion Fulk, a Manhattan Project scientist who worked in the nuclear weapons program at the Livermore Nuclear weapons lab where I also worked. He did the research on "rainout" of nuclear materials from atmospheric bomb testing for the nuclear weapons program at Livermore because DOE refused to give Nevada Test Site data to their own nuke lab - Livermore about the bomb testing. The EPA had a secret dairy at the Nevada Test Site all through atmospheric testing and were secretly monitoring the levels of fission products in dairy milk - they (AEC/DOE) wanted to hide this from the nuclear weapons program. —Leuren Moret 29 Dec 05

Thank you for your help, by the way. You deserve to be rewarded for your efforts. —James S. 20:43, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

He designed the equipment to collect nano-sized particles which cannot be collected with air filters. The other person who gave me information is Dr. Ernest Sternglass who was asked by Pres. Kennedy to testify in Congress about the harm of bomb testing on our children. Sternglass convinced the Senate to sign the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963. I think these are extremely reliable sources. In fact much more knowledgeable than any of the Editors on this webpage. And James, although you have tried to cover the DU issue, you do not have the scientific background to really provide expert opinion. You bring up good questions and have done a lot of research, but you are not trained in a scientific field and DU is a very very very complex issue. So before you remove someone else's post, you should consider that you may not know everything, and that person may know more than you do. —Leuren Moret 29 Dec 05

I am unlikely to remove gramatical and factually accurate material which fits into the existing article structure. Again, Wikipedia is about the truth, and the system is designed to help find it. I will have to see the time-series data from the Naval Health Research Center [33],[34] before being able to help you determine whether intentional uranyl oxide gas exposure is a form of genocide. It certainly destroys genetic information. I will profide Zen with the recent details of my FOIA request on his talk page. —James S. 20:43, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

James - read what you wrote here, you are contradicting yourself and confirm that it is a genocidal weapon. Zen was absolutley correct about what he said and here you agree with him.

Leuren Moret

Well, let me play devil's advocate here and say that while most genetic mutations are harmful, not all of them are. The word "genocide" has a specific meaning relative to ethnicity. DU doesn't discriminate by ethnicity; all who inhale it are equally harmed, as are their kids, without regard to race. If the Navy ever sees fit to share their Birth and Infant Health Registry database, and the trend for birth defects over time in increasing, then we're going to have to look at 2nd generation statistics, and who knows how long that could take. —James S. 09:54, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Leuren Moret

Radiation Specialist, Independent Scientist, Livermore Nuclear Weapons : Lab whisteblower

Past President, Association for Women Geoscientists

Environmental Commissioner, City of Berkeley

—Leuren Moret 29 Dec 05

—James S. 09:54, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Here's a good reference for the historical understanding of the toxicity: H. Hodge (1973) "A History of Uranium Poisoning 1824-1942." In: Uranium, Plutonium, Transplutonic Elements, H.C. Hodge, J.N. Stannard and J.B. Hursh, eds. (New York: Springer-Verlag) pp. 1-68. —James S. 09:04, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Cars

Is there a source for the Formula 1 race car story? —James S. 21:03, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Web searching finds only mention in passing, e.g. [35], and only pre-2001 sources. No mention on official Formula 1 site. Since the arrest of Jose Padilla, DU has been more highly regulated in civillian applications. Given the implications, and the RfC questions above, I'm removing that from the list of applications. —James S. 04:36, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

FYI. I am told by a track fireman that it is in use, but like the use of beryllium parts in F1 cars we are not going to know officially about it until the FIA bans it! That's because of the high secrecy around the auto racing business. The FIA current stand is: "If we decide it's an issue we will rule on it." Now this is not to say it should go back in the article yet, but the day it does it will probably be in the past tense. 70.51.173.221 01:27, 13 January 2006 (UTC)