Depleted Uranium: Army Use & Radioactivity Risk

[swansont]

This is a long set of comparisons regarding cancers, and rates of cancers among military personnel exposed to DU explosions, and those not exposed. The graphs are fairly expressive, and the data is fairly clear. There is such a great divide regarding the pro and con data, the pro and con statements.

http://www.web-light.nl/VISIE/DUREPORT/mirror_dureport.html

The data are clear? I can't tell from that report exactly what they were comparing. It looks like they think there's a difference in the occurrences of different types of cancer for people exposed to DU. I don't understand what their control group is.

The all have a common experience of exposure to a DU explosion, but I'll bet they also have a common exposure to MREs as well as a lot of other factors. Correlation is not causality. Unless I'm missing something, this doesn't look like good science at all.

 

[russ_watters]

The data are clear? I can't tell from that report exactly what they were comparing. It looks like they think there's a difference in the occurrences of different types of cancer for people exposed to DU. I don't understand what their control group is.

That was my assessment as well. I don't see a description of the groups - not even how many people are in each. Without that, its impossible to draw conclusions from the data.

 

[Dayle Record]

The data is cross cultural, being combined efforts of Iraqi scientists, and data from the University Of New Mexico school of public health. There are a lot of radioactive sites in New Mexico and there is a lot of valid research regarding public health dangers of these various things out of the University Of New Mexico. The Iraqi research was documenting a well defined rise in numerous cancers, over several years following the first DU use there. The graphs showed a dramatic and clear increase of cancers over time past the first DU use in Iraq. While thrashing about looking for some good research, I came across statements regarding plutonium on the ground as much as a mile away from the Nevada Test Site, and Tritium plumes entering the water tables there. I was reading that the date 2070 has been set for the end of cleanup of that stuff.

Keep in mind a lot of damage has happened while we were being assured that there was no danger, at any time.

Those graphs were simple to read, and the method was simple, were you present at a DU explosion, yes/no; then the data regarding cancer, yes/no.

 

[BCRion]

The Iraqi research was documenting a well defined rise in numerous cancers, over several years following the first DU use there. The graphs showed a dramatic and clear increase of cancers over time past the first DU use in Iraq. While thrashing about looking for some good research, I came across statements regarding plutonium on the ground as much as a mile away from the Nevada Test Site, and Tritium plumes entering the water tables there. I was reading that the date 2070 has been set for the end of cleanup of that stuff.

Keep in mind a lot of damage has happened while we were being assured that there was no danger, at any time.

Those graphs were simple to read, and the method was simple, were you present at a DU explosion, yes/no; then the data regarding cancer, yes/no.

But it is not so simple. We need to rule out other potential causes of cancer as well. It may be true there is a correlation between the use of DU weapons and a rise in cancer rate, but was DU singled out as the agent actually causing the increase in cancer? I think not.

In a war you have literally hundreds of chemicals and who knows what put into the atmosphere and inhaled or absorbed into the lungs, blood, etc. Are we sure that it is DU causing this, or the other residues of the chemical explosives used in war? These questions are not addressed.

As far as the Nevada Test Site, so what? They tested real live nuclear (fission, if you will) weapons there and a lot of them. Two entirely different situations that do not apply.

 

[russ_watters]

The data is cross cultural, being combined efforts of Iraqi scientists, and data from the University Of New Mexico school of public health.

Ahh - a "meta-study." I really, really hate those things. It eliminates all accountability for the data, treating all studies as equals.

The Iraqi research was documenting a well defined rise in numerous cancers, over several years following the first DU use there.

I thought the study was all American servicemen?

edit: reread. Ok, this changes everything. A combination of Iraqi studies on Iraqi soldiers - sorry, but that scores reallllllly high on my B.S.-O-Meter. I have no confidence whatsoever in the accuracy of those numbers.

and the method was simple

It may have been, but I don't know because it wasn't explained.

But it is not so simple. We need to rule out other potential causes of cancer as well. It may be true there is a correlation between the use of DU weapons and a rise in cancer rate, but was DU singled out as the agent actually causing the increase in cancer? I think not.

For a comparison, Dayle, have you heard about the data regarding cancer risk from power lines? Same idea. A statistical correlation exists, but no causation has been identified. Most scientists think there are more cancers around power lines because there are more poor people living around power lines.

 

[faust9]

Correlation and Causality.* One common mistake made by people interpreting a correlational coefficient refers to causality.* When we see that depression and low self-esteem are negatively correlated, we often surmise that depression must therefore cause the decrease in self-esteem.* When contemplating this, consider the following correlations that have been found in research:

• Positive correlation between ice cream consumption and drownings
  
• Positive correlation between ice cream consumption and murder
  
• Positive correlation between ice cream consumption and boating accidents
  
• Positive correlation between ice cream consumption and shark attacks

link: http://allpsych.com/researchmethods/correlation.html


I always love these ice cream correlations. The bread is evil correlations is another good one.

Studies that don't involve the scientific method are easy to skew. In the case of DU the studies are focusing on DU as the cause because there is a correlation; however, the more significant correlation is war in general causes illness.

 

[swansont]

For a comparison, Dayle, have you heard about the data regarding cancer risk from power lines? Same idea. A statistical correlation exists, but no causation has been identified. Most scientists think there are more cancers around power lines because there are more poor people living around power lines.

I think you can even go further than that. The idea that power lines caused cancer cropped up because in some power line areas, there were higher-than-normal cancer rates. But IIRC once a full, statistical study was done, it was found that there was no overall correlation, once you removed the economic status bias.

This situation is similar to the silicone breast implants that were banned - women got sick after having the implants, and were convinced that the silicoone was the cause. But the statistics showed that the chances of getting ill after implants was no higher than in general. A case of post hoc, ergo propter hoc. (Robert Park discusses this in Vodoo Science, which is a must read, right after Sagan's The Demon Haunted World) This fallacy is why I disregard the earlier statement of 'XXX blames his illnesses on DU exposure.' It's anecdotal, and doesn't constitute evidence. It has no more weight than saying that there were no nuclear weapons until after women got the right to vote in the US. True, but meaningless from a causality standpoint.

 

[russ_watters]

...there were no nuclear weapons until after women got the right to vote in the US.

I am soooo using that one.

 

[hitssquad]

Meta analyses and Eysenck

Ahh - a "meta-study." I really, really hate those things.

...So did Eysenck. He discusses meta-studies a bit in Genius.

 

[Dayle Record]

Plenty of reputable scientists claim that DU is carcinogenic. I read aplenty regarding this, and thought about it too. I really don't have a lot of emotion about this subject, but I enjoy seeing what happens when this is discussed.

Let us see, those that do not embrace the technology of Depleted Uranium, are:

Hippies
Emotional wrecks
Non thinkers
Poorly versed in Science

If I didn't know better, I would think this were an election year. I don't kiss babies though, they might be radioactive.

When all the money is made
And all the doers are daid,
Then we will find the terrible
The unbearable sad reality;
But only after the statute of
Limitations has run out.
Death is always in fashion.
When you have a pipeline to broker
Oil or drug you take your pick.
We did not go there to make life better,
Nor did we remove a single fetter.
The blue burkas blow in Kabul still,
The old men lie with the boys and the girls
They always will.
The Oilmen, the deathmen bored of their trailers,
Are brushing the dust off their khakis
Picking up their guns,
And looking for rich fields to drain,
Into the deathstream.
The nuclear dust now flows
In the Euphrates and the Tigris,
If only it were blood instead,
This history flows forever now,
Not just the tale of vicious monkeys,
But the tale of poison to deaden
A world. Poison on poison,
Into the veins of the world
The Amazon, the Mississippi,
The Orinoco, the Rhine, cannot
Drown our misdeads.
If there is a judgement day
How the scientists will cry,
I was just doing my job,
The figures bore this out,
The studies said...
It was within acceptible limits...
The risk outweighed the consequences,
I did what I was told to do.
It was the lesser of the two evils.

 

[faust9]

I don't think anyone here disputes the fact that DU is a know carcinogen. The sun is a know carcinogen. Diesel fuel is a know carcinogen. Acrylamide is a known carcinogen. Smoking is a known carcinogen... I could go on but it'd be pointless. The simple fact that a material is a carcinogen doesn't make it any less or more dangerous than the 1000 plus things you encounter on a daily basis that are just as harmful. Heck working with epoxy or super glue can be more dangerous than the limited exposure to DU on a battle field.

 

[Kojac]

And I thought he'd given up and gone home...

Seriously. Everyone absorbs carcinogenic material daily. Who really cares if DU is too? The point is that it's not really adding any discernable risk. Hell, our soldiers probably are in more danger from the cigarettes they smoke and the secondhand smoke their teamates blow their way. I kinda figure we've gone over this 5 zillion times now...there is no hard data that backs up claims of real danger stemming from DU. There are plenty of nay-sayers who don't like the word 'Uranium' and scream 'radioactivity', when in reality, what we've got is an emitter of alpha's and beta's (hardly a DEADLY killer), and a bunch of people who should be more worried that it's a heavy metal then a source of radiation poisoning. Shoot. Until you can really show us some data, quit with the poetry and the claims that it's as harmful as *gasps* Aspartamine.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Depleted uranium is uranium at its final isotope, where it can not release any more radioactivity.

 

[swansont]

Depleted uranium is uranium at its final isotope, where it can not release any more radioactivity.

Uh, no. There are no stable isotopes of Uranium.

 

[russ_watters]

Plenty of reputable scientists claim that DU is carcinogenic.

Dayle, with statements like this, you continue to display your willful ignorance on the subject. Like the others said, of course its a carcinogen: its a heavy metal! What we've been trying to pound into you (unsuccessfully) is there is a difference between chemical properties and radiological properties. You are still mixing the two up. Besides which, just saying a substance is carcinogenic doesn't say much of anything about what the risks are with it.

I really don't have a lot of emotion about this subject...

There are a lot of things that could kill you - or me, or an Iraqi schoolchild. DU is one of them. But DU is so low on the list that it does not warrant the attention you and some others give it. Why not pick on cigarette smoke? Air pollution? Stairs! As I said before, you latched on to DU because of an emotional reaction to the word "urnanium."

 

[Dayle Record]

I "Latched onto this" because this stuff is being tested extensively less than 40 miles from where I live. There are a lot of conflicting discussions regarding this, in the scientific community. I know that as a heavy metal it is poisonous, and radiologically it is carcinogenic, if it is taken into the body. It is taken into the body if you are in close proximity to a DU weapon discharge, or if you pick up a shrapnel wound, or if you are a child, handling pieces of spent ordinance, and playing in the dust, and putting your hands in your mouth as children do. I am not sure what happens if you grow a vegetable garden over where DU explosions occurred. I don't need to be pounded. I have done a lot of reading about this, especially since starting this thread, and I have followed up on every point. I don't like the patronizing tone, you take with me.

The future of warfare needs to be peaceful distribution of the world's resources, and conflict resolution before it becomes war. The money spent on weaponry, and warfare, insures that it will persist, as it impoverishes the world, and instability from that results in warfare. When war becomes more and more toxic, and new and longer lived pollutants are disbursed we pay for generations into the future, for whatever short term gain came from warfare.

This substance is, whether mildly or massively, radioactive. This substance is toxic, and carcinogenic. These explosions occur at such a high temperature that new compounds are formed at impact whose nano properties have not been tested, because that is one of those side issues that was skirted when DU was approved for use. It is thought that the new compounds that form, and the unusual shape of the molecules are the main carcinogen.

Again, I don't need to be pounded, and why don't you substitute a more blatant mysogynistic name for the emotion that you are projecting onto me. All of this personal projection of my supposed emotional state, is highly subjective, and innacurate. I am concerned that this will turn out to be one of those things that will really cost this nation, enormous amounts of monies in reparations later.

 

[Kojac]

yeah...world peace would be nice. I agree. Nice, however, is a whole different ballgame then realistic. By the way, no one fusses about our soldiers handing out cigarettes to the residents of warzones, or the fact that we use x-rays, MRI's, or CAT scans in medicine, or the radiation emitted by smoke detectors, TV's, your computer monitor, microwaves...or any other things I see every day. Aspartamine is used in everything, along with MSG, and every circuitboard I've ever encountered is covered in soldering- tin and lead. no one fussed about the fact that when they started ripping asbestos out of schools and public buildings they actually put more asbestos into the air and exposed more people to it then would have happened had they just left it. you know what it is? it's political. it's a card that's being played to advocate change beyond just changing ammunition. it's a card that's being played because some people don't like the fact that we even have a military, because we're involved in conflicts that offend their sensibilities. I really don't know about you, but my view is that the bigger and badder our guns our, the more likely it is that the friends i personally have in Iraq right now will come home alive and well, because the tank that might have shot them, or the truck carrying radical gunmen was shredded with a nice, dense bullet, eliminating the threat before it really even became a threat. thank God they are testing such materials, and for all i care, they can test them around where i live. (as long as they're not too loud, i'd like to get some sleep at night) shoot. the things aren't any more harmful then tons of stuff we see every day. just quit it.

 

[russ_watters]

I don't like the patronizing tone, you take with me.

Ditto for you, though your tone is maybe a little more sanctimonious than patronizing.

The future of warfare needs to be peaceful distribution of the world's resources, and conflict resolution before it becomes war.

Thats all well and good, but 1. that has nothing to do with this discussion, 2. that world does not exist, and 3. wishful thinking will not make it happen.

Again, I don't need to be pounded...

If you keep posting, I'll keep responding. If you interpret that as "pounding," that's up to you.

...and why don't you substitute a more blatant mysogynistic name for the emotion that you are projecting onto me.

The only person here to make an issue of your gender is you. With a name like "Dayle," I initially assumed you were male. But it doesn't really matter to me either way. On issues like this, being emotional is not strictly a female trait.

All of this personal projection of my supposed emotional state, is highly subjective, and innacurate.

Your initial arguements made comment on your emotional point of view relevant: your initial arguments were based largely on emotion, not science (your very first sentence was an emotionally charged accusation of disinformation). You've gotten better, but you haven't let go of the emotion and argued strictly based on science. edit: reading back, you argued specifically that emotion should play a role in science. You seem to be backing away from that, which is good, but you haven't let go of the emotional content of your argument yet.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Here is a website about DU:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium

 

[Oyéah]

Today in New Scientist the link between plutonium and cancer is discussed. This is an article that discusses the fact that the DU being manufactured is not pure and contains Plutonium, and other more radioactive isotopes. The article also stated that the Navy has withdrawn from use of DU due to health concerns. Here is a link to the Dirty Du article.

http://www.firethistime.org/plutoniumcontamination.htm

Here is a link to today's New Scientist article

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996152

 

[Arctic Fox]

Could the DU be recycled for use in something like an RTG?

I’m thinking that DU wouldn’t get (temperature)hot enough to run an RTG... comments?

 

[russ_watters]

Could the DU be recycled for use in something like an RTG?

I’m thinking that DU wouldn’t get (temperature)hot enough to run an RTG... comments?

I don't think so either - it has an extremely slow decay rate.

 

[flylake]

As one poster to this forum was so fond of noting, one single particle of radiation can cause a fatal cancer. It is not a question of whether DU ammunition is dangerous, it is a question of whether it is better or worse than the alternatives. The alternative to DU ammunition is not peace. The alternative is lead. Lead is so toxic, that without even being radioactive it is a far greater environmental hazard than DU. However, depleted uranium has a much scarier sound to it, and that mobilizes the howlers. Granted, we'd all be better off not shooting any high-velocity, heavy, metal objects around, but if we're going to be doing it anyway, we're better off with DU than lead.

Njorl

I question everyone's paranoia about lead. I've worked around lead my entire life and show no ill effects. My grandfather worked lead for 60+ years and was alert, healthy and physically and mentally active well into his 90s (died in an auto accident - hit by a drunk driver, not of illness). New England's only natural resource is lead, and if you live anywhere in northern New England you are exposed to it every time you hike through the mountains or fish in a river.

Sure, if you sit down and ingest a meal of lead every day, you'll have issues, as you would if you were hit by a lead bullet, but I have never seen any documented studies that legitimately show "lead pollution" is creating any sort of hazard to humanity.

 

[Francis M]

I noticed the next to last post on this was in July. Question did anybody actually answer the persons question in the first place or did this degenerate into an argument (as usual)? I can only hope that this "discussion" ended up in either the trash heap or was moved to the POLITICAL/OPINION section of the forum. The health risks from DU rounds are worse as a heavy metal than from the radiaton, no doubt. But that would be from inhalation or ingestion. SO unless we're grinding these bullets up and sniffing/eating them I wouldn't worry. Id' be more worried about the health risk of getting hit wiht a DU round. YOu know there has been a proven corollation to getting shot with one of these things and death. The AP round a tank uses is a thin metal rod (about 40mm)? shot out of a 105-120mm cannon. It's nothing more than a kinetic kill weapon. Also if you were close enough to breathe the vapor/dust from a DU tipped cruise missile or cannon round the cuncussive blast would kill you. There's more of a health risk from the general vaporized smoke and debris from the destroyed target. How do we separate that possible health risk from that of the DU? PLease let's answer this persons question and take the political discussion to that section of the forum?

 

[russ_watters]

I question everyone's paranoia about lead...

Sure, if you sit down and ingest a meal of lead every day, you'll have issues

Well, that's just it: with DU, the trouble happens when you inhale it. With lead, the trouble typically happens when you eat it. That's why lead paint was a problem (kids would eat it), lead pipes - and in the middle ages in England, lead utensils.

I have never seen any documented studies that legitimately show "lead pollution" is creating any sort of hazard to humanity.

"Lead pollution" would be difficult and that's where most criticism of DU comes in: DU oxidizes and vaporizes easier. Nevertheless, I have seen studies of lead-linked illness in shooting ranges.

 

[russ_watters]

There's more of a health risk from the general vaporized smoke and debris from the destroyed target. How do we separate that possible health risk from that of the DU?

This is my biggest criticism of anti-DU arguments. War is unhealthy, period. Whether you're standing next to a tank that just blew up, breathing everything from DU to burning plastic, to burning diesel fuel, or just inhaling the fumes your rifle gives off when you fire it, soldiers are exposed to a lot of hazardous chemicals.

I doubt DU makes up a significant fraction of reports of "Gulf-war syndrome," for example.

 

[Francis M]

This is my biggest criticism of anti-DU arguments. War is unhealthy, period. Whether you're standing next to a just blewtank that up, breathing everything from DU to burning plastic, to burning diesel fuel, or just inhaling the fumes your rifle gives off when you fire it, soldiers are exposed to a lot of hazardous chemicals.

I doubt DU makes up a significant fraction of reports of "Gulf-war syndrome," for example.

I Also have to wonder what kind of health risks and problems are brought on by psychological trauma and stress.

On a side note I also saw a post with a poll asking if war was good or necessary? Boy is that a slippery slope to get on.

 

[Dayle Record]

Sure, if you sit down and ingest a meal of lead every day, you'll have issues, as you would if you were hit by a lead bullet, but I have never seen any documented studies that legitimately show "lead pollution" is creating any sort of hazard to humanity.
flylake is offline Reply With Quote


There is significant danger from lead, in every pediatrician's office in Salt Lake, there is a map, showing that you should be tested for lead poisoning if you live in the older area of town.