Slashdot Mirror
Depleted Uranium May Stop Kidneys "In Days"
James writes: "The New Scientist, Reuters, and the San Jose Mercury News, are all carrying stories on a U.K. Royal Society report which confirms that depleted uranium shells, used widely in the Gulf War and the Balkan conflicts, are in fact deadly to bystanders. Moreover, it seems that U.S. servicepeople have been most at risk, and civilians remain at risk years after the use of such shells. The Royal Society report is being described as portraying the situation in the most favorable light, and critics say the truth is far worse."
Oh, and I forgot to add -- if the writeup were accurate and the report claimed that anyone walking by a DU shell would suffer critical kidney failure within days, and that was an optimistic spin on reality, don't you think people would have noticed entire tank brigades spontaneously dying from renal failure?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
The kidney is the most likely organ to suffer toxic effects from uranium. The few human studies that have been done indicate that kidney failure is likely to occur within a few days at concentrations above 50 micrograms of uranium per gram of kidney.
Minor kidney problems are thought to be linked with concentrations of about 1 microgram per gram of kidney.
The Royal Society estimated that most soldiers would have levels of 0.005 micrograms per gram of kidney, or less.
Soldiers who survived a tank hit with depleted uranium ammunition would likely have kidney uranium levels of 4 micrograms per gram.
In other words, the slashdot write-up is an example of the worst kind of anti-nuclear hysterical ignorance. This isn't the first time such technophobia has appeared on Slashdot.
evanchik.net
What are the advantages of u238 shells and rounds over lead ammunition or ammunition made out of some other material?
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
A lot of people say "Oh, so DU ammo is dangerous, 'snicker'".
When I was a kid here in Denmark, it was a fairly common event, that some 40 year old WWII "horned" mine was seen drifting into a harbour. I remember that a couple of kids that died, because that rusty old tincan they kicked, in fact was a german stick granade. (those "potatomasher" granades are higly unstable).
Even today it is very common, that fishermen gets a stack of corroded gas granades, usually mustard gas, in their nets, since incredible amounts of WWII gas ammmo, was dumped into the baltic sea after the war.
Some years ago, I visited a woodclearing where german small arms and AA ammo was tried destroyed. It wasn't a well done job; the entire clearing was littered with shells. The holes where the detonations had taken place, was still, after 55 years, without a trace of a single leave of vegetation. Probably caused by the phosphor from the tracer rounds.
The danish coastline was part of the Atlantik Wall, and therefore heavely mined (more than 1.4 million mines). Roughly 1 mineclearer died, for evey ten miles of coastlines, and there are still areas not cleared to this day.
The rest of Europe and the former USSR is littered with WWI and WWII ammo.
The "war most be fought with all means" proponents, really lives in the "here and now", and forget the decades, and centuries that comes afterward, and the huge amount of civilians who has to live on or near the former battlegrounds.
Correct me if I'm wrong, aren't they rather hazardous to the "intended" recipients?
Exactly. And since we have in the past bombed Osama bin Laden's encampments and caves, and we are informed Pakistan that bin Laden has failing kidneys, and may in fact of died this winter if he was not able to get to a working dialysis machine, it may eventually be discovered that the US killed him years ago (following the Embassy bombings?) but that it just took hime years to die.
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