When you read “dirty bomb,” you probably think of terrorists – Jose’ Padilla, Adnan el Shukrijumah, Osama bin Laden. But the premier producer of “dirty weaponry” – weapons containing radioactive material – isn’t in Pakistan, or North Korea, or anywhere other than the pretty, mild-mannered, Midwestern town of Edina, Minnesota. A company called Alliant Technologies is at home amid the golf courses and subdivisions.
Alliant Technologies makes its living by being one of the largest private contractors for the U.S. Department of Defense. Among its many products, Alliant appears to be the only U.S. provider of weapons loaded with “depleted” uranium, or DU.
The recent war in Iraq has certainly been good to Alliant Technologies. They’ve been growing since the start, and they’re so busy they’re actually not sure they can even meet the needs of the DoD for further weapons production. They are not out of uranium, there is plenty of that. In fact, the raw materials for these munitions comes from the Deparmtent of Defense free of charge.
That’s right – the depleted uranium is free. These munitions were designed to be given away free to Soviet tanks, too. From a particular angle, a round of this stuff will "self-sharpen" and burn right through the armor plates between the turret and the tank body. Or whatever else has the misfortune to be temporarily in front of it.
The U.S. military loves DU. It’s heavy and dense – when you put it in a bullet or missile, it packs a wallop. It’s also good for making tank armor with, since DU armor plates are hard to penetrate, even if you have DU bullets.
When objects made of out depleted uranium are shattered, they release vaporized uranium into the air and onto the ground. According to the U.S. military, aerosolized DU isn’t radioactive enough to harm people or the environment. (MilaciÄ¿ S “Examination of the health status of populations from depleted-uranium-contaminated regions,” Environmental Research vol 95, issue 1).
They claim that studies of U.S. soldiers with DU exposure showed that being exposed to DU doesn’t cause long-term damage – even if it’s in shrapnel embedded in your body. "The bottom line is that there is going to be no impact on the health of people and the environment,” says Dr. Michael Kirkpatrick, the Deputy Director of the Deployment Health Support Directorate at the DoD.
But you have to wonder whether the U.S. military is protesting a little too much. Even as they insist DU is safe, army training manuals require that anyone who comes within 25 meters (about 80 feet) of any DU-contaminated equipment or terrain wear respiratory and skin protection, and states that “contamination will make food and water unsafe for consumption.”
A person insisting on two conflicting things like this would likely not be telling the truth, experiencing the discomfort that psychologists refer to as cognitive dissonance. Or, they could be a psychopath, who experience no such discomfort.
Large organizations like the U.S. military are able to pull this off because they have whole teams of people dedicated to propaganda, and separate teams of people dedicated to teaching the soldiers how to stay alive.
Let us suppose that DU is completely safe for healthy soldiers in the short term.
DU and Radiation
The Prime Minister Big Poppa of the Uranium Posse, Uranium-235 gets its rep as radioactive and dangerous because it spits out atomic particles at incredible rates. But naturally occurring uranium isn’t mostly U-235; mixed in is a much larger amount of U-238, which is sometimes called “depleted” uranium because it’s natural uranium with the U-235 taken out as much as is convenient. It’s a misnomer.
“Depleted” doesn’t mean “harmless.” DU is still over 60% as radioactive as U-235 [?]. A number of studies performed independently of the US government suggest that DU exposure increases the risk of cancer (source). The military is quick to dismiss the 6 out of 100,000 chance of getting lung cancer if you inhale the stuff, but that’s still twice the incidence of lung cancer of the average population. But that is per exposure.
Heavy Metal Is Bad for You
DU damage isn’t just about radiation; DU also a heavy, dense metal. Ingesting heavy metals can interfere with the body’s day-to-day chemistry, everything from basic energy production to the functioning of brain cells; just ask any parent whose child has suffered lead poisoning from old paint or water from old pipes. In the case of DU, your body can get rid of most of it. The rest goes through your kidneys. Over time DU can damage your kidneys – and that can mean either dialysis or death.
Ironically, even the studies that the DoD says show DU is “safe” in fact show that DU has negative effects on the human body, though the studies haven’t gone on long enough for all the long-term effects to appear. The studies note that there are subtle but permanent changes in the way the soldiers’ brains work, and not for the better [1]. In addition, many of these soldiers show mutations in their blood and kidney cells [2][3]. Mutations in cells don’t mean much now, but since DU effects can take up to 25 years to manifest, cancer may be the final outcome for many DU-exposed soldiers and civilians [4][5].
Problems Come Home to Roost
So what’s going on here? Is the military simply being cautious – or disingenuous? Scientists like Dr. Keith Braverstock, former member UK Medical Research Council, suggest that the WHO and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) suppressed vital data about DU health risks …under pressure from the U.S. government. Dr. Doug Rokke, a Vietnam veteran and former nuclear health physicist for the U.S. army, has gone on record saying that DU is a potential health hazard. Rokke also suggests that the U.S. government has been deliberately delaying testing of persons exposed to DU to prevent information about DU dangers from being publicized. But to date the military has simply ignored or denied the claims of these experts, in a manner similar to their dismissal of the concerns of local citizens groups like AlliantAction.
Unfortunately, ignoring DU concerns may just bring the problems closer to home. DU munitions plants could easily become targets for terrorist attacks – a single bomb or a rogue airplane could easily turn a “harmless” munitions factory into a weapon of mass disruption – causing panic and long-term health effects among people living near the plants. Since the military won’t look more carefully into the dangers of DU, it may be time for more civilians who live near DU munition plants to take action. After all, the dangers of DU are not ones we want to have brought home to us.
[1] McDiarmid MA, Military Medicine, Vol 167, issue 2 Suppl, 2002
[2] McDiarmid MA "Health effects of depleted uranium on exposed Gulf War veterans: a 10-year follow-up.” Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health Vol 67, issue 4: 2004.
[3] Schröder H, “Chromosome aberration analysis in peripheral lymphocytes of Gulf War and Balkans War veterans” Radiation and Protective Dosimetry, Vol 103, issue 3, 2003
[4] Samson, C. “The ghost of Saddam and UN sanctions,” The Lancet, Oncology Vol 5 2004
[5] Rooney, A, “The legacy of depleted uranium,” The Lancet, Oncology Vol 4, 2003)
Other interesting reading:
[6] Horror of USA’s Depleted Uranium in Iraq Threatens World
[7] Bolton JP, “Battlefield use of depleted uranium and the health of veterans,” Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps Vol 148, 2002
[8] International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear WarDepleted Uranium Weapons and Acute Post-War Health Effects: An IPPNW Assessment
Read News about Alliant
Check this site out if you want to see what this stuff does to innocent children. People wondered why the Germans never did anything, history will ask the same question of us.
http://www.bushflash.com/pl_lo.html
Peace,
Fred
Great article! Beautifully written and insightful. As omeone from Edina, Minnesota, I very much appreciate your bringing it to our attention.
So OK; the military makes tank armor and ammo out of DU, and then turns around and says that anyone who comes within *25 meters* of “DU-contaminated equipment” wear resperatory and skin protection.
The hey? Is there some definition of “contaminated with” that doesn’t include “made of”? Or are soldiers expected to wear hazmat suits at all times while in their tanks? Or is the Pentagon just being nuts again? Wait, don’t answer that; I think I can guess.
The depleted uranium is not really really dangerous, until it blows up. With weapons, blowing up is sort of the point. When this happens a sphere around where this happened is contaminated.
In other words these devices deliver radioactive contamination when they are used as indended. That’s poison.
That is willful nuclear contamination, and against the Geneva conventions covering the laws of war. In America, these conventions have legal authority granted directly from the Constitution of the United States. Despite what you may see on FOX’s ‘Over There’ you don’t need a name, rank, and serial number to be covered by the rules of war, since these rules govern our own behavior, how we treat people when we haven’t killed them.
These rules say that when you spread poison over an area, like a ‘dirty bomb,’ that’s foul. Now you may feel that it’s okay to poison the area as we depopulate it but let’s at least know what is going on and then agree or disagree on if it is right or wrong.
At least that way, we will both know what is going on, even if we don’t agree.
You might feel that we’ve just got to get rid of this nuclear waste and shooting it at Iraqis is better for us than burying it in Nevada.
Directly causing human birth defects and lifelong suffering for hundreds of years into the future. No big deal.
At least be up front about it.
When one of these rounds explodes or is shot at something and hits it or misses it and hits something else the uranium vaporizes in an incredibly high energy reaction. This contaminates everything around where this happens.
As a point of fact this type of contamination is generally accepted as the most likely cause of Gulf War Syndrome, which affects our own troops in a serious way long after they have been removed from the contaminated area.
We don’t even talk about the people who are still living there, and the effects on them. But they are suffering and you and I and the people in our government are responsible.
If these bullets hit something like a well in a neighborhood, for example, then everyone living in that neighborhood will be affected for generations, long after everyone that you and I both know have passed.
Do we have the right to do this?
I think that we should stop doing it.
[...] Unfortunately, it’s toxic. We don’t really know how toxic it is, but the Army Manual “require that anyone who comes within 25 meters (about 80 feet) of any DU-contaminated equipment or terrain wear respiratory and skin protection, and states that contamination will make food and water unsafe for consumption.” (1,2) [...]