Today's San Francisco Chronicle carries an op-ed piece from bleeding-brain hystericist and junk-science proponent Dr. Helen Caldicott, called "Medical Consequences of attacking Iraq".
Caldicott works herself into a frenzy over the imaginary health consequences of the depleted Uranium that was used in the Gulf War. She calls depleted Uranium a "potent carcinogen". The World Health Organization, in its survey on health effects of depleted Uranium says that it is only "weakly radioactive", in fact used as a radiation shield in medical devices, and that
contamination by DU in the environment was localized to a few tens of metres around impact sites. Contamination by DU dusts to local vegetation and water supplies was found to be extremely low. Thus, the possibility of significant exposure to the local populations was found to be very low.and the WHO says absolutely nothing to suggest that environmental DU is carcinogenic.
Caldicott blames depleted Uranium for various cancers and other illnesses in Iraqi children, but offers zippo evidence of the cause. She also blames the "sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United States and the United Nations" (that evil Kofi Annan!), for depriving Iraq of resources to pay for medical treatment for these children. But she conveniently ignores the fact that it is Saddam's own behavior that has kept the sanctions in place, and that Saddam chose to blow his health care budget on suicide terrorism in other countries.
None of this distracts Caldicott from her tirade against the Bush Administration. As usual, her primary function in life is to fabricate reasons to demonize America, and she doesn't want to be bothered with all the children who really were murdered by Saddam and his supplicants.
Another of Caldicott's unsubstantiated charges is that depleted Uranium caused a number of Iraqi children to born "missing all or part of their brain". But as we see in the person of Helen Caldicott, this can also happen to little girls who are born in Australia.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at October 10, 2002 11:54 AMStefan:
The campigan against depleted uranium is a ploy by militarily weak countries to negate the West's technical advantage. Depleted uranium rounds are extemely effective against most known armour protection. You can't use high explosive anti tank (HEAT) shells because they'll bounce off. Depleted uraiium shells are also easier to train solders with because its trajectory is relatively straight whereas with a HEAT shell solider have to train much longer to compensate for trajectory arc. (HEAT is still used for blowing up building or taking out less armoured veicles)
Also depleted uranium round are effective from far distances. During the Gulf war there's an unofficial record of 5100 m (5,1 km!)by a British Challenger I tank shot that disabled a T 72; another Challenger took out a T 72 in the first shot at 3100 m.
Today's NATO tanks are even more lethal.
I think that the environmental effects should be studied because the uranium is the most toxic substance known to man right now but a ban is unwarranted until we know more
Posted by: xavier on October 11, 2002 01:40 PMCaldicott's easy game, Shark. You should aim higher. Like Maj. Doug Rokke.
No reasonable sane person still believes DU is responsible for Iraqi civilian casualties away from the battle area. But a lot of us are having trouble finding a good reason to reject Rokke's contention that U.S. soldiers and anyone else who actually spent a lot of time climbing in and out of DU-destroyed vehicles were putting themselves at a much greater risk... as apparently happened with members of Rokke's own DU contamination assessment team in 1991.
CAVEAT: No, I do not believe DU caused Gulf War Syndrome, which extended far beyond those likely to have been repeatedly entering destroyed Iraqi vehicles in the desert. However, I've yet to see anyone who was able to firmly dismiss Rokke's more limited claims, and as a soldier that bothers me.
Posted by: BruceR on October 11, 2002 01:46 PMRe Xaviers 'uranium is the most toxic substance known to man right now' comment, try swallowing one gram of depleted uranium v one gram of nicotine and see which one kills you first...
Posted by: Husky65 on October 11, 2002 04:44 PMBruceR: Any medical problem you would have with DU would be heavy metal poisoning, as with lead or nickel. If you had enough to show symptoms, it could be detected. DU is also relatively unreactive, chemically. This is why they have to use fluorine in the gas separation plants.
Posted by: CGeib on October 11, 2002 08:59 PMCaldicott complains about the toxicity of Depleted Uranium. Personally, If I were a soldier, I would be more worried about natural radioactivity in food (eg, due to potassium-40)before working myself up into a panic about DU.
DU is about 99.8% U-238, which has a half-life of 4.51 billion years. Compare that with Potassium-40, with a half-life of 1.28 billion years. It is worth bearing in mind that the daughter nucleides of U-238 decay generally have short half lives, but this is still not enough to get me excited.
This is what the WHO has to say about it:
Depleted uranium
-The uranium remaining after removal of the enriched fraction contains about 99.8% 238U, 0.25% of 235U and 0.001% 234U by mass; this is referred to as depleted uranium or DU.
-DU is weakly radioactive and a radiation dose from it would be about 60% of that from purified natural uranium with the same mass.
-The behaviour of uranium and DU in the body is identical radiologically and chemically.
While I agree that DU gives far too great an advantage to our forces to deny its use, xavier is wrong when he says it is good for training - DU rounds are not generally used in training. They are war shots only. Actual combat was the first time that most Gulf War troops had fired DU rounds. The major advantage DU has over Tungsten is the tendency of tungsten penetrators to blunt on impact whereas DU penetrators jave a 'self-sharpening' characteristic. In addition, the density of DU vs W penetrators is higher.
Also Uranium is far from the most toxic substance known to man. Plutonium is a lot worse in terms of radioactivity, apart from being horrendously toxic in the classical sense. Other short lived radioisotopes are a lot worse than Uranium too. The record for 'the most toxic substance' is generally held to be botulinum toxin, or possible tetrodotoxin (puffer fish venom).
While we're piling on to the comment that "uranium is the most toxic substance known to man," let's not forget the most non-peptidic (not protein, which botulism toxin is, as is ricin, I think.) toxic substance known is maitotoxin, which is isolated from South Pacific coral.
Maitotoxin is supposed to be deadly in milligram quantities... that's a thousandth of about half the weight of a penny.
I wouldn't build a house out of DU, but this effort to make it responsible for child cancers, birth defects and the bad taste of Richard Simmons is getting a little out of hand.
Besides, what's the environmental transfer mechanism? Are people making pillows out of old DU shells for their kids? I'm under the impression that DU ammo is primarily an anti-armor weapon -- what's DU doing in a urban area? I don't know much about Iraqi geography, but I'm under the impression that the majority of tank battles were fought in the desert and NOT in urban environments.
Is there someone who can correct me?
Posted by: Klug on October 12, 2002 08:35 PMThank God she didn't take on fluoride.
Posted by: tim on October 12, 2002 10:11 PMShe's just another Antoinette Liberal. It's not that she's stupid, she just has no idea of reality outside her own limited viewpoint. I go into that a little more deeply on my blog, but not much. Go take a look if you want a grin.
Posted by: nathan on October 12, 2002 11:33 PMPlutonium (Pu) isn't even all that toxic. It's bad for your liver if you manage to ingest it, and it's bad for your lungs if you manage to breath it. But it's so dense that particulate settles rapidly, and the experiments required to determine the impact of inhalation were delayed by the difficulty of keeping enough of the stuff airborne long enough for rats to inhale it.
Also, Pu was incredibly valuable during the Manhattan Project. How to keep it from being stolen? Convince people it was deadly beyond comprehension. Unfortunately, this was done too well.
Posted by: J Bowen on October 13, 2002 08:42 AMMany moons ago I had the interesting experience of hearing good ol' Helen wax eloquent on environmental & other such issues in a speech she gave at an Environmental convention.
Give the gal her due: She is a mezmerizing, funny, and entertaining speaker, and since she speaks mostly to a room of the converted, she doesn't have to worry about being contradicted.
Or she didn't used to anyway.
Thank God for the attentive, and well armed BLOGGER. :-)
Posted by: Kiril on October 25, 2002 09:40 AMDepeleted Urainum may not be all that toxic as say anthrax spores. But it like any other radioactive substance can result in serious helth effects. Why don't western goverments consider other alternatives such as Tungsten-Caribide? A material second only to cystaline Carbon and Borazon in terms of hardness (but far more durable and denser). It is used extensively by the mining industry to drill through the hardest ores. Though it may be more expensive isn't it worth it if it can save even just one person from death or cancer?
Posted by: drew on March 11, 2003 02:37 PM