Afghans to probe whether U.S. used depleted uranium

[maddezmom]

Source: Reuters

KABUL, April 19 (Reuters) - The Afghan government plans to investigate whether the United States used depleted uranium during its invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and if it might be linked to malformed babies born afterwards.

Parts of Afghanistan, particularly the mountainous region of Tora Bora in the east -- the suspected hideout of al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden -- came under heavy U.S. bombing in late 2001 when the Taliban regime was ousted.

Depleted uranium is a heavy metal used in some weapons that can pierce armour. It has small levels of radioactivity associated with it.

Cases of malformed babies delivered in the heavily bombed Afghan areas have come to light, Faizullah Kakar, Afghan deputy public health minister for technical affairs said on Saturday, citing an unnamed U.S. expert.

Kakar told Reuters the Afghan government planned to investigate the matter.

Read more: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/ISL146529.htm

[fed-up]

1. K & R nt

[merh]

2. some one will derail the investigationg

I admire their courage, but someone will derail it.

[Dr.Phool]

3. Uh, check out Iraq.

I think all of their topsoil is now depleted uranium dust.

When the chickens come home to roost in this country, it ain't gonna be pretty.

[me b zola]

5. My DIL returned from Iraq and is now pregnant

I am deeply concerned about the health of the baby. I tried to tell my son about this before she was deployed, tried to tell them that when she returns they shouldn't have any more children.

[pasto76]

7. A female in my platoon

and my buddy got together while we in Iraq. Their daughter, conceived and carried for 5 months in Iraq, was born no complications, no deformities. Shes a pretty cute, normal girl. I wouldnt worry too much.

SGT PASTO

[lovuian]

31. Just cause a child is born without complications

doesn't mean that the child will develop luekemia when they are 5 -10 years old

http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio.jsp?...
LEUKEMIA IN HIROSHIMA CITY ATOMIC BOMB SURVIVORS

Infants and children are extremely susceptible

I hope all goes well for the baby

plus we are talking about metal toxicity due to breathing in dust particles with the radioisotope
it attaches to the DNA causing illness...especially after the missile explodes

[grahamhgreen]

14. That's called 'aerosolized uranium oxide"

[izquierdista]

4. Investigate?

Aren't there other questions to be answered which are more uncertain? Like the direction the sun rises in the morning sky? Or whether the Pope is a Catholic?

They should spend their effort planting Jimson weed, so it can scavenge the DU and they can cut it and bury it deep, before the situation gets as bad as it is already in Iraq.

[Javaman]

6. Probe? LOL this is laughable.

all they need to do is ask any tech in a tank. It's not like they keep the shells in special disguised wrappers.

Hell, just walk out into a field where there was a battle with a Geiger counter, and that will tell you everything you need to know. Just remember, don't inhale. It's not like pot. LOL

[sir pball]

8. Sigh.

Slap the name "uranium" in there and all of the sudden it's ZOMG TEH POISON O NOES!!!111...while it's certainly not something I'd eat a heaping spoonful of, it's really just another heavy metal (of which there's already a metric assload of being sprayed all over the Middle East on a daily basis). Three quick tidbits to know about DU:

-It's about 60% as radioactive as natural uranium, which is "safe" enough for no-questions-asked public sales. It's actually used as radiation SHIELDING in medical equipment. It's the highly-enriched stuff you have to worry about. (1)(2)

-"A recent United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report giving field measurements taken around selected impact sites in Kosovo (Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) indicates that contamination by DU in the environment was localized to a few tens of metres around impact sites. Contamination by DU dusts of local vegetation and water supplies was found to be extremely low. Thus, the probability of significant exposure to local populations was considered to be very low." (2)

-"The radiation doses from depleted uranium (specific activity only 15 Bq/mg)(U-238 has a 4.5 billion year half life) are very small compared to potential toxic effects from uranium ions in the body…as to its "heavy metal" toxicity, the closest analogy is lead. However, metallic lead has considerably higher toxicity than metallic uranium. Compounds of lead are much more hazardous than compounds of uranium since uranium tends to form relatively insoluble compounds which are not readily absorbed into the body. Also, lead within the body affects the nervous system and several biochemical processes, while the uranyl ion does not readily interfere with any major biochemical process except for depositing in the tubules of kidney where damage occurs if excess deposition occurs." (3) Whoops...what are 98% of the bullets we shoot made up of again?

Don't get me wrong, both DU and lead are some nasty nasty metals, but DU is not some unholy blend of benzopyrene and polonium, the merest touch of which will irrevocably cause hideous tumors all over your body if the radiation poisoning doesn't kill you first. No doubt it has been used in Afghanistan (as has been said already, it's hardly a secret - APFSDS tank round and 30mm ammo for the A-10 are both made of it), and given the dry, dusty environment, population monitoring would be a good idea, but at the same time it's not tantamount to spraying VX or dropping nukes.

(1)
(2)
(3)

[sir pball]

9. Oops, forgot to mention.

The explosives used in all those bombs are also extremely toxic and carcinogenic. RDX, probably the most commonly used military explosive, "showed positive mutagenic activity in three of four in vitro bioassays". (1) The latest greatest weapons that have been designed to maximize impact damage while minimizing distance damage are extra-nasty, packing pre-finely-powdered heavy metal alloy in with the explosive. "The toxic and carcinogenic effects of the HMTA may cause increased deaths in those who survive the initial blast or in people who inhale the dust…A more recent U.S. Department of Health study in 2005 found that HMTA shrapnel rapidly induces rhabdomyosarcoma cancers in rats. The tungsten alloy carcinogenicity may be most closely related to the nickel content of the alloys used in weapons to date. However, pure Tungsten and Tungsten Trioxide are also suspected of causing cancer and other toxic properties, and have been shown to have such effects in animal studies." (2) There's no reports of these being used in Afghanistan, but given the nature of the combat there it certainly wouldn't surprise me.

(1)
(2)

[Fedja]

10. Ohhhh ok.

"Population monitoring would be a good idea, but at the same time it's not tantamount to spraying VX or dropping nukes."


So let's see, as long as it's not VX or nukes, it's fine? Fine to the point where even a probe into the consequences makes you mock the affected people?

Bottom line, nobody is saying that DU is the 1st cause of death in those places. However, it does have negative effects on the population, and cases of disfigured newborns do increase in regions littered by DU leftovers. To stress again, I'm not saying every newborn in a DU-pulluted region is disfigured, but statistically, the chances are higher.

Now I assume you're not raising a child born in a region like that and with limbs missing from birth, which makes it possible for you to mock other people's plight. You, Sir, disgust me.

[sir pball]

11. I'm hardly mocking

My main point was that lead (and tungsten for that matter) are far worse than DU in terms of long-term effects on the population, but I don't see any clamor for banning of their use or investigations into the consequences.

[StudentThinker]

12. oh man

Sir pball:

First of all, we're not talking about big lumps of DU sitting around and simply spreading a little radiation love. It's DU dust that is the problem - once it's inhaled it REALLY fucks up your system. This is the current problem in Iraq. Also, while you stress that it's somehow 'not that bad,' have you stopped to ask whether we ought to be chucking loads of radioactive material at each other at all? I mean, is it 'OK' if it just has a bad effect on a few Afghani babies? I bet you wouldn't be arguing this way if someone had just shelled your town with DU weapons and your next child was born deformed.

Second, while there is as yet no existing law specifically banning use of DU as such, there are a number of calls from weapons experts for such a law to be passed. There is also a real argument to be made that DU constitutes a weapon of mass destruction under the terms of international law (and hence illegal). It meets the criteria of WMD under US law. Oh, and arguing that other weapons have bad effects doesn't JUSTIFY the use of DU.

From the 2003 World Uranium Weapons conference:
"The evidence coming from the scientists, health professionals and legal experts at this Conference is clear: DU is causing significant health effects worldwide, and it illegal under existing international law and convention," concluded conference planner Marion Küpker.... "Now it's up to the activist community to force rogue governments like the US and Britain to observe international law the same way they preach it to other nations."
http://www.grassrootspeace.org/depleted_uranium_hamburg...

Half-life of 4.5 billion years - this shit isn't going away soon. Do you really think it's ok to spread it all over the Middle East just because it's not as bad as plutonium? Christ.

[Lorentz]

13. You're not listening

You completely missed the point. The fact that DU is radioactive (gasp!) is inconsequential. It's activity rate is so incredibly low that it might as well not be radioactive. I have various pieces of DU (and natural uranium ore) in my office. You can pick them up and look at them, without fear of dying.

As you indicated, it's aerosolized DU that is the problem. Of course you don't want to inhale the dust -- putting heavy metal in your body is poisonous. But, the bad part about DU is its heavy metal toxicity, not it's radioactivity (and as the poster indicated, it's more benign than other weapons). Slap the name "uranium" on it, though, and it becomes the worst thing since Hiroshima!

If you live in any industrialized country, though, I would worry much more about the crap you're breathing in on a daily basis.

Listen to the poster before blindly unleashing "DUPO" (Democratic Underground Perpetual Outrage") on us.

[bhikkhu]

15. If you look at the volumes of DU and the sizes of the regions

And its persistence in the environment, it could well be argued that it is the worst thing since Hiroshima. Thousands of tons of aerosolized DU dispersed in three countries now (Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq), mostly concentrated in densely populated urban areas. It may be worse than Hiroshima, but we probably won't know for some time.

The point of heavy metal toxicity being the issue rather than radiation is a good one and becoming more generally understood.

[Lorentz]

16. I don't think so

There is no comparison to Hiroshima. You're taking that fecitious comment out of context.

If you actually look at the volumes of DU And the size of the regions, as you suggest, then you'd likely see that these sensationalist arguments are moot. The two numbers are orders of magnitudes different from one another. The effective concentrations of DU would likely be in the parts-per-billion or smaller.

The only reason DU is even an issue is that naive activist groups turned it into an "outrage" cause, under the erroneous guise that "depleted uranium = uranium = radiation = nuclear bomb = mutants". If the toxicity aspect is really becoming more understood, then why are all the arguments against DU on this board always about radiation?

[jaksavage]

17. sniff sniff NT

[bhikkhu]

19. Because the Pentagon justifications of its safety were always about radiation

I think it is a matter of being able to deflect valid criticism for years to the one feature they could scientifically prove to be safe. Keep in mind that there have been years of controversy on this from veteran's groups here.

As long as we have unknown numbers of malformed fetuses, stillbirths and bizarrely mutated births in affected regions and affected veterans (there are photo galleries that would make anyone's hair curl) I think I will reserve the right to outrage. The US has actively defeated and opposed research into the effects of DU, and continues to do so.

[lovuian]

32. You guys need to take a look at the US Training Video on

Depleted Uranium
the Video designed to tell our troops of the danger
It was made in 1996 and guess what
was never showed to them

it was shelved but now you get to learn about how dangerous metal toxicity is
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U93PBZIyqBs

[sir pball]

23. THANK YOU. nt

[StudentThinker]

25. you also seem to have trouble listening Lorentz

I explicitly said that we were NOT talking about chunks of DU, so your point about not dying when picking one up, regardless of its factualness, is beside the point. Attacking me there gets you nothing. My point was basically the fact that DU has HARMFUL effects. So it's the toxicity, not radiation - ok I grant you that. But regardless of WHAT makes it harmful, the fact is that it IS harmful and THIS is my opposition to its use. I should think that would be pretty clear. (Also, why are you continuing the argument about the fact of its name when that is not part of my argument? Nor did I compare it to Hiroshima.) DU still fucks you up if you breathe in the dust, and clearly there's enough evidence that it has negative effects on pregnancies that Afghanistan's government feels its necessary to investigate. On this basis I argue we ought not to be using it. Got that? Not because it's "big-scary-thing-called-uranium!" but because regardless of what it's called and what specifically makes it harmful, it is having negative effects on people.

Arguing that it's toxic effects are worse than the effects of its radiation and THEREFORE outrage over its use is stupid is like arguing it's idiotic for me to be mad about having my head smashed in with a rock on the basis that I'm claiming it was the rock's heaviness that made it hurt, and you saying no, the sharp bit of the rock was what did the damage. Utterly beside the ACTUAL POINT.

Why do you seem to believe poisoning half the Middle East with DU is OK just because it's not the radioactivity that's the problem? Interesting how I'm only getting attacked on technical details and everyone defending the use of DU is ignoring my main point about its negative effects. Also, as I said before, the fact that other weapons have worse radioactive effects (or that I'm breathing pollution) is no justification for using DU. Big swords generally cause more damage than little knives. Does that mean I'm less guilty of a person's death for stabbing them with a knife than for hacking at them with a sword? Law doesn't think so. Injury is injury.

If you have an allergy to outrage about the needless poisoning of a country, why are you reading this story? Why are you even on this site when apparently you are so averse to the idea of Democratic Underground posters getting upset about things once in a while? Or did I somehow confuse a Democratic site with a right-wing hate site where posters gather to feel good about people in other parts of the world getting an ass-kicking from Team America World Police and their Not-SOOOO-Bad-Weapons of Only-Some-Destruction? And yes, NOW I have an outrage problem - at shit like your comment.

Excuse me for having a conscience and caring about my county's behavior in the world. Apparently indifference is now the only acceptable response to things anymore.

[Lorentz]

37. Instead of being a StudentThinker, try being a StudentReader

What outrages me on this discussion board is the unfounded hysteria and hyperbole against anything and everything, without the injection of common sense. Comments like "poisoning half the Middle East" is sensationalist and nonsensical, and undermines your credibility.

A little education on the subject goes a long way. Before you "think" too much about the issue, read a little about it. Start here, for example:

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp150.html

Finally: try being a "StudentListener," too. There are people on this website who have some knowledge about this. And just because they get angry at the "perpetual outrage" and don't agree with an ultra-pacifist agenda doesn't meant they're "right wing hate" mongers, as you suggest (in fact, they're probably quite liberal and progressive).

[yava]

26. life of the isotopes

What is stated here underestimates the health risks of absorbed DU nanoparticles. The radioactive isotope has a long half-life. The pyrolized nanoparticles absorbed via breathing or food are so small they cross from cell to cell in the body all the while irradiating neighboring cells.
It is a catastrophy and all said opposite is coverup.

[Tempest]

43. Every time there's a wind storm the DU dust is spread

Or do believe the DU dust settles permanently?

There are areas in Iraq where babies are born with deformities away from where DU shells were used, but downwind from the locations.

[lovuian]

18. US has been bombing with little nukes since Bush has been

in and I guess we will see where the investigation goes
the great thing about Uranium is it leaves a detectable trail

we will just have to wait and see but if US has bombed Iraq Afghanistan Bosnia and if Israel used them on Lebanon eventually

it will catch up and be revealed

just wait and see
the saddest part is that we may have poisoned our own troops

[bhikkhu]

21. They were used in Bosnia

I recall reading that European radiation counters were going off and there was a big fuss over whether someone had an illicit nuclear test, or a nuclear plant accident, or what was happening. The US had to come forward about DU, which was the first time many had heard of it, and pressure began to cease its use.

My memory may be faulty, but that is what I recall from the time.

[Lorentz]

22. Riiight.... They're secretly nuking the Middle East..

If anyone exploded a nuke -- especially above ground -- every international watchdog agency would know it. You can't hide that.

[bhikkhu]

27. Essentially we are talking about an aerosolized toxic metal

dispersed widely in urban areas to the point of becoming environmentally endemic. With the capacity to cause organ failure, birth defects, immune system failures, etc - all poorly documented because we have actively suppressed research and data gathering.

Not a "nuke", though, as the word is commonly used.

[lovuian]

30. They are using mini nukes and Watch the US Training Video

on Depleted Uranium found on the US Army shelves done in 1996 a training video for our soldiers problem is our soldiers haven't watched this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U93PBZIyqBs

Gets some popcorn and enjoy
its ILLUMINATING

[Lorentz]

34. Prove your assertion of mini-nukes

Show me the atmospheric monitoring data that indicates an increase in fission products since the bombing campaign began. And on a more common-sense note, explain to me why they need to use nuclear weapons in Afghanistan in the first place.

[Pavulon]

35. Having handled numerous types of DU

munitions as in the NG I can tell you we were aware of what it was, saw its MSDS and treated with proper respect. It is a toxic heavy metal, like lead. Don't eat it. It is not fissile material. It is not as toxic as some other stuff you may come into contact with in many industrial processes.

However until a better performing anti tank ordinance is found don't expect to see it go away.

They are not nuclear weapons. The MSDS and handling procedures are probably different for nuclear weapons

[shadowknows69]

20. It's in most of our ordinance isn't it?

I know the A-10 used to use DU rounds in it's nose cannon.

[sir pball]

24. Off the top of my head..

30mm rounds, 20mm rounds, 25mm rounds, 120mm APFSDS anti-armor rounds (all that ammo is NATO standard so we aren't the only ones using it), most modern tank armor also incorporates it, possibly as counterweights in large bomber and transport wings. The stuff is a lot more common than people think, and also a lot less radiologically hazardous - it's used as radiation SHIELDING fercrissakes!

[Fedja]

28. Sigh.

Losing a leg is better than getting killed. Amputations also sometimes save lives. I bet you'd be pissed if someone took your leg for no aparent reason.

See what I mean? I don't care that "NATO also uses it", NATO hasn't fired as many rounds in its whole existence as the US does in a week. I don't care that DU doesn't hurt people via high radioactivity but by other means.

It does have negative effects on the populations of affected regions, and it sticks around for generations. Downplaying it just because it's not as fatal as a "proper nuke" is downright retarded.

[Pavulon]

36. It is used in munitions designed to kill hard targets

anti tank rounds can be used on tanks, APC's, hardened structures. DU reacts when slammed into metal. It provides a huge advantage to its user.

It is used in tank armor as well.

However at this point I would imagine we are not using DU in either Iraq or Afghanistan in large quantity. The rounds used to kill people and cars HE and kill by splattering the target with chunks of metal.

Its effectiveness means it will stay in the arsenal until a superseding technology is found.

[Fedja]

29. Hadzici

The so-called Balkan Syndrome affair first came to attention in early 2001, when several European countries, members within a UN peacekeeping mission, reported a series of cancer cases among soldiers who had taken part in peacekeeping operations in Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina. There have also been cases of children of Italian Balkan veterans born with genetic malformations.

During NATO's 1994 and 1995 bombings of Bosnian Serb positions near Sarajevo, aircrafts used munitions containing depleted uranium. Most of those bombs - 10,800 rounds of 30mm armor-piercing projectiles in total - were fired in Hadzici, where the Bosnian Serb army had a weapons depot. In one day in October 1995 alone, NATO planes fired 300 projectiles into this Sarajevo suburb.

Back in 2003, UN experts confirmed the discovery of two locations containing a high level of radiation from depleted uranium from NATO bombings. A UN research team found that depleted uranium had contaminated local supplies of drinking water and could still be found in dust particles suspended in the air in the Hadzici are and in a Bosnian Serb army barracks in Han-Pijesak, also near Sarajevo. Investigators also discovered uranium materials and dust inside the buildings.

.....

To date, up to 30 percent of some 30,000 wartime Hadzici residents have died of various cancers, tumors and heart attacks, according to official statistics. Only in Bratunac, the only town to have kept track of possible depleted uranium illnesses, out of 4,500 wartime Hadzici residents who fled to Bratunac, nearly 1,000 of them died of illnesses believed to be related to depleted uranium exposure.

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?ID=18290

Let's all ignore it.

[Lorentz]

38. Contextualized statistics...

How do those figures relate to the regular mortality statistics of the region? What are the ages of the deceased? How many people died of "various cancer, tumors, and heart attacks" (?!) before these bombings? How is a heart attack a tell-tale sign of DU exposure? Since heart failure is one of the leading causes of death almost anywhere and would be difficult to correlate to DU toxicity, adding that component to the data artificially inflates the statistics to make them look worse.

Finally, the article you're citing has a picture of a Geiger counter and exhaustively discusses radiation levels. However, it refers to DU as a "heavy metal" only once (citing the military, not their own research), and nowhere contains the words "chemical" or "toxicity". Thus, I agree with your conclusion: let's ignore it, since the piece is clearly written with an erroneous agenda by someone who didn't do their homework.

[Fedja]

39. Indeed.

I'd much rather the "studies" done by the perpetrators of DU pollution than the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Maybe 30% of the people in a city suburb died in a decade after DU bombing, but surely that's just fancy statistics. And we all know about the Swiss and their biased agendas, they're famous for never managing to stay neutral. Right?

[Lorentz]

40. Check your source.

The publication is NOT from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. It is from the "Italian Military Health Observatory" (read the article!). The publication location is also not the SFIT website, but rather the ISN (International Relations and Security Network), which is an affiliated humanitarian watchdog agency.

This is not akin to something coming out of Caltech or MIT, and even if it were, it would suffer from the same failings that I've already pointed out.

[Fedja]

41. ehm...

By Anes Alic in Sarajevo for ISN Security Watch (29/10/07)

About ISN
Based in Zurich, Switzerland, at the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich)

Seriously, the author refers to one study by the IMHO in his analysis of the issue, and that study only focused on the consequences on Italian peacekeepers, which I didn't even mention. We can delve into that one as well if you wish.

According to an October study by the Italian Military Health Observatory, a total of 164 Italian soldiers have died thus far due to exposure to depleted uranium while serving in the Sarajevo suburbs and in Kosovo during the 1990s. In 2007 alone, the study said there were nine such related deaths and 97 new cases of uranium infection.

Maybe you'd better stop trying to disassemble the article I posted and counter with a Pentagon one that claims all is fine and dandy.

[Lorentz]

42. I never claimed that all is "fine and dandy"

Why do you think I'm arguing for "the Pentagon"? My point about that article -- wherever you want to think it came from -- is that it is bad science. The statistics are misleading, and the article is slanted to sensationalize DU as a dangerous radioactive contaminant, while avoiding the issue of chemical toxicity.

As for a different link, I already provided one in a previous post:

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp150.html

Happy reading.

[libodem]

33. The gift that keeps on giving

The Afghans also need to explore the possible extermination of 3000 POWs. Their bones are littering the desert. Many of those prisoners surrendered yet they were put into trucks and taken out and shot. I saw a short video recently about the genocide. I think the Brits are looking into it. The US will of course just deny everything.

[annm4peace]

44. Support our Walk Against Weapons (DU)

Alliant Tech is moving their headquarters in MN. and we are following them.

http://alliantaction.org/actionpromo/wamm08walk/052408w...


Alliant Tech makes several Items with DU and also makes the horrific cluster bombs.