Sandia Completes Depleted Uranium Study; Serious Health Risks Not Found

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Sandia Completes Depleted Uranium Study; Serious Health Risks Not Found
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- Sandia National Laboratories has completed a two-year study of the potential health effects associated with accidental exposure to depleted uranium (DU) during the 1991 Gulf War.
[...]
Marshall's study concluded that the reports of serious health risks from DU exposure are not supported by veteran medical statistics nor supported by his analysis. Only a few U.S. veterans in vehicles accidentally struck by DU munitions are predicted to have inhaled sufficient quantities of DU particulate to incur any significant health risk. For these individuals, DU-related risks include the possibility of temporary kidney damage and about a 1 percent chance of fatal cancer.
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...well then, lead ought to be completely benign! So the .gov cannot shut down any shooting ranges due to 'environmental impact'...

...I smell a double standard a-brewin' :scrutiny:
 
Its depleted uranium in particulate form, not uranium vapor...that would be uranium in gaseous form. Nor is it enriched uranium. People automatically hear "uranium" and think if you even see it, your eye will turn cancerous and fall out. I have a sample of uranium ore here as a scientific curiosity but I'm not worried my hair will fall out. Heck, you can buy uranium ore samples that'll register on a counter via ebay and any other store that sells geological stuff.

The isotope used for DU rounds doesn't release radioactive decay in as copious amounts as the stuff they use for reactors...nowhere even close. I wouldn't be eating chunks of DU I find and I'd try not to breath in DU particulates, but I wouldn't worry much over it either, at least not if I was over in the sandbox. If the stuff stays in your body (as opposed to passing through the system), it could collect over time, and given enough time start complications.

Yet, I would rather inhale some DU dust than step on undetonated mines, munitions, boobytrapped homes, bodies, or objects and lose my life and limb that instance instead of entertaining the chance for removing a few years off the end of my natural lifespan.

I'm more worried about inhalation of lead particulates since lead is retained in your body in the greatest quantity through inhalation. That, and there isn't much DU stuff in the states for me to worry about.
 
Its depleted uranium in particulate form, not uranium vapor...that would be uranium in gaseous form. Nor is it enriched uranium. People automatically hear "uranium" and think if you even see it, your eye will turn cancerous and fall out. I have a sample of uranium ore here as a scientific curiosity but I'm not worried my hair will fall out. Heck, you can buy uranium ore samples that'll register on a counter via ebay and any other store that sells geological stuff.
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If I'm not mistaken, it's still a nasty heavy metal that you don't want to breathe in if one can avoid it. DU and uranium ore are slightly different, also.

As for my term "vaporized DU", yer right on the technical terminology. I was moreso referring it in a slang term, not the technical definition of vaporization. But when a DU penetrator is aerosolized by a sudden impact with a heavy object (say, a T-72), it does release some nasty DU particles that are not healthy to suck down. Keep in mind, we used hundreds of tons worth of DU munitions. It does add up, yanno.

As for "not a worry", I'm sure they said similiar things to Vietnam vets about dioxin, aka the nasty part of Agent Orange.
 
The isotope used for DU rounds doesn't release radioactive decay in as copious amounts as the stuff they use for reactors...nowhere even close
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IIRC the half life for DU is something like 4 billion years. You probably walk across ceramic tiles way more radioactive than DU all the time.
 
If I'm not mistaken, it's still a nasty heavy metal that you don't want to breathe in if one can avoid it. DU and uranium ore are slightly different, also.
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This is true. But I think the real question is whether it's more dangerous than lead or tungsten. What the study says is that there is no "downwind effect" and the only people who received dangerous levels of DU were people whose vehicles were directly hit by DU penetrators. Which doesn't matter because DU is not supposed to be safe for the person it's being shot at.
 
Everything is arguably dangerous to some extent. Aluminum is not good for you. Ask any machinist; you're supposed to handle the stuff with gloves. Aluminum is only safe once it's exposed to air and has time to form aluminum oxide on the surface. New studies have shown fluoridated water increases cancer in children.

Go take a geiger meter to potassium salt substitute at the grocery store. You might be a bit surprised at what it reads. Got granite counters? You're exposing yourself to radiation. Got soil at all in your property? You probably have some concentration of radon gas, no matter how minute.

If you inhale enough water, it's dangerous to you. Heck, if you drink water, a small percentage of it is deuterium, which is used as a fuel in nuclear fusion! We're expected to not eat beef because it has hormones in it that might damage us. We can't touch vegetables because they use pesticides that hurt us. We can't drink water since it's got heavy metal contamination, lead, and fluoridation. We can't breathe air because it's got toxic particulates and fumes in it from powerplants, farting cows, and automobiles. Hell, what are we supposed to do?

You can spend your life making precautions against anything that might harm you (almost everything), or just take a common sense approach and avoid what you can, but not enough to impede the quality of your life.

Go shooting at the range with your lead-laden projectiles. Then come home, sniff some chemical vapors while cleaning your guns. Then, wash your hands with some anti-bacterial soap, creating superstrains of bugs. Go eat a big steak ripe with hormones, a hearty serving of pesticide covered carrots and peas. Afterwards, sit back, have a drink, grab a cigar, and enjoy life! You only live once!
 
Justin, nice.

I didn't know the moonbats where that dangerous, do they glow in the dark?

Back to the discussion, i remember handling uranium in science class in high school, if suffered no ill (twitch) ill (twitch) nuttins da matta wit me now.
 
Hmm...Sandia National Laboratories...versus something hosted at http://www.ratical.org/? Which has statements like:

The advent of being of the co-globalizing joining with group mind, good mind for gaia's children , renewal resistance
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Sounds a bit new age to me. Googling Doug Rokke's name, seems he is the "former head of the Pentagon's Depleted Uranium Project" and is refered as a "DU expert" numerous times. I guess there is an expert for everything. Who is the hydrogen expert? He has a nice Ph.D plastered on his name, but can't find references if he got a doctorates in applied physics, or economics. His name only turns up anti-DU references and he has no listed references in his paper or citations to independent research.

I think one needs a lot more than one study versus another contrary one. You need agreement, and we'll need independent confirmation since right now we're on a one-vs-one source battle on this thread.
 
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Welcome to rat the rat haus haus reality press
rat haus reality, ratical branch is the electronic manifestation of rat haus reality press, dedicated to promulgating and promoting life-nurturing activities and awarenesses regarding this "home" we all share and are all responsible for, not simply for the seventh generation of humankind yet unborn, but for all life germinated and nourished by Gaia.

the human transition from an adolescent, "industrial-mind" value system, based only on asking the question, is it POSSIBLE?, to Gaia- sustaining and promoting practices and explorations which must ask the question, is it APPROPRIATE? is the only possible future of human activity on this earth. without taking responsibility for everything we participate in here, we condemn to premature termination the exquisite eons of life exploring itself in this dimension.
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Umm OK... but on to their arguments.
Depleted uranium or uranium 238 is still very dangerous as an internal hazard because the alpha particle emissions are not reduced but proportionally increased. Also spent penetrators or parts of penetrators emit at 300 mrem/ hour and thus cannot be touched or picked up without protection
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This is gobbledygook. REM is not a unit of radiation, it's a unit of dose. It's like if they said "that guy sure is fast, I bet he can run a 3 minute kilogram". At most you could say "if a sword swallower stuck a DU penetrator down his throat, he would receive a dose of X rem/hour". In any case it is obviously false that it is unsafe to touch "parts of penetrators" because several veterans have had parts of penetrators embedded in them for 12+ years and are fine.

Verified adverse health effects from personal experience, physicians, and from personal reports from individuals with known DU exposures include:
[a list follows including everything from cancer to impotence]
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This is a list of things to look for in a scientific study. They were looked for, and some were found but only at high doses.
 
Here is a bio of Doug Rokke. It says he has a PhD in Physics but gives no details. There are no papers by anyone named Rokke on arxiv.org .
 
All heavy metals by there nature are toxic,but your not gonna have to worry about radiation poisoning from depleted urainium. I once read a large paper where they broke down the math of the radiation givin off by depleted urainium. Its pretty much harmless, unless your standing on it on a hot 105 degree sunny day without suntan lotion on...Oh wait doesnt that stuff cause skin cancer... WERE DOOMED I SAY DOOOOOMMMMMED!!

On a more serious note however the vapors from it could be quite nasty. How one gets vapors from depleted urainium however is a little tougher for me to figure out...In a iraq tank working for Saddam maybe...Hmmmm probably the least of your concerns though i hear ventalation isn't a problem with the russian model tanks, something about a turretless design
 
One small point:

"Only a few U.S. veterans in vehicles accidentally struck by DU munitions are predicted to have inhaled sufficient quantities of DU particulate to incur any significant health risk."

Umm, 'a few' doesn't sound like many people. But when you compare it to the number of US vehicles struck by DU munitions fired from other US vehicles, that's not a gigantic number either. 'A few crew members' could be 50% for all we know.

I'm not saying it is bad or it is healthy, I'm just saying that that little sales pitch won't sell me.
 
Likewise, as a few others including myself mentioned, you're bound to come across a lot of radioactive samples in your lifetime that you're not even aware of.

ACOGs use tritium isotopes which have radiation decay. Smoke detectors used to (still do?) use an Americium isotope. Granite tiling and countertops, and ceramic tiling both contain naturally occuring uranium and other isotopes found in rock. For the longest time, green-tinted glass was tinted with uranium oxide, which is also radioactive. Potassium salt substitute is radioactive, and so is fertilizer containing potassium. There is a reason the term "background radiation" was coined. It's everywhere, at very low levels, and very difficult to escape.

The main problem presented are those who directly inhaled high quantities of DU dust when their vehicle took direct friendly-fire hit (since I don't believe the Iraqis have DU projectiles). These DU projectiles, which fit in your hand, are cited to atomize about 70% of its initial mass and end up released in a very small enclosed area no more than a few cubic yards inside a tank.

Inhalation of such a high concentration is GREATLY contrasted by the concentration of an identical atomized DU projectile caught in airborne winds and distributed over several thousand square miles. The concentration becomes exponentially less, and I would fathom it barely rises above the normally accepted value of background radiation for the area in question. Uranium and it's isotopes existed long before man harvested and enriched them.
 
'A few crew members' could be 50% for all we know.
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There's a table on page 12 of the pdf I linked to. It says the risk of cancer in the most exposed group increased by 1.43%
 
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