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v1.70 PJMWeb2
Spreading the truth to one idiot at a time?
Is this a satire site? I mean, some people really do have that sick a sense of humor.
good grief
No, he’s serious.
There are a lot of people like that in the middle east- ignorant and prone to conspiracy theory.
Dunno what made him worthy of linkage, tho.
I’ve no idea what the site said. I closed the window as soon as I saw the picture.
After several years working at Oak Ridge I know depleated uranium amminition only poses a threat to the person it actually hits. Depleated uranium is used in armour piercing shells. When a shel hits the armour it is immidiatley turned into a plasma jet by the kinetic energy. A very small burst of radiation does occur but it is so small as to be insignificant. You get more from a high altitude plane trip. There is no “depleated uranium dust”. Bogus claims.
(sees picture)
Yipe.
(Back button)
Come on, Stephen: some of us are work.
Or even at work.
The next post after the DU one is on “The Israeli’s were behind 9/11″.
By virtue of being a heavy metal, it’s my understanding that DU is fairly toxic. I’ve also read that a lot of soviet era armor used radium coated dials, which are a source of radiation after the tank is shot up.
Thanks for the warning Stephen! (sarcasm) I did not read the story after seeing the picture, probably would have if I knew it was coming.
Oh ick.
Yep, that got a quick back-click.
After several years working at Oak Ridge I know depleated uranium amminition only poses a threat to the person it actually hits.
Um, not exactly. Uranium is a heavy metal, and is chemically toxic (like all heavy metals). It is not a good thing to have inside your body.
However, the primary radiation emitted by DU is alpha particles, which are not particularly dangerous- if the source is outside the body, they will be stopped by skin. However, if the emitter is inside the body, you have a serious problem.
Sadly, sites like this are all over the net.
Glad I read the comments first and prepared myself for the picture. I didn’t read beyond the quote below the picture because the colors are seriously eye-unfriendly.
I did notice, though, that the quote is dated 1992.
rosignol
Hey man, give a warning please. It isn’t only because the picture was revolting, but I popped it up at work and could conceivably get in trouble for it.
doug
Yeah – how ’bout a warning!? Tell us to scroll down immediately!!!
What a friggin’ moron – this guy needs a serious reality check!
rosignol
Depleated uranium is not used in rifle bullets, only armour piercing shells. Depleted uranium is toxic in the same way other heavy metals are but when an armour piercing round hits it’s target it’s true it could fragment but there really isn’t much left. The only people affected are the ones in the armoured vehicles the rounds hit.
I went back and checked again. The quotes and stuff *are* from the 1990′s during sanctions on Iraq. The complaint is that the US was not allowing the necessary clean up to prevent the birth defects.
This is pretty similar to how we were supposedly not *allowing* the importation of chlorine to treat water, resulting in the deaths of so many Iraqi children.
What amazes me most of all is that after the invasion in 2003 no one remembers this stuff anymore, how the situation in Iraq was used by everyone as a huge club to clobber the US at every opportunity, blaming us for the death of hundreds of thousands of children.
It doesn’t matter if it was true or not. It doesn’t matter if DU causes birth defects or if it was Saddams own bio-weapons and research (maybe we didn’t find WMD’s but our guys dug up plenty of equiptment with radiation symbols out there in the sand). It doesn’t matter that Saddam could have purified all the water he needed with regular old chlorine instead of the ultra-pure sort we wouldn’t let him have or that he could have fed the babies under Food for Oil instead of building more palaces while he maintained his children’s prisons.
And how many times have we heard people say that the sanctions could have worked if given more time? The only nation they were working against was US.
Being close enough to inhale the DU generally means you are either an enemy, somewhere you shouldn’t be, and not going to live after the hit so suffer the radiation effects anyways.
It
Dude, WTF?!?! How about a warning about the pics!?
Maybe someone should tell him it’s spelled LIBYA, not LYBIA. Whatta maroon.
Graphic shmaffic…I didn’t find the picture warning-worthy myself.
I guess its all in the eye of the beholder.
“Once you have a DU sabot inside your body, I wouldn’t sweat the radiation damage. ”
As others have stated, the primary health danger of DUis long term exposure to dust, runoff, etc. It is more toxic than lead as a heavy metal, with the primary targets being brain and kidney.
The problem is not having a “sabot in your body,” it’s having a bunch of the stuff in ground water, runoff, etc.
However, this is a theoretical rather than documented risk. A recent Italian study of Balkans battlefield revealed “The uranium concentrations in water samples collected in Serbia and Montenegro were found to be in the range of 0.40-21.9 mBql(-1) for (238)U, 0.27-28.1 mBql(-1) for (234)U, and 0.01-0.88 mBql(-1) for (235)U, these values being much lower than those in mineral water found in central Italy and below the WHO guideline for drinking water. From a radiotoxicological point of view, at this moment there is no significant radiological risk related to these investigated sites in terms of possible DU contamination of water, air and/or plants.” (Appl Radiat Isot. 2005 Sep;63(3):381-99. Concentration and characteristics of depleted uranium in water, air and biological samples collected in Serbia and Montenegro. Jia G, Belli M, Sansone U, Rosamilia S, Gaudino S).
Another study, however, noted that uranium oxidizes like lead, and that it is the oxidized product that disperses. Thus, the amount of toxin in soil and runoff may increase over time as the solid fragments turn into powder. Environmental surveillance, thus, will be necessary for some years to come.
I’ve seen that happen with lead.
Depleted uranium has an almost trivial radioactive profile. Thanks to radon, there are probably hundreds of thousands of basements in the United States that have higher radioactivity than a tank chassis destroyed by a 120mm DU tank round.
DU is a heavy metal, with toxicity in excess of lead but of the same order of magnitude. But the alternative (inferior) for an armor piercing shell is tungsten. Elemental tungsten is relatively insoluable and has much lower toxicity than lead, enough so that it is an approved substitute for lead in waterfowl shot. However, uranium forms relatively insoluble compounds too and doesn’t really interfere with very many biological processes. But frankly, if I had to choose which of uranium or tungsten to be poisoned by, its six of one and half dozen of another.
“DU is a heavy metal, with toxicity in excess of lead but of the same order of magnitude. ”
should have read “DU is a heavy metal, but with toxicity far less than lead, not even of the same magnitude.”
Don’t ask.