I don't know whether you just don't understand this, or you are trying to willfully mislead- it's impossible to tell the difference
The pellets have nothing to do with oxidized uranium, given off in a blast. Nothing. Zip. Zilch.
The large fragments have nothing to do with that.
I've already told you why urine samples would be useless- this substance binds with proteins (including DNA), it's not in the urine usually (although for some poor saps who are apparently highly exposed, it still is. You have to feel sorry for those guys.) Let's start somewhere easy. Are you aware of the hazards to humans from lead and mercury? Even you should be able to understand the hazard of people inhaling something like lead or mercury dust.
Some government experiments HAVE shown DNA damage, but the government is loathe to let out the data- but you seem not to be able to put that together with the fact that our soldiers (and Iraqis) have ingestesd/inhaled/dermally absorbed, oxidized uranium- a particularly nasty element, like plutonium- it's an element that really doesn't know what it is. And if our government has done any work on this in humans, they haven't made the results public. Plutonium, for example, has a phase change on the order of 30%, from solid to solid to relieve stress. These are odd materials to have loose in your environment- they are big stupid heavy round things, that don't know where they belong in a system (including in an organic system like our bodies.) These elements have so many orbitals they can basically hook up to anything, in to huge clumps- imagine that in a living system. Not so good.
"The military is aware of DU's harmful effects on the human genetic code. A 2001 study of DU's effect on DNA done by Dr. Alexandra C. Miller for the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, indicates that DU's chemical instability causes 1 million times more genetic damage than would be expected from its radiation effect alone, Moret wrote.
Dr. Miller requested that questions be sent in writing and copied to a military spokesman, but did tell AFP that it should be noted that her studies showing that DU is "neoplastically transforming and genotoxic" are based on in vitro cellular research.
Studies have shown that inhaled nano-particles are far more toxic than micro-sized particles of the same basic chemical composition. British toxicopathologist Vyvyan Howard has reported that the increased toxicity of the nano-particle is due to its size. "
I'm amazed you are trying to justify this stuff. That the government, in its small studies, hasn't managed to find health effects it didn't want to find, surprises me not at all. As far as I kow they aren't looking for tissue concentrations of this stuff- and they aren't studying oxidized uranium in their publicized experiments- but if you've got some of those, I'd love to see them. We know people who've worked with uranium, and no one we know, not one of them, would want to inhale oxidized uranium particles. Anyone who was in an area where there was shelling from high powered canon will be covered in a fine film of nano particles. Compare the tonnage between gulf war one and gulf war two. If I'm right we'll see an epidemic of "gulf war syndrome" in our soldiers who fought in Iraq. If you are right, maybe we won't. I hope we don't see it- but uranium is such nasty stuff in its oxidized form, I think it's very unlikely that you are correct. You are apparently unable to even consider that I might be right- but then you don't appear to understand this at all.
It's touching you put so much faith in the small studies that have been done by the government. It really is. Even though they aren't on point to what I am talking about.
This study looked at mortality rates between DU gulf exposed personnel and non-exposed- but unfortunately it didn't look at morbidity, but only mortality.
M A McDiarmid et alia, Environ. Res. A 82 168-180 (2000), G J Macfarlane et alia, The Lancet 356 17-21 (2000). |
