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Politics : War -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (18014)	12/3/2002 1:58:51 PM
From: Thomas M.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23908

We have no way reliable way of knowing from your sources whether the depleted uranium ammo produced any health problem. Basically, what you are doing is covering your eyes and saying, "I don't see anything, so it must not be there." This mentality plays well in the sandbox, as well as with dim-witted adults. Tom

To: Brumar89 who wrote (18014)	12/3/2002 2:30:36 PM
From: LPS5	Respond to of 23908

We have no way reliable way of knowing from your sources... Here are a few guidelines that can be used to evaluate the credibility of website(s) presented as "documentation" by few of the fringe posters here (and elsewhere on SI, for that matter): lib.berkeley.edu lib.berkeley.edu I have a number of others I'll post shortly. LPS5

To: Brumar89 who wrote (18014)	12/3/2002 2:38:57 PM
From: LPS5	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23908

More on evaluating internet-based "documentation." You'll note that the additional sources below generally gravitate toward the same points that should be scrutinized: whether in fact the information is represented as factual or is an opinion/editorial piece; to the extent that it is an editorial, how objective it is; what the author's credentials are; what the nature of the website is; and whether/to what extent references are provided for facts cited; et al. Apply liberally. Message 18076238 Message 18076259 Message 18076266 Message 18076288 LPS5

To: Brumar89 who wrote (18014)	12/12/2002 2:13:55 AM
From: bela_ghoulashi	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 23908

Depleted Uranium is a waste product of process used in nuclear power and nuclear weapons to produce enriched uranium. The useful part of Uranium is U-235 and it is a vanishingly small 0.72% of naturally-occurring Uranium. The other 99+% is U-238. The goal of the enrichment process is to produce uranium with a couple of percent U-235 (for use in reactors) or nearly pure U-235 (for weapons). To produce enough U-235 for a nuclear weapon, you create several tons of depleted Uranium, which is nearly pure U-238. U-238 is radioactive, but only as a courtesy. It has a halflife of more than four billion years, and it releases alpha radiation. And here we have the first source of Pinter's misconception, because he like many leftists try to group all forms of radiation together and pretend that they're all equal. In reality, radiation is a collective term for many different kinds of things which are very different. And some of them are far more dangerous than others. The classic forms of radiation everyone's heard of are alpha, beta and gamma. Alpha particles are helium nuclei, made up of two protons and two neutrons, which are spontaneously released by many heavy atoms. Beta particles are fast electrons which are emitted from the nucleus of an atom; they're part of what is created when neutrons break down. Gamma rays are high-energy photons; they're above the levels of X-rays. But there are other kinds of radiation as well. Some kinds of nuclear reactions produce free neutrons, for example. Cosmic rays are something of a puzzle because we're not quite sure where they come from, but what they seem to be is heavy particles of various kinds traveling at relativistic speed. When they strike the earth's atmosphere (from all directions, which is why it's known that they don't come from the Sun) they cause a cascading shower of secondary particles of all kinds. It's also possible for short periods to produce a whole menagerie of particles with names like muon and pion and lambda, most of which only last a brief period (sometimes well below a nanosecond) which have all sorts of interesting characteristics. Of these, neutrons are by far the most dangerous because they tend to infect whatever they strike, often converting stable atoms into ones which are themselves radioactive. A sufficient exposure to gamma radiation will kill you stone dead by straight destruction of the chemicals in your cells needed to sustain life. Lower levels are likely to cause tumors. The problem with shielding against neutrons and gamma radiation is that they are uncharged particles, and the only way to stop them is to use a sufficient thickness of something which guarantees that almost all of them will strike an atom in the shield rather than penetrate. That means feet of concrete or inches of lead. Beta radiation is charged, but the particle is very light, and the protection needed to stop it is much thinner. Beta radiation cannot penetrate ordinary walls in your home because that thickness of wood (or gypsum) is enough to stop it. And because a helium nucleus has twice the charge of an electron but weighs more than two thousand times as much, it is far easier to stop alpha radiation. A piece of paper is more than enough. In fact, the dead layer of skin cells on your body is more than enough. External alpha radiation cannot harm you unless the concentration is truly mammoth, and it is impossible for U-238 to create such a concentration no matter how much is present. But ignoring that, it's also the case that U-238 is almost non-radioactive. In fact, a Geiger counter will react more strongly to a human than it will to an equal mass of depleted uranium, because the trace amounts of carbon 14 and potassium 40 (both of which are beta-sources) in our bodies cause more actual radiation. Oddly enough, depleted uranium is used as radiation shields in some kinds of equipment. A thin layer of something else on the inside will stop its puny alpha emissions, and because it is so dense (and for other reasons) it is superb at stopping other kinds of radiation. (It's actually better than lead.) The reality is that the primary danger from depleted uranium is heavy metal poisoning, a chemical effect, rather than any danger from its radioactivity, and because uranium is phyrophoric much of the uranium used in comment burns and turns into the oxide. It's true that breathing the dust has the potential of causing lung cancer, but even there the risk is pretty low, because the resulting dust is extremely dense and doesn't tend to stir up readily or hang in the air. And even its danger as a chemical poison is low (in terms of contaminating areas), and heavy metal poisoning doesn't cause the effects he's blaming on it. The biggest hole in Pinter's argument is this: it's true that we used a lot of DU projectiles in the Gulf War, but the majority of them were used in Kuwait. It's not a universal ingredient in all American weapons. It only appears in specific weapons designed to destroy tanks. First, the penetrator in the APFSDS ("sabot" ) rounds was DU, but we didn't actually fire all that many of those. The other major use of DU was in the bullets fired from the GAU-8 gun on the A-10 "Warthog". Thus the primary places where DU would be found were in those places where American tanks fought against Iraqi armor (e.g. 73 Easting) and on the "Highway of Death" north of Kuwait City where American aircraft (prominently including the Hogs) massacred a column of Iraqis attempting to flee from the US Marines coming up from the south. Pinter's fantasy of a sort of uniform increase in the radioactivity level of the entire region is, shall we say, not justified by the facts; the DU we used was mostly expended in a relatively small amount of the terrain and it doesn't disperse easily. Besides which, if DU has caused so damned many birth defects in Iraq, why are we not hearing similar reports out of Kuwait where far more DU was used? My best guess is that the presumed huge number of birth defects in Iraq is actually nothing more than an example of Pinter's hallucinations. But if, indeed, there is such a rise, there's an alternate explanation which is at least as plausible. See, for all the short term damage that chemical weapons can cause, most of the modern ones are also extremely dangerous mutagens which means that they can also cause cancer and birth defects. And though the majority of DU expended in the Gulf War was expended in Kuwait, very large amounts of chemical weapons have been released by the Iraqi government in Iraq itself. And those disperse far more readily than extremely heavy uranium oxide dust. denbeste.nu