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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (174227)	11/4/2005 11:50:08 PM
From: mistermj	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Canada also agrees that DU munitions do not present any substantial risk to soldiers or civilians. Canadian Military Journal Summer 2003 ENVIRONMENTAL ASPECTS As mentioned above, on hitting hard targets, a significant portion of DU projectiles will aerosolize and oxidize. These projectiles, along with those that hit the ground and fail to fracture, will result in surface, or slightly subsurface contamination. A post-conflict environmental assessment study by the United Nations Environment Programme of eleven sites in Kosovo (including the most heavily attacked) found that there was no detectable widespread contamination of the ground surface by DU. In other words, the contamination resulting from the use of DU is present in such low levels that it cannot be detected or differentiated from natural uranium. Consequently, it was concluded that the radiological and toxicological risks were “insignificant and even non-existent”. CONCLUSIONS Penetrator impact on hard targets generates aerosols, most of which are respirable thereby raising the possibility of human ingestion of DU. To date, no direct linkage has been established between uranium contamination of the body due to DU munitions and “Gulf War illness” symptoms observed among some veterans. In fact, virtually all veterans and comparably-exposed civilians tested for uranium content have been found to have levels consistent with the unexposed general public and were generally symptom-free. Environmental contamination due to the use of DU penetrators is thus considered to be marginal and highly localized, with no long term consequences anticipated. journal.forces.gc.ca