Reply #8: Your're right, you're wrong, and you could do some more research. [View All]

[MadHound]

Hi there, how are you doing? Hope your holidays are going well

Let me fill you in about DU. I would link to some sources, but the sources I know best are not the kind put on the web. Mainly IATA, NRC, CFR, DOE and other such alphabet entities. You see, I work at a nuclear reactor, a small reasearch reactor, we mainly deal with cancer treatments and archeological samples.

I deal with DU on a daily basis, and you are correct in your assertion that DU gives emits such a small amout of radiation that it cannot even penetrate the skin. In fact DU is used as shielding for some of the more radioactive isotopes. It is primarily an Alpha wave emitter, though DU does emit a minute amount of Betas also.

However there are a couple of leathal drawbacks to DU's use in a military capacity. When a shell that is tipped with DU strikes it's target, the DU heats up drastically and starts burning off much like a sparkler. Combines this with the explosion behind it and you wind up with a DU dust. It blows around, is inhaled or ingested and that's when problems arise.

DU, like other heavy metals, is quite toxic. Having dropped several thousand tons of DU in Iraq over the past twelve years, there is a great deal of DU dust floating around. With this fine DU dust virtually everywhere, a great many people are getting it inside their body. From the toxicity standpoint, it is similar to constantly dosing yourself with lead. No immediate symptoms, but as dosages accumulate, deadly symptoms appear. It attacks the nervous system especially. Also like lead, no matter how you get the DU inside you, it takes a long time to excrete it. And if you live or travel through the midst of DU, you are constantly taking more onboard.

The other problem with DU is the fact that however minutely, DU is radioactive. Although you are, for the most part, protected from DU's radiation by your skin, once DU gets inside your body, you have no such protection. And since most DU in Iraq has been rendered into a talc like dust, DU can get trapped in the most delicate corners of the body, like the aevoli. Thus the Alpha and Beta waves can do their work, causing cancers, killing cells, shuting down entire parts of the human body. Your lungs could go to hell, or you colon. Strange and varied symptoms can appear, depending where the DU lodged in your body. Hell, even the best medical minds don't know the entire catalog of DU symtoms, being that it is a relatively recent addition to mankinds' arsenal of attrocities.

So don't write off DU as propaganda or BS. It is real, and it kills. Slowly, agonizingly, it kills. It's use in war should be banned, because with a half life of billions of years, it is the gift that keeps on giving. It kills our soldiers and innocent Iraqis, both now and for generations to come. It really is a WMD, an insideous, slow motion one that has no regard for who it kills. You could probably grow a crop in the stuff, but would you really wish to eat the plants? Or any animal that ate the plants? I wouldn't reccomend it.