[ RadSafe ] radiation not to blame for DU's nanopathology

[James Salsman]

I wish I had the time to read J.B. Bishop, K.L. Witt, and
R.A. Sloane, "Genetic toxicities of human teratogen," in
Mutation Research, vol. 369 (1997) pp. 9-43.  Perhaps I
will find myself at the biology library soon.

I have read Q. Hu and S. Zhu, "Induction of chromosomal
aberrations in male mouse germ cells by uranyl fluoride
containing enriched uranium," in Mutation Research, vol. 244
(1990) pp. 209-214.  It would seem prudent to redo that
experiment with inhaled uranium combustion products, given
the forwarded message below.

Sincerely,
James Salsman

Subject: 	Depleted uranium
Date: 	Fri, 6 May 2005 23:08:27 +0200
From: 	Secrétariat Avigolfe <avigolfe at tiscali.fr>

Dear Sir, madam

My name is Alain ACARIES and I am the general secretary of
AVIGOLFE  - the French association for military and civil
victims of the Gulf and Balkans wars, the chairman is M.
Herve DESPLAT, an ex-military person and veteran of the
First  Gulf  war.

I am also the father of Ludovic, sent to the Balkans during
his military service for six months with FORPRONU  - and who
died of a serious illness in 1997. I would like to inform
you , that due to the lack of recognition by both military
and civil authorities of the connection between the military
service and the death of my son, I asked for a scientific
analysis of one of his lymph glands that had been conserved
by the civil hospital where he had been treated in the first
instance. This examination was done in the NANODIAGNOSTICS
   laboratory (Via E.Fermi  41057 San Vito, Modena , Italy)
Dr. Gatti, biologist and physician, examined the lymph
ganglion, that I personally took to her in January 2005.

A new technique has been developed using an ambient electron
microscope, with funding by the EEC ( Projet QLRT - 2002 -
147 NANOPATHOLOGY) . This method, for the moment unique,
reveals inorganic micro and nano particles in the tissues.
For more information on their research you can connect to :
http:/avigolfe.ifrance.com  - click on the flower on the
title page and you have access to all the rubric  - select
Nanopathologie 2.  The documents are in both English and
French  or if you wish I can forward  further information to
you, in French or English, about this method.

As in all the cases of victims of the "Balkans Syndrome"
studied by this laboratory, the sample of the lymph gland of
Ludovic Acaries was found to contain a concentration of
metallic micro and nano particles ( Ag. Cr. Au. Si. Al. Mg.
Mo.) and non metallic  ( P, S, I, Cl ). Such a mass is not
found in the normal composition of human tissues, and these
alloys do not exist in a natural state or in the
metallurgical industry. It has already been proven that
normal cellular defense mechanisms are ineffective when
confronted  with extremely small particles. Once these
fragments have entered the human body, they can penetrate
the cellular nucleus and lead to very serious consequences,
- a number of them are listed as poisonous chemicals.

These particles produced during the impact of the weakened
uranium or tungsten munitions on the target  and owing to
the extremely high temperature  ( +3000° ) can remain
suspended in the atmosphere for a very long time after their
formation, and they can persist in high concentration in
enclosed areas (cars or rooms ). The vehicles used by the
French of FORPRONU in the Balkans, had not long returned
from the Gulf war and NO research or specific treatment was
carried out before they were re-used in the Balkans.
(Confirmation by the defense ministry)

An important detail is that Ludovic was in the Balkans from
March 1993 to October 1993 and NATO declared to have used
weakened uranium weapons as from August 1994  But we have
proof that tungsten munitions were found in the Balkans in 1993.

In Ludovic's case, who was a lorry driver - and who ate and
slept in his lorry when on supplies mission to troops in
Sarajevo , and frequently having to stop due to close
fighting, the origin was confirmed to be caused by
vaccinations and radioactivity , but not necessarily both.
For more information, you can read  "Les Vaccins"  on our
internet site.

A complaint is being registered by the French judge in
charge of the investigations  ... But here , at AVIGOLFE, we
would like to take these sanitary problems associated with
modern wars to a European level  as our governments refuse
to listen to reason and give pensions to the victims or to
their families.  We would like the veterans of  each
European country who took part in these conflicts,  alert
the press again with the information I'm sending you ,so
that ALL  persons concerned are informed  and that each one
write to one or more European deputies in Strasbourg asking
for the creation of  a European Inquiry Committee, and also
that the scientists involved be heard.

I'm sure I can count on you to distribute this letter as far
as possible to all yours European friends and other people.
    Avigolfe has already written to French European
parliamentaries - but  that it must do it in other Europeans
countries.

I would very much appreciate acknowledgement of this letter
- and, if possible , the actions you intend to take.

Very sincerely yours,

     Alain Acaries
AVIGOLFE

Association Française des victimes civiles et militaires des
   guerres du Golfe et des Balkans
49 avenue Bontemps
95750 CHARS ( FRANCE )
tél : +33 6 85 20 06 99
avigolfe at tiscali.fr <mailto:avigolfe at tiscali.fr>

http://avigolfe.ifrance.com



Antonietta Morena Gatti is a physicist and bioengineer, and
is the founder and the director of the Laboratory of
Biomaterials of  the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
(Italy). She is the  discoverer of the presence of micro-
and nano-particles in biological tissues and of their
pathological effects. The European Community appointed her
Coordinator of the international group in charge of the
nanopathology study.

Stefano Montanari is a pharmacist and a scientific
consultant. He has collaborated with Dr Gatti for about 25
years.

THE SO-CALLED "BALKAN-SYNDROME": A BIO-ENGINEERING APPROACH

Dr Antonietta M. Gatti - Dr Stefano Montanari

It is a well-known fact, widely reported by media, that a
non-negligible number of veterans of the Gulf War (1990-91)
showed what according to medicine are mutually unrelated
symptoms. Some of those can be attributed to stress:
headache, for example, or sleep disturbance, or
forgetfulness, or an impaired concentration. Other symptoms
like fatigue, muscle and joint pain, and shortness of breath
are somewhat harder to classify, but cancers, various and,
in some cases, extremely unusual diseases of the
genitourinary system, an  increased incidence of birth
defects among veterans' children and disorders of the blood
and the haemopoietic organs must be due to causes that
cannot be legitimately ascribed to stress. Other pathologies
Gulf War veterans are suffering from, like sudden death and
Lou Gehrig's disease are under investigation as to their
meaningfulness.

But the problem is unfortunately wider and not limited to
that group of military population.

Very similar symptoms are being displayed by soldiers who
served in the former Yugoslavian territory during the
so-called Balkan War, made worse by an unusually high
incidence of Hodgkin's and non-Hodgkin's lymphomas. Staffers
of humanitarian missions and Yugoslavian residents as well
are suffering from the same diseases.

Professor Edo Hasanbegovic, chief of the Paediatric Clinic
of Sarajevo, denounced how leukaemia is on the increase in
children throughout the Yugoslavian Federation, but mainly
in children coming from Velika, Kladusa and Buzim, towns
located close to the Croatian borderline.An explanation to
all that was offered when in March 2000 NATO revealed that
Depleted Uranium (DU) shells had been employed in the
Balkans and in 2001 traces of radioactivity were detected by
the United Nations Environment Protection agency not far
from Sarajevo, in a barracks at Han Pijesak and in two
places inside a factory in Hadzici.

It is a frequently observed fact that radioactivity is a
triggering factor to cancer, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki
taught a painful lesson about that. So, uranium was
immediately seen as the obvious scapegoat to blame.

For a better understanding, it is necessary to know that DU
was used to make a component of some shells used in that
war, but radioactivity played no role in that choice. High
density and hardness are the features that made those
projectiles, called kinetic penetrators, particularly fit
for piercing even very thick armours. DU is what is left
over when most of the highly radioactive isotopes of uranium
are removed for use as nuclear fuel or nuclear weapons.

The DU used in armour-piercing munitions is also used in
civilian industry, primarily as ballast, for stabilizers in
airplanes and boats.

As a matter of fact, uranium is a mixture of three isotopes:
U235, U234, and U238. When the content of U235 is below
0.711%, uranium is classified as "depleted", and the blend
used in the Balkans contained less than 0.2% of that isotope.

DU is approximately 40 percent less radioactive than natural
uranium and emits alpha and beta particles, and gamma rays.
Alpha particles can hardly pass through the skin, while beta
particles are blocked by most garments, and the amount of
gamma rays, a form of highly penetrating energy, emitted by
DU is very low.

The radioactivity produced by those weapons is certainly not
healthy, but its full responsibility for such an unusual
health situation looks at least doubtful if observed from a
scientific standpoint.

In addition to that, another piece of evidence is raising a
further doubt about the radioactive origin of the
pathologies: A higher-than-expected quantity of lymphomas
and symptoms identical to those suffered from by the Balkan
War's veterans was observed in Italian soldiers who had
never served in any theatre of war nor had ever come near to
radioactive weapons. The condition all those soldiers shared
was serving in firing grounds.

In the meantime, someone tried to blame the multiple
vaccinations soldiers underwent during the so-called
Operation Desert Storm, but without being able to give any
scientific demonstration to that thesis.

As a matter of fact, in addition to the usual vaccines
against tetanus-diphtheria, hepatitis B, poliovirus,
meningococcal, typhoid and yellow fever, the American troops
were treated with Botulinum Pentavalent, unlicensed in the
United States, intended to counteract botulism.

Then they were treated with a vaccine against anthrax, a
drug proven to be teratogenic. In fact, women receiving it
are warned not to have children for at least three years.

Finally troops received Pyridostigmine bromide, not a
vaccine, but a pre-treatment against nerve agents. That
drug, normally used for myasthenia gravis, is not approved
by the Food and Drug Administration as a nerve gas antidote
and its side effects are potentially very dangerous.

But those medicines were administered to US troops only,
while the Gulf War Syndrome affected also civilians and
soldiers of other nationalities.

Thus, no answer was given to the question: why do people
living in theatres of war and soldiers working under
particular conditions contract those diseases with such an
alarming frequency?

Our Laboratory of Biomaterials of the University of Modena
and Reggio Emilia (Italy) is engaged in checking bioptic and
autoptic samples coming from patients belonging in the
classes described above. It is an indisputable fact that all
samples contain inorganic micro- and nano-particles, while
it may be interesting to observe that  none of them show any
trace of uranium.

  From the technical point of view, those very small
fragments can be detected by using an innovative technique
of electronic microscopy we developed and that has been
already described in literature.

What we found were very small bits, sometimes agglomerated,
of simple or combined metals: Fe-Si, Cu-Cl-Zn, Si-Ti-Fe-Al,
Si-Bi, Si-Pb, Fe-Cu-Zn, Cr-Fe-Ni, Fe-Mn and, but just once,
Zr alone.

The spherical shape, hollow in the larger sizes, of many
particles proves their formation under a very high
temperature, a condition compatible with that of the
explosion of a DU shell.

DU projectiles hit very different targets, but specially
buildings and armaments like, for example, tanks, and when
they do, the temperature in the core of the explosion
exceeds 3,000°C, which is more than enough to have all solid
matter sublime and, in some cases, form new metal alloys.

That gas expands over a large volume  of atmosphere, then,
rapidly, the matter becomes solid again taking the shape of
very small spheres (down to 10-8 m diameter), stays
suspended in the air and is carried away over distances
depending on atmospheric conditions like wind, rain, snow
and pressure. This phenomenon was studied in 1977-78 at the
US Air Force base of Leglin (Fla).

After some time, all the air-borne particles fall slowly
down and settle on grass, vegetables, fruit or expanses of
water where they become inevitably a guest of food and drink
to animals and men alike. Even if that unwanted presence is
known in advance - but very often it is utterly ignored -
getting rid completely of inorganic particles can be very
difficult. A good wash eliminates a great quantity of debris
from fruit or vegetables, but cauliflowers, for example,
cannot be cleaned thoroughly because of their rough surface,
while those particles that settle in the tissues of animals
that ate contaminated grass and men eat as meat can't be
taken away at all.

Keeping in mind the well-known, even if never widely
publicized, phenomenon studied at Leglin and the new science
of nano-pathology, an explanation to the unanswered question
becomes easy.

People present in firing grounds and in the theatres of war,
and being a soldier or a civilian makes no difference,
breathe in micro- and nano-particles while they are
suspended in the air as an aerosol, then eat and drink them
along with vegetables and water.

We have amply demonstrated with our researches that once
debris that size (10-9 - 10-5 m) enter the body, be it via
the digestive or the respiratory system, they can easily
negotiate the luminal tissues and either be captured by the
tissue itself which acts the way a filter does, or be
transported by the blood or the lymph until they end their
travel in some organ (for instance the kidneys and the
liver). Lymph nodes, for example, are the organs where
lymphomas start and develop and where, in all pathological
cases checked, we found the presence of inorganic particles.
But also all the other pathologic specimens we had the
possibility to observe show clearly and without  any single
exception the presence of debris.

It is important to underline that none of the particles we
found is biodegradable.

Just to give a further confirmation about the applicability
of the theory according to which the so-called Balkan
Syndrome has an environmental, nanopathological origin,
particles found in the diseased tissues of soldiers and
civilians, and particles found in the ground of the
territories where the pathologies were contracted are
mutually compatible.

If no uranium was ever detected, that does not necessarily
mean there is none somewhere in the tissues of the patients.
The fact is likely to be due to its quantity, which is
extremely scarce when compared with the huge masses of the
targets that sublime and that contain no such element. It is
also possible that uranium particles had been captured by
tissues but, probably because they did not reach a critical
threshold, did not trigger any disease and, as a
consequence, we did not have the chance to receive and study
the samples.

In conclusion, DU's responsibility is only indirect, and it
is not its radioactivity to blame, but the very high
temperature that uranium produces once the shells of which
it is a component hit the mark.

It is then possible that the Balkan Syndrome has a
multi-factorial origin including radioactivity and
vaccinations, but the main cause is without any doubt a
nanopathological one.