AW: [ RadSafe ] RE: Report of the Royal Society on the health hazardsof DU munitions
Franz Schönhofer
franz.schoenhofer at chello.at
Thu Mar 9 16:13:26 CST 2006
John,
Being a (radio)chemist, a radiation protection professional on both research
and government level and finally a person who has followed the discussions
about DU and is also much interested in sociological and environmental
questions associated with not only nuclear energy but everything
"radioactive" I would like to ask you:
What did you expect??????
Uranium is toxic - chemotoxic like lead, cadmium and the like. Its
radiotoxicity is much lower than it's chemotoxicity. Still some id**ts
(sorry to the list owner, I wanted to write "persons" but my fingers went
out of control) out there denying this fact?
For the persons killed it is really of no importance, whether they were
killed by DU, natural uranium, tungsten, steel or whatever is incorporated
in the bullets and shells and whatever the ammunition is called.
Dear RADSAFErs, I sent this message on Thursday, 09 March 2006 at 10:28 pm
Middle European Winter Time. You will - hopefully - receive it with a long
delay, because my messages to RADSAFE are since some time subject to
list-owner approval.
Best regards,
Franz
Franz Schoenhofer
PhD, MR iR
Habicherg. 31/7
A-1160 Vienna
AUSTRIA
phone -43-0699-1168-1319
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl [mailto:radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl] Im
> Auftrag von John R Johnson
> Gesendet: Donnerstag, 09. März 2006 20:39
> An: parthasarathy k s; Steven Dapra; radsafe at radlab.nl
> Betreff: [ RadSafe ] RE: Report of the Royal Society on the health
> hazardsof DU munitions
>
> Dr. Parthasarathy
>
> I've reviewed the 2 Royal Society references you recommended and the
> summary
> (Document 6/02, dated March 2002). I also looked at the report from the
> Health Council of the Netherlands (Health risks of exposure to depleted
> uranium, An overview, 2001) again.
>
> I don't think there is anything in these reports that "proves" that
> depleted
> uranium has a different non-radiological risk than natural uranium.
>
> John
> _________________
> John R Johnson, Ph.D.
> *****
> President, IDIAS, Inc
> 4535 West 9-Th Ave
> Vancouver B. C.
> V6R 2E2
> (604) 222-9840
> idias at interchange.ubc.ca
> *****
> or most mornings
> Consultant in Radiation Protection
> TRIUMF
> 4004 Wesbrook Mall
> Vancouver B. C.
> V6R 2E2
> (604) 222-1047 Ext. 6610
> Fax: (604) 222-7309
> johnsjr at triumf.ca
> -----Original Message-----
> From: parthasarathy k s [mailto:ksparth at yahoo.co.uk]
> Sent: March 7, 2006 5:43 PM
> To: John R Johnson; Steven Dapra; radsafe at radlab.nl
> Subject: RE: Report of the Royal Society on the health hazards of DU
> munitions
>
>
> Dear Dr.Johnson,
>
> You may post your review of the royal society report on DU to all
> radsafers. I feel sad that the issue was discussed with unwanted acrimony
> because of an individual who appears to have a different agenda.
>
> I did not have a chance to look at DU munition issues. The nearest I did
> was when a few pieces of depleted Uranium used as shields/trimmers in
> medical accelerators appeared in public domain. Many consider any element
> ending with "ium" as radioactive. The news reports whipped up paranoia. In
> one instance, the Du pieces were recovered from near Bhabha Atomic
> Research
> Centre. News papers believed that it must have been stolen from the
> Centre;
> actually it came out of two old medical accelerators imported in to India
> by
> a private hospital and later sold as scrap.
>
> Since the material was unusually heavy, those who received them thought
> that it will be a very expensive material. They tried to sell it
> "secretly".
> POlice got scent of it. Posession of urnium without a licence is illegal.
>
> In yet another instance, police wanted to show that they did some smart
> detective work. They loved to exaggerate the risks from handling uranium.
>
> Police felt that they got contradictory advice from specialists. A
> medical
> physicist who did not know the actual hazard of handling uranium took
> extra
> ordinary precautions while advicing the police. He had an exaggearted
> sense
> of the " precautionary priniciple". A health physicist who visited the
> scene
> later gave the correct advice; police thought that he was foolhardy!
>
> There were questions in Parliament. It was difficult to convince the lay
> person that DU is not "bomb" making material. We prepared a note on the
> true
> nature of the material and used it in TV spot interviews etc to inform the
> uniformed.
>
> Regards
>
> K.S.Parthasarathy
>
> John R Johnson <idias at interchange.ubc.ca> wrote:
> DR Parthasarathy
>
> I will review these and respond. Would you like it copied to all
> Radsafers?
>
> John
> _________________
> John R Johnson, Ph.D.
> *****
> Pr! esident, IDIAS, Inc
> 4535 West 9-Th Ave
> Vancouver B. C.
> V6R 2E2
> (604) 222-9840
> idias at interchange.ubc.ca
> *****
> or most mornings
> Consultant in Radiation Protection
> TRIUMF
> 4004 Wesbrook Mall
> Vancouver B. C.
> V6R 2E2
> (604) 222-1047 Ext. 6610
> Fax: (604) 222-7309
> johnsjr at triumf.ca
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: parthasarathy k s [mailto:ksparth at yahoo.co.uk]
> Sent: March 7, 2006 8:12 AM
> To: John R Johnson; Steven Dapra; radsafe at radlab.nl
> Subject: Report of the Royal Society on the health hazards of DU
> munitions
>
>
> Dear Dr.Johnson,
>
> Let me give you a very useful reference on the health impact of DU
> munitions by the Royal Society; Its URL is
> ! ;
> http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/landing.asp?id=1243
>
> The report was published in two parts . The titles were:
>
> 1. The health hazards of depleted uranium munitions Part I (May
> 2001)
>
> 2. The health hazards of depleted uranium munitions Part II (March
> 2002)
>
> You may also read the clarifications issued in April 2003. The
> links
> for it is avilable at the above URL.
>
> I request your comments in light of other references
>
> Regards
>
> K.S.Parthasarathy Ph.D
> (Formerly Secretary, Atomic Energy regulatory Board)
>
> Raja Ramanna fellow
> Department of Atomic Energy
> Strategic Planning Group
> Board of Research in Nuclear Sciences
> Roo! m No 18, Ground Floor, North Wing
> Vikram Sarabhai Bhavan
> Mumbai 400094, INDIA
> 91+22 25555327 (O)
> 91+22 25486081 (O)
> 91+22 27706048 (R)
> Mobile 9869016206
>
>
>
>
>
> John R Johnson <idias at interchange.ubc.ca> wrote:
> Steven and other Radsafers
>
> I have found that the WHO report on DU is useful reference.
> Details
> are at
>
> http://who.int/publications/en/
> [PDF] 1 Depleted uranium: sources, exposure and health effects
> Page 1. 1 Depleted uranium: sources, exposure and health effects
> Executive
> summary This sc! ientific review on depleted uranium is ...
> www.who.int/entity/ionizing_radiation/pub_meet/en/DU_Eng.pdf
>
> John
> _________________
> John R Johnson, Ph.D.
> *****
> President, IDIAS, Inc
> 4535 West 9-Th Ave
> Vancouver B. C.
> V6R 2E2
> (604) 222-9840
> idias at interchange.ubc.ca
> *****
> or most mornings
> Consultant in Radiation Protection
> TRIUMF
> 4004 Wesbrook Mall
> Vancouver B. C.
> V6R 2E2
> (604) 222-1047 Ext. 6610
> Fax: (604) 222-7309
> johnsjr at triumf.ca
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl [mailto:radsafe-
> bounces at radlab.nl]On
> Behalf Of Steven Dapra
> Sent: March 6, 2006 7:31 PM
> To: radsafe at radlab.nl
> Subject: Re: answers (was Re: [ RadSafe ] James Salsman, DU, and
> peer-reviewed literature)
>
>
> March 5
>
> James Salsman wrote:
>
> Thanks to Steven Dapra for his excellent questions. [You are
> welcome.]
>
> > How many of the quotes you offered did you read from the primary
> > sour! ce material?
>
> James Salsman:
> Those that include URLs to full text I have read in full; of the
> others, I have read the abstract of Kang, et al. (2000) and
> McDiarmid,
> et a! l. (2006). As far as I can remember, these sources were all
> suggested either by MEDLINE, the Science Citation Index searches,
> emails
> from people, emails from stored searches, or references in other
> articles. Citations to papers by Schott, Durakovic, and McDiarmid
> all
> appear in some of the anti-DU literature I have seen, but the 2006
> article I haven't seen cited anywhere but MEDLINE yet. Thank you
> for
> your excellent summary. I wonder where the congenital
> malformations
> are
> coming from if the chromosome abberations are as low as are
> suggested.
>
> Steven Dapra:
>
> Since you have read seven of the papers, and the two abstracts,
> how could you possibly come up with all those carefully
> manipulated
> quotes? And how did you manage to so cleverly extract those eight
> wordsfrom Durakovic's review paper? How did you do what you did with the
> Miller
> et al. paper? (The ninth one in your list. [Journal of Inorganic
> Biochemistry])
>
> You wrote: "! Abstract: 'chemical generation of hydroxyl radicals
> by
> depleted uranium in vitro exceeds radiolytic generation by one
> million-fold....' "
>
> I replied: "There is no sentence in the Abstract that is in any
> way
> similar to the one Salsman quotes, nor is there any sentence in
> the
> paper
> that is similar to it. Salsman's quote appears to be a patchwork
> quilt of
> two or three sentences from the Abstract."
>
> *How* did you manage to piece that together? (Not that I want to
> imitate you, I am only curious.)
>
> I don't know what "congenital malformations" or low chromosome
> aberrations you are talking about.
>
> > How do any of these papers show criminal negligence?
>
> James Salsman:
> I am not an attorney. The legal questions of gross negligence
> include:
> Should those w! ho approved pyrophoric DU munitions have known, or
> should
> they reasonably have been expected to know, that uranium is
> teratogenic,
> at the time they approved of the munitions?What regulations then
> governed the use of poisons?
> Would a reasonable person have been expected to approve a weapon
> which
> poisons civilians off of the battlefield, after the battle is
> over?
> How many members of the civilian families of U.S. troops have been
> injured by the teratogenicity of uranium combustion products?
>
> Steven Dapra:
>
> You wrote, " . . . dozens of those who were supposed to have been
> responsible have in fact been criminally negligent . . . ."
>
> If you are "not an attorney" how can you even claim that "dozens .
> . . have IN FACT been criminally negligent"? (Emphasis added.) You
> have
> convicted these "dozens" without so much as naming them, let alone
> having
> them go through a trial, when a jury is supposed to hear the
> evidence,
> consider the fac! ts, and then decide if anyone is guilty of
> anything. I am
> not an attorney either, and I know about innocent until proven
> guilty. You
> have also switched from "criminal" negligence! to "gross"
> negligence. What's with that?
>
> Are you suggesting that using uranium (DU) is wrong because it is
> a suspected teratogen? It is well established that live ammunition
> and
> high explosive shells and bombs kill people outright. Why not ban
> them
> instead of bemoaning the presence of a possible teratogen? That
> doesn't
> make a whole lot of sense, does it?
>
> Civilians have been killed on and off the battlefield, caught in
> crossfires, and so forth since the beginning of warfare. I think
> your
> questions here are somewhat on the self-righteous side. Soldiers
> and
> civilians both get killed in wars. I don't like it either, but it
> is
> an
> unfortunate fact of life.
>
> The number of injured U.S. civilian families is unknown, and may
> never be known. Sheer conjecture abo! ut this is certainly no
> basis
> for
> accusing anyone of criminal (or gross) negligence.
>
> > Can it be shown that enlistment rates have fallen as a result of
> > DU exposure?
>
> James Salsman:
> It is my opinion that, yes, this is easy to show. A poll of
> college
> students from military families could be used to answer this
> question,
> but I know of no such poll in existing literature. I note the rise
> of such groups as "Leave My Child Alone," which did not exist
> during
> the time of the first Gulf War, as far as I know.
>
> Steven Dapra:
>
> You plainly implied that the use of DU weapons had a "resulting
> effect on enlistment rates and thus national security." A
> reasonable
> person would construe your closing comments, and this phrase, as a
> statement that the use of DU weapons had directly caused a
> decrease
> in
> enlistments in the Armed Services. The implication was that the
> decrease
> had already happened, not that it would be "easy to show." I !
> have
> not
> heard of Leave My Child Alone. I know there are some groups that
> opposed
> Service recruiters having access to high school children, and I
> imagine
> LMC! A is one of them. More than likely this stems from a general
> opposition
> to war, and in particular to the current war in Iraq. I seriously
> doubt
> that any group was formed to oppose Service recruiting solely
> because of
> the use of DU weapons. I am not a statistician, however I suspect
> it
> would
> be impossible to prove that enlistments have fallen solely because
> of the
> use of DU weapons.
>
> Steven Dapra
> sjd at swcp.com
>
>
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