[ RadSafe ] half of burning uranium becomes gas vapor

Mon Jan 15 14:24:25 CST 2007

Colonel Eric Daxon wrote that the U.S. Veterans' Administration
"found that Gulf War veterans REPORTED more birth defects than
non-Gulf War Veterans. When they actually did the study and examined
the medical records, the birth defect rates were equal to the normal
population rates," and, "the paper that found that the birth defect
rates were equivalent did not receive much press," citing some
unpublished research of Dr. Han Kang.

Dr. Kang, the Director of the Veterans Administration's Environmental
Epidemiology Service, does not agree, stating that the total number of
"moderate to severe" birth defects in children of male Gulf War
veterans increased from an odds ratio of 1.8 from survey data to 2.2
after the pediatric medical records were examined.

Colonel Daxon should have known better than to try to misrepresent
Dr. Kang's unpublished results, because a summary of them was
published in 2003:

"Dr. Kang found that male Gulf War veterans reported having infants
with likely birth defects at twice the rate of non-veterans.
Furthermore, female Gulf War veterans were almost three times more
likely to report children with birth defects than their non-Gulf
counterparts. The numbers changed somewhat with medical records
verification. However, Dr. Kang and his colleagues concluded that the
risk of birth defects in children of deployed male veterans still was
about 2.2 times that of non-deployed veterans."
-- Department of Veterans Affairs (2003) "Q's & A's - New Information
Regarding Birth Defects," Gulf War Review, vol. 12, no. 1, p. 10:
  http://www1.va.gov/gulfwar/docs/GulfWarNov03.pdf

Sincerely,
James Salsman

On 1/11/07, Eric D <edaxon at satx.rr.com> wrote:
> Mr. Salsman,
>
> Your accusation (I am a liar) is unfounded.  I provided the information I
> based my statements upon and this is an old discussion.  A recently released
> National Academy of Sciences report (2006) is in line with my original
> statement as are the many other independent, published studies cited in this
> work.  Unpublished results are just that.  I would suggest you read earlier
> posts that discuss the topic of lying.
>
> I disagree with your connecting Dr. Kang's results as an endorsement of your
> position that DU is a causal factor.  There are no data that support your
> inference.
>
> I would like to see the references for "... people to propose using urine
> testing to measure uranium exposure, instead of measuring chromosome damage
> from uranyl poisoning, which is a much more accurate method of measuring
> exposure to uranium trioxide gas."  If anyone on the list has information to
> corroborate or to disprove the statement, I would appreciate it.  I believe
> it to be incorrect.
>
> Once again you are discussing the vapor issue, the uranium trioxide and DoD
> testing which has already been laid to rest multiple times. I skimmed the
> 1970 article you provided and saw no mention of uranium trioxide and very
> little discussion of uranium.  The paper focused on Pu.  If you read the
> discussion with an understanding of vapors and the experiment itself, the
> results are in line with the many articles published since this work was
> done.
>
> Dr. Johnson's statement that you provided in your link was accurate.  He
> agreed with my statement, I am assuming, because of his study and the rest
> of the scientific community's research into the health effects of DU.
>
> Your argument appears to be that if someone disagrees with you they are
> either a "liar" or "...are betraying the interests of truth, science..."
> Your post illustrates a previous discussion thread on this web site.
>
> Eric Daxon, PhD, CHP
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl [mailto:radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl] On Behalf
> Of James Salsman
> Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2007 6:07 PM
> To: radsafe at radlab.nl
> Subject: [ RadSafe ] half of burning uranium becomes gas vapor
>
> When I see posts like this...
>
>   http://lists.radlab.nl/pipermail/radsafe/2006-November/004495.html
>
> I wonder why Dr. Johnson is agreeing with someone who has been proven to
> have lied about epidemiological birth defect research results.  To make a
> long
> story short, Dr. Kang, a Veterans Administration epidemiologist, has been
> tracking an increasing trend of birth defects in the children of 1991 Gulf
> War
> veterans, and Colonel Daxon claimed that Dr. Kang's unpublished research
> indicated the trend had decreased.  In fact, in is increasing more sharply
> than
> ever.  (Roger H, did you ever call Dr. Kang to confirm after I gave
> you his phone
> number?)
>
> The only reason I can think that Dr. Johnson would want to agree with a
> proven
> liar is because he was responsible, in the 1990s for proving the "safety" of
> depleted uranium munitions.  In doing so, he never considered the amount of
> uranium which becomes gas vapor instead of particulates, which settle much
> more quickly, when it burns.  Neither has anyone else in the military
> or industrial
> production of DU munitions.
>
> Sadly, this state of affairs has caused otherwise-intelligent people to
> propose
> using urine testing to measure uranium exposure, instead of measuring
> chromosome damage from uranyl poisoning, which is a much more accurate
> method of measuring exposure to uranium trioxide gas.
>
> I note that fully half of burning uranium becomes gas vapor, see page 836 of
> Carter, R.F. and K. Stewart (1970) "On the oxide fume formed by the
> combustion of plutonium and uranium" Inhaled Particles 2:819-38:
>   http://www.bovik.org/du/CarterStewart.pdf
>
> I suspect that the people who lie about depleted uranium think that they are
> doing our military a favor.  In fact, they are betraying the interests
> of truth,
> science, the health of our nation's armed forces, and their ability to
> recruit,
> upon which they rely.
>
> Sincerely,
> James Salsman
> _______________________________________________
> You are currently subscribed to the RadSafe mailing list
>
> Before posting a message to RadSafe be sure to have read and understood the
> RadSafe rules. These can be found at:
> http://radlab.nl/radsafe/radsaferules.html
>
> For information on how to subscribe or unsubscribe and other settings visit:
> http://radlab.nl/radsafe/
>
>