[ RadSafe ] Fwd: ruling out uranium vapor with x-rays

[Steven Dapra]

April 28

         (Comments interspersed.)


At 03:52 AM 4/28/08 -0700, Ben Fore wrote:
>[Replies to Gary I. and Roger H. are included below.]
>
>Gary,
>
>Thank you for your good advice.  I regret that I must continue to another 
>pseudonym as the Radsafe list
>manager seems not to share the opinion that this is an important discussion.
>
> > those tanks are shot with DU in a very earnest effort to destroy the 
> tank and kill the troops in it.
>
>Attacking the children of combatants is illegal, and is a serious war 
>crime.  Tungsten is preferable, even
>if it does have more shrapnel cancers (one of many ways people die in 
>wars.) The U.S. Navy switched to
>tungsten around 1993 under John Taschner's direction.  Their Toxicology 
>Detachment publhjicly recognized the
>genotoxic and teratogenic nature of DU as early as 1998.

         Nobody is attacking the children of combatants.  This is 
rubbish.  (What are your thoughts on attacking the children of 
non-combatants?)  Do you have any citations to the refereed literature for 
your claims that DU is genotoxic and teratogenic?

>At least one of the U.S. Army contract researchers on this list who failed 
>to recognize the
>genotoxicity or teratology of uranium in their safety studies have joined 
>the call to study its teratology:
>
>   http://lists.radlab.nl/pipermail/radsafe/2006-March/002280.html
>
>Others working for the U.S. Army, such as Col. Bob Cherry -- and who also 
>failed to recognize
>the teratology of uranium even though it was well-established in 1953, 
>have not joined the call
>to correct that mistake.
>
>Will anyone else join the call to study the teratology of uranium smoke?

         First let's find out if DU is teratogenic.  Citations, please.

>Do radiation protection professionals have any responsibility to ask for 
>it to be learned?
>
> > That is usually how war goes - you shoot at and kill the enemy until 
> somebody surrenders.
>
>Sadly, there are also the innocent bystanders.  Why are we using something 
>that harms N generations
>of victims when nobody has any idea what N is?
>
> > The real tragedy is war itself.  Work on that....
>
>What makes people hate war more than seeing how badly the war-mongers' 
>safety provisions have been?

         My best guess is that the "war-mongers'" safety provisions, or 
lack thereof, are rather low on the list of why people hate war.  In and of 
itself, war is an unsafe business.  Besides, when someone is blazing away 
at you with an AK-47 you're probably not too worried about whether or not 
you're going to get cancer from exposure to DU smoke.

>Roger Helbig wrote:
>
> > James Salsman, Mountain View, California, aka
> > Dave Blaine has already wasted perhaps a
> > hundred thousand or more of your tax payer
> > dollars in his complaints to the Nuclear Regulatory
> > Commission
>
>It's money well spent. I would debate that in public
>with Col. Helbig, who has probably done more to
>see that the teratology of uranium smoke has not
>been funded than anyone else. Helbig has refused
>a public debate in the past, because he knows that
>his position is utterly contradicted by current
>medical and military research.  The challenge
>stands, however.

         Let's see *you* prove your position.  What are the citations to 
this alleged research?

Steven Dapra


>James Salsman, as Ben Fore (not running out of pseudonyms)

         Seems to me if you're using fake names that's a good reason to be 
expelled from RADSAFE.