[ RadSafe ] uranium and breast cancer

[Steven Dapra]

June 3

         (See below for instigating message.)

         I did a Googol search and found this:

Let us start with an equally eloquent but far more accurate letter sent to 
the Royal Ordnance in London on 21 April 1991 by Paddy Bartholomew, 
business development manager of AEA Technology, the trading name for the UK 
Atomic Energy Authority. Mr Bartholomew's letter - of which I have obtained 
a copy - refers to a telephone conversation with a Royal Ordnance official 
on the dangers of the possible contamination of Kuwait by depleted uranium 
ammunition. An accompanying "threat paper" by Mr Bartholomew, in which he 
notes that while the hazards caused by the spread of radioactivity and 
toxic contamination from these weapons "are small when compared to those 
during a war", they nonetheless "can become a long-term problem if not 
dealt with in peacetime and are a risk to both military and civilian 
population".

The document, marked "UK Restricted" goes on to say that "US tanks fired 
5,000 DU rounds, US aircraft many tens of thousands and UK tanks a small 
number of DU rounds. The tank ammunition alone will amount to greater than 
50,000lb of DU...if the tank inventory of DU was inhaled, the latest 
International Committee of Radiological Protection risk factor...calculates 
500,000 potential deaths."

(end quote)

The link with the full article is <http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles22.htm>.

         It looks like we have a letter by Paddy Bartholomew that refers to 
a telephone conversation, that in turn was accompanied by a "threat 
paper."  This seems to then be transmuted into a "document" marked "UK 
Restricted" that makes claims about the amount of DU rounds fired.  IF all 
that dust was inhaled, and if the ICRP's risk factor is reliable there will 
be all these "potential" deaths.  Sounds like a rather weak reed to me.

         But 500,000 deaths is nothing.  According to an article by Leuren 
Moret, there will be 25,250,000 cancer deaths from DU use in the Middle 
East.  This is based on 2200 tons of DU being used, which would cause 
22,000,000 "new cancer deaths."  Read about it here 
<http://antarchia.org/drupal/en/taxonomy/term/24?page=5> under the heading 
"25 Million Cancer Cases?".

         (I don't write this junk, I only report on it.)

         I did a little more looking around on the Web, however this 
appears to be not an urban legend but an urban fantasy.

Steven Dapra


At 01:21 PM 6/3/08 -0500, garyi at trinityphysics.com wrote:

[edit]

>Did UKAEA make some obscure statement, as claimed by the blog he cites? 
>Lets see, We
>can (A) do James' work for him, or (B) go back to real work that has some 
>basis in reality.
>
>Tough choice, but I think I'll go with (B) this time.
>
>  -Gary Isenhower
>
>
>On 3 Jun 2008 at 9:48, James Salsman wrote:
> > This is line 050 of Gary's pseudocode, but on topic:
> >
> > "... at the end of the first Gulf War, the United Kingdom Atomic
> > Energy Authority estimated that 50 tons remained in Iraq, and that
> > amount could be responsible for 500,000 cancer deaths by the year
> > 2000." --
> > http://www.picassodreams.com/picasso_dreams/2008/05/depleted-uraniu.ht
> > ml
> >
> > Did the UKAEA actually say that?

[edit]