Re: DU - request for scientific (!) information

["ruth_weiner" <ruth_weiner@email.msn.com>]

Dr. Schoenhofer is quite right.  Uranium is readily oxidized (that's WHY it
is used in weapons) and the oxide is relatively insoluble.  (And, by the
way, I really wish more of our policy makers understood solubility.)
However, particles less than about 10 microns in diameter can be inhaled
past the bronchial cilia and can lodge in the lung alveoli, where they are
irritants.  This is why heavy smokers get emphysema.  I would expect that
someone inhaling a lot of UO2 dust from an explosion would suffer lung
irritation until the particles were cleared, just as occurs on inhaling
large quantities of any very fine dust.  However, uranium, which is almost
all U-238, has such a small specific activity that it is hard to imagine
that there would be any radiological effect.  In fact, cigarette smoke
probably has more specific activity than UO2.

We are facing a larger, serious question, however, and I am at a loss as to
how to address it.  The kind of junk science that is in all this talk about
DU not only gets in the press, people believe it (even for some obscure
reason, good scientists) and we start to get regulation that acts on it.  We
talk largely to each other on RADSAFE and we are mostly of one mind about
junk science, but we must communicate publicly that acting on junk science
is more than foolish, it is dangerous and costly, and diverts both attention
and money from the actual risks that are present in society.  What should we
do?

Thanks for reading the "sermon"

Ruth Weiner
ruth_weiner@msn.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Franz Schoenhofer <franz.schoenhofer@chello.at>
To: Multiple recipients of list <radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu>
Date: Tuesday, January 16, 2001 12:10 AM
Subject: DU - request for scientific (!) information


>After having read in a copied mail, that the ICRP is the most criminal
>organisation ever, causing the death of hundreds of millions and trillions
>(what is that????) people of the future generations we probably should not
>worry about the effects of depleted uranium, because the earth will be
empty
>from human beings within a few years due to the ICRP's "criminal" actions.
>But we have a saying in German, which reads "Live every day as if you had
>hundred years ahead". Therefore I care to ask for some scientific
>information.
>
>I am a radiochemist and I have dealt for decades with all kind of
>radionuclides, but all of them more or less soluble or in solution and I
>have determined their concentration, not their chemical behaviour. I
believe
>to remember from the times long long ago, that metallic uranium is easily
>oxidized and the resulting oxides are not readily soluble. Especially when
>uranium is dispersed because of the impact on an armoured vehicle I would
>have expected that the transfer of kinetic energy into heat would oxidize
>uranium so efficiently that the "dust" would become totally insoluble. Of
>course I am aware that the lung fluids are one of the most agressive ones
>and that a large surface from finely dispersed uranium oxide would
>relatively facilitate the dissolution. On the other hand uranium oxides are
>extremely heavy and the question still is, what the size and weight
>distribution of the particles could be and whether they can be easily
>resuspended, once they are on the ground. It seems unlikely to me. As well
I
>know that sintered uranium oxide (and carbide) pellets have been used
>extensively as nuclear fuel and I always have regarded this as an
additional
>safety feature to have the uranium in an extremely inert form.
>
>This request is more or less out of curiosity - btw I am fed up with the
>articles on DU and its danger in the news media, but the hystery is clearly
>declining. Maybe because a cow born in Austria and having been exported to
>Germany is suspected to be infected by BSE?!!!
>
>Maybe Andrew McEwan knows more about the topic of my request - for
plutonium
>he has done a very good job!
>
>Franz
>
>
>
>
>
>
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