[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: Can someone explain this to me in fireman talk
DU is used in preference to Tungsten in KE rounds because unlike Tungsten DU
does not mushroom on impact, but self sharpens. You often find that the DU
rounds right through and out the other side. DU rounds do not tend to
shatter, but ablate as they pass through, the ablation process causing the
phyrophoric release of DU oxide.
It should also be noted that tungsten is not benign. The following reference
is worth a look
Miller AC, Mog S, McKinney L, Lei L, Allen J, Xu J, Page N. Neoplastic
transformation of human osteoblast cells to the tumorigenic phenotype by
heavy metal-tungsten alloy particles: induction of genotoxic effects.
Carcinogenesis, 22(1):115-25, Jan 2001.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/medsearch/Cancer/DoD122.shtml
Fred Dawson
New Malden
Surrey. KT3 5BP
England
020 8287 2176
----- Original Message -----
From: <daleboyce@charter.net>
To: "Frank Helk" <frank.helk@nis-hanau.de>; <radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu>;
<LNMolino@AOL.COM>
Sent: Thursday, April 08, 2004 2:03 AM
Subject: Re: Can someone explain this to me in fireman talk
> Let me take this one step further without taking sides on cause and
effect.
>
> DU penetrates armor not only because it is nearly twice as dense as lead.
> Uranium is also pyrophoric. When you shatter it into little pieces
> penetrating armor it ignites violently inside the vehicle with the
> misfortune to be hit. When you factor in that the kinetic energy of the
> projectile gets converted into heat I would predict it is the equivalent
of
> a high explosive round going off.
>
> The resultant uranium oxide smoke is very likely to be in the respirable
> size range. If you convert the inhalation ALI's to grams you get about 50
mg
> from ICRP and about three times that from U.S. regs. That is a lot of
> powder to inhale at one time. Uranium Oxide is most likely inhalation
class
> Y. If it were D or W chemical toxicity would lead to a lower exposure
limit.
>
> That said ALI's are not supposed to lead to any significant probability of
> long term health hazard and absolutely no acute health effect due to
> radiologic considerations. Ten ALI"s?? threshold of possible long term
> health effect. To get to a dose that would cause acute radiation sickness
> we're talking about drowning in uranium dust. As an amusement I calculated
> the disintegration rate of a 1 micron uranium particle (I was lazy and
> didn't do the oxide since the uranium will be higher than the oxide) to be
> 1e-6 Bq.
>
> So I will take sides and say it isn't a radiological effect.
>
> Now having done a bit of chemistry with uranium, I know that to get a
fairly
> coarse powder to dissolve in HCl requires concentrated acid plus heat, and
> time. Not the conditions you find in the human lung. However particle
size
> can make a difference (and frequently does) in the reactivity (non-nuclear
> {8-).
>
> I have never tried to dissolve uranium smoke. I suspect it would be
easier.
> In the inverse case, if you scrape the oxide coating off a piece of
uranium
> and take a little metal with it the metal you scrape off will ignite
similar
> to a Fourth of July sparkler.
>
> The piece of metal will remain shiny briefly, but you can watch it quickly
> darken as the surface oxidizes (you get some rainbow effects as the oxide
> layer goes through a thickness between 100 and 1000 microns or so). It
then
> slows way down on the oxidation, but doesn't stop. A loose oxide coating
> will continue to eat away at the metal until it is totally oxidized
(unless
> you do something to protect it). A big piece may take a very long time for
> this to happen.
>
> That said even if the uranium were slowly dissolving in the lung it would
be
> absorbed, and the kidney would be where you would expect to see a problem.
>
> All this said, I can't rule out chemical toxicity based on what I know. My
> gut tells me that it isn't the uranium, but I always preach that you don't
> rule out a potential source of a problem until you have found the real
> cause, or it is proven beyond a reasonable doubt that it is not the cause.
> I find that if there are two possible sources of contamination in a lab,
it
> is always the one attributable to the other guy ;)
>
> Is there research out there on uranium smoke inhalation? Could it be a
> secondary effect such as pH change in the lung? Unless the pathway
> (particle size, chemical form, and route of intake) has been studied
> somewhere, we don't know if there isn't something going on that isn't new.
>
> My normal instinct would be to dismiss uranium as the cause. However a
> nuclear medicine physician, whom I respected, contracted an unusual form
of
> head and neck cancer shortly after serving as a reserve in Gulf One. Head
> and neck tumors benign and otherwise were an early complaint of a
relatively
> small number of Gulf War vets. It got washed out by all the other
> complaints that came in after the publicity started to gain attention.
>
> He and I discussed the possibility that it was caused by uranium, and I
> assured him at the time that I had never heard of anything that would make
> me suspect uranium. He died of it almost 5 years after contracting it, and
> as is the case in most individual cancers, no cause can be assigned. If I
> hadn't known him, I would have been sure that there was no real Gulf War
> Syndrome.
>
> Is there a real GWS? I don't know. In lieu of specific research (including
> follow up) we'll never know the cause of the health complaints of our
> soldiers coming home, or even if there is anything for which to find a
> cause.
>
> All I know is that in the case of the poor sucker sitting inside the tank,
> we know the cause.
>
> Dale
> daleboyce@charter.net
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Frank Helk" <frank.helk@nis-hanau.de>
> To: "radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu" <radsafe@list.Vanderbilt.Edu>;
> "LNMolino@AOL.COM" <LNMolino@aol.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2004 2:38 AM
> Subject: Re: Can someone explain this to me in fireman talk
>
>
> > Hi Louis,
> >
> > >Can someone explain to me how DU exposure ='s RAD sickness?
> >
> > OK - I think I can ... and I try to make it short and simple.
> >
> > Uranium - as it is found in the nature - consists of three nuclides,
U234,
> U235 and U238, of which only U235 is fissile (=usable for NPPs and bombs),
> but
> > they're all radioactive. Depleted Uranium has been mostly stripped off
the
> fissile nuclide. Besides of the radioactivity, uranium is a heavy metal,
> roughly as
> > chemotoxic as i.e. lead.
> >
> > If DU is used as ammunition (it can break shieds due to its very high
> density), a great share of the bullet is pulverized by the force of the
> impact.
> >
> > If the resulting dust is inhaled, the dust praticles accumulate in the
> lung, with the following effects:
> >
> > - the particles irradiate the lung lissue with alpha radiation, which
> could cause lung cancer
> >
> > - some of the uranium gets dissolved by the body liquids and will travel
> mainly to the bones and accumulate there, where it will irradiate the bone
> marrow - that
> > may result in bone cancer and leukemia.
> >
> > - the uranium may also cause chemotoxic damage to i.e. the kidneys.
> >
> > There are therapies that may remove uranium from the blood by binding it
> to chemicals that walk easy thru the kidneys.
> >
> > Best regards
> >
> > Frank
> >
> >
> > ************************************************************************
> > You are currently subscribed to the Radsafe mailing list. To
> > unsubscribe, send an e-mail to Majordomo@list.vanderbilt.edu Put the
> > text "unsubscribe radsafe" (no quote marks) in the body of the e-mail,
> > with no subject line. You can view the Radsafe archives at
> > http://www.vanderbilt.edu/radsafe/
> >
> >
>
>
> ************************************************************************
> You are currently subscribed to the Radsafe mailing list. To
> unsubscribe, send an e-mail to Majordomo@list.vanderbilt.edu Put the
> text "unsubscribe radsafe" (no quote marks) in the body of the e-mail,
> with no subject line. You can view the Radsafe archives at
> http://www.vanderbilt.edu/radsafe/
>
>
>
************************************************************************
You are currently subscribed to the Radsafe mailing list. To
unsubscribe, send an e-mail to Majordomo@list.vanderbilt.edu Put the
text "unsubscribe radsafe" (no quote marks) in the body of the e-mail,
with no subject line. You can view the Radsafe archives at
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/radsafe/