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AW: uranium munitions burning in air, and ignited by propellant or explosive N/Cl compounds
James,
This is the response of a European, one of those opposing the military
engagement of the US in foreign countries without the consent of the
United Nations. Furthermore it is the response of a radiochemist and a
person who has been engaged in the consequences of a disastrous nuclear
power plant explosion (Chernobyl) and the most comprehensive follow up
study of a nuclear weapons test site (Mururoa). Most of all it is the
comment of an Austrian citizen, who is deeply concerned about the way
international politics is increasingly leading to military power
demonstration, killing a few "enemy" soldiers, but tens or hundreds of
thousands of innocent civilians, which are opposed to the occupation of
their country.
On your comment:
Not only Health Physics Society members read and contribute to RADSAFE.
I reject your comment about scientists having an interest in uranium
commerce. I have no interest, but of course I am not influencing the
medical literature. Your "threat" to expose authors who do not share
your opinion to "RADSAFE and other fora" is close to blackmail. I do not
believe that these authors care for it.
Being a radiochemist I declare your claims on "uranium-nitrate
formation", and "halogen compounds" as complete nonsense. I do not waste
my time to argue on this topic. You cite "air-soluble compounds" -
absolute non-scientific nonsense.
You obviously lack any scientific qualification. I could go on with my
comments for a long time, but I do not intend to waste my time on it.
The last and most important comment on this issue:
When I was a long time ago doing service in the Austrian army (I had
graduated already in radiochemistry) we had also exercises in how to
behave in the case of a drop of a nuclear bomb. From the radiation
protection point of view the scenarios would have been disastrous. We
complained about it and we received an answer which I think is more than
appropriate in this case: "If soldiers are supposed to die in enemy fire
then it is also acceptable that some will die from radiation from a
nuclear bomb."
Do you understand that???? I doubt. Yes, I know, it is harsh, but it is
perfectly compatible with military thinking.
Summarizing: Nobody has forced the US to engage in this war. A large
proportion of the US forces is even made up by non-US-citizens, which we
in Europe (and I believe also in international law) would be regarded as
mercenaries. Your arguments are simply not valid. Even if they were
valid they are not acceptable in a situation where so many soldiers
return seriously wounded, lacking arms or legs or even having suffered
worse wounds. Not to talk about the ones coming home in a coffin. All
have been paid for their risks.
If you really would want to do any good to prevent any of the alleged
health problems join a group arguing for an end of this war.
Flames very welcome to me or RADSAFE. I hope that nobody at RADSAFE -
unless politically forced - will sign your petition.
Franz
Franz Schoenhofer
PhD, MR iR
Habicherg. 31/7
A-1160 Vienna
AUSTRIA
phone -43-0699-1168-1319
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: owner-radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu [mailto:owner-
> radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu] Im Auftrag von James Salsman
> Gesendet: Montag, 13. Dezember 2004 07:23
> An: radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu
> Cc: RadSafeInst@cableone.net
> Betreff: uranium munitions burning in air, and ignited by propellant
or
> explosive N/Cl compounds
>
> I have just found this mailing list today, and I have read the
> archives for about the last month. I am under the impression that
> many Health Physics Society members read and contribute to this
> RADSAFE mailing list. The extent to which those with a financial
> interest in uranium commerce of one kind or another have repeatedly
> been attempting to influence the determination of what should
> rightfully be the province of the peer-reviewed medical literature
> has not gone unnoticed. I have decided to hold the authors of some
> of the most egregious examples of apologism personally accountable
> for their errors of commission here and in other fora.
>
> In regard to the comments of Ed L. Battle, COL USAF (Ret.):
>
> > There is nothing more important than caring for the illnesses of our
> > civilians and military men and women who served in the two Gulf
Wars.
>
> That is false, because protecting those who are not already poisoned
> is more important than attempting to find a cure for those who have
> been poisoned when the best known combinations of antidotes must be
> administered less than seven days after exposure to be effective.
> The hyperbole is understood, but it detracts from the truth. The
> attempt to imply that burning uranium munitions are not the primary,
> if not the only, cause of Gulf War Illness is already past the point
> of absurdity, and has entered the realm of professional malfeasance
> or abject negligence. Moreover, the sharp and increasing incidence
> of congenital malformations is of the utmost seriousness:
> http://ije.oupjournals.org/cgi/content/full/33/1/74
>
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&lis
t_
> uids=12854660&dopt=Abstract
>
> > We can only hope that the true cause(s) of those illnesses will be
> > discovered soon, so that they can be cured.
>
> This is disingenuous at best and a cruel attempt at a fig leaf
> at worst. Back in 2000, before reports of the sharply-increased
> congenital malformation rate were reported in the peer-reviewed
> medical literature, there was still a small probability that the
> anti-nerve gas agent pyridostigmine bromide (PB) was responsible.
> That has since been ruled out by cohort analysis. The evidence of
> cancer and birth defect incidence rates are consistent with
> partially-soluble uranium combustion product inhalation exposure,
> in the time frame of Operation Desert Storm, and peer-reviewed
> results from medical literature have the same consistent incidence
> rate curve for U.S. and U.K. troops, which in turn is consistent
> with informal cancer and birth defect statistics from the Basrah
> medical research establishment. The early data from the Balkan
> conflict and Afghanistan are also in agreement.
>
> > Meanwhile, allegations that they spring from an assumed single
> > source (DU) only serve to confuse the issue
>
> Again on the contrary, combatant/noncombatant reserve cohort studies
> had already ruled out all of the multi-source hypotheses as early as
> 2000, according to the responsible investigator then, former Army
> General Dale Vesser, who said this in 2000: "People talk about oil
> well fires, DU (depleted uranium), PB (pyridostigmine bromide),
> low-level chemical agents, and vaccines against biological weapons,
> but at this point, we do not believe that any of the hazards to
> which the Gulf War veterans were exposed are directly related to
> their illnesses. The only one we cannot rule out is PB." So, he
> plainly admitted four years ago that the only alternative
> hypothesis, including the combinations, that had not already been
> ruled out was PB. The roughly-concurrent multi-volume RAND
> Corporation report on the topic established that PB was not mutagenic
> in any way. All the combinations have already been ruled out by the
> histories of other troops with the exact same medications and
> pesticides deployed in noncombat areas. The RAND study on uranium
> inhalation was flawed in two ways. First, it described in
> quantitative terms effects of the low level of radiation from
> uranium projectile munitions, to the exclusion of similar
> quantification of uranium metal toxicity. Second, it ignored the
> uranium nitrates and other soluble compounds.
>
> Two questions to which I have not yet been able to obtain a direct
> answer are:
>
> 1. What is the proportion of uranyl nitrate produced when burning
> uranium in air at STP, relative to the other combustion products,
> by mass of the uranium?
>
> 2. What is the proportion of STP air-soluble uranium-halogen
> compounds produced when burning uranium in the presence of
> propellants used in uranium munitions? High pressure combustion
> may be assumed, but only for the time it takes for the round to
> escape the gun barrel.
>
> On these points, I note that uranium burning in air reaches a
> temperature no lower than 3100 Kelvin, and that uranium will
> burn in a pure nitrogen atmosphere at under 1000 Kelvin.
> It is also helpful to know that, of the oxides, the UO3 form
> represents approximately 1/5th of the combustion products by
> mass. So, my closest approximation is that uranyl nitrate
> amounts to about 1/18th of the combustion products by mass of
> the original uranium, when burning uranium in air at STP.
>
> The extent to which uranyl nitrate remains dissolved in the
> atmosphere is also an open question. It precipitates slowly,
> with a melting point of 60 deg. C. None of the publications
> of the Health Physics Society have directly addressed the
> aerosol dispersion of uranyl nitrate, some having gone so far
> to consider only the oxides to the exclusion of the nitrate.
> Moreover, there is nothing on the Health Physics Society web
> site directly stating that uranium attacks any organ other
> than the kidneys, when it is known to accumulate in the bone
> (with the U232 isotope embedded permanently, with no half-life
> of organ clearance) and in the testicles, which explains the
> 5% incidence rate of birth defects reported about 1999 when
> compared to the 3% rate in the population as a whole. These
> results are both statistically significant at the 99% level
> and predictive of further increases in cancers in veterans
> and birth defects among their children.
>
> More pressing is the issue of indirect contamination of Indian
> Ocean fish. What are we going to do about people who want to
> eat fish from any of the Tigris and Euphrates' tributaries, up
> to and including the Indian Ocean? At the rate UO3 and uranyl
> nitrate flow into the groundwater and streams, we should already
> be able to detect unsafe levels of uranium in the skeletons of
> Persian Gulf fish. Does anyone on this list remember "Fallout and
> Reproduction of Ocean Fish Populations" by E.J. Sternglass (1971)?
> http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/Fallout-Fish-Sternglass8oct71.htm
>
> The U.S. Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute has
> found that uranium exposure can produce literally one million
> times as much chromosome damage as would be predicted from its
> radioactivity alone (J Inorg Biochem. 2002 Jul 25;91(1):246-52),
>
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dop
t=
> Abstract&list_uids=12121782
> ... and that it causes a form of "delayed reproductive death,"
> which doesn't cease like exposure to simple radioactivity does
> (J Environ Radioact. 2003; 64(2-3): 247-59.) The U.S. military
> has admitted that DU is "both neoplastically transforming and
> genotoxic" (Radiat Prot Dosimetry. 2002; 99(1-4): 275-8.)
>
> A February, 2004, U.K. Pension Appeal Tribunal Service decision
> in Edinburgh implicated depleted uranium directly in the birth
> defects of children fathered by Gulf War veteran Kenny Duncan,
> of Clackmannan, U.K.:
> http://www.denniskyne.com/KennyDuncan.htm
> http://idust.net/News/DUVetsClaims01.htm
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1122566.stm
> ... after Dr. Albrect Schott of Germany found that damage to
> chromosomes in the white blood cells of Gulf War veterans was
> about five times greater than the rest of the population:
> Radiat. Prot. Dosimetry, 2003; 103(3):211-9 --
> http://rpd.oupjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/103/3/211
>
> The new U.K. combat regulations require a 50 meter stand-off for
> shell targets, and also mention gun barrel contamination, but that
> part doesn't make a distinction between shells and bullet ordnance,
> and nobody, frustratingly enough, is quantifying the contamination.
>
> The U.S. government admitted back in 2001 that inhaled uranium
> accumulates in the testes:
> http://www.bovik.org/du/reproduction-review-2001.pdf
>
> The incidence of birth defects are skyrocketing after having
> laid dormant for several years. Congenital malformations in
> Basrah's civilian population soared 600% in 2000 from
> just-above-baseline levels in 1997:
> http://www.bovik.org/du/basrah.gif
> Very frightening similar incidence rate patterns have been
> observed in U.K. and U.S. troops.
>
> The cancer rate increase over time in consistent with "low
> level" uranium inhalation poisoning:
> http://www.bovik.org/du/Effects-of-DU-war.pdf
> I estimate that at least 40,000,000 have already lost more
> than half of their remaining life expectancy to cancers alone
> (i.e., not counting the obvious immune system damage or any
> of the birth defects) from uranium inhalation and secondary
> food chain contamination. I am waiting on more accurate data
> in order to be able to produce a 95% confidence interval.
>
> There are simply no alternative epidemiological hypotheses
> consistent with the observations. Burning uranium produces
> poison gas which kills friend and foe alike. This is in fact
> the largest "friendly fire" incident ever. This is against
> the international laws of war, and other treaty obligations.
> The U.S. must me held financially accountable, and punitive
> measures must be imposed to prevent such breaches in the future.
>
> I have placed additional supporting documents here:
> http://www.bovik.org/du
>
> Please join my petition: http://www.bovik.org/du/du-petition.html
>
> Sincerely,
> James Salsman
> Mountain View, California
> 650.793.0162
>
>
>
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