[ RadSafe ] DU and other sublimed metals; nano-pathology

[James Salsman]

Jim Barnes wrote:

> are you drawing a parallel between Tc-99 plated on carbon and U?

Yes, since the latter is considered "insoluble" in lung fluid, the
point is that any substance less than 0.1 micron in diameter will
make it into the blood stream if inhaled.

> Also, is your central contention that it is the chemical behavior of
> DU that is producing the physical debilities, or do you consider that
> it is a radiological effect? 

I think the chemical toxicity of absorbed uranium is several orders
of magnitude worse than the radiological hazard it presents.  The
important fact that I think is overlooked is that uranium does not
accumulate in the kidneys, where a sufficient one-time dose can
cause kidney failure, but continuous doses half of that size, each
given a week apart, will only result in minor structural changes in
the kidneys and not kidney failure.  However, uranium does accumulate
in, for example, the testes, where it affects the chromosomes in
spermatogonia, with increasing damage over time.  There are plenty
of other tissues where it accumulates and causes problems, too.

>... The problem that I have with the "dissolved U"
> hypothesis is that it would seem to me you'd have to get quite a bit of U
> into the bloodstream and into the tissues to see the effect, and if you get
> that much dissolution going on, I believe you'd be able to detect it in
> urine or through other bioassay techniques.  Yet, except for folks with
> shrapnel embedded in their bodies, controlled sampling programs are not
> detecting U above background levels using radiological techniques.  Has
> anyone done chemical assay (e.g. blood or urine) for U, and if so, what have
> been the results?

Sure; a good example is in "Estimate of the time zero lung burden
of depleted uranium in Persian Gulf War veterans by the 24-hour
urinary excretion and exponential decay analysis," Military Medicine,
vol. 168, no. 8 (2003), pp. 600-605.  They estimated that the initial
inhalation exposure was only about 0.34 mg in five symptomatic ("Gulf
War Illness") patients with urine isotope ratios indicating D.U.
exposure:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=12943033
However, I think they may have used a misleading lung clearance rate.

> The discussion regarding the temperature of burning U aside, I still go back
> to the point that there are nano-particles of other metals in the diseased
> tissues, and no DU.  My gut feeling is that you need a delivery system that
> a bit more sophisticated than simple dissolution in the lung in order to
> deliver the chemical dose close enough to a cell nucleus to do the damage
> you describe.  According to the article, there's lead and mercury very close
> to cell nuclei, and both of those are capable of doing what U does on a
> chemical level; so we have a photo with two bad actors next to cell nuclei
> in a tumor mass.  A third bad actor (U) is (perhaps surprisingly) not
> present.

Not present in particulate form like the other metals; bioavailable
uranium is almost never metallic, but the hexavalent uranyl (UO2++) ion,
which participates in cation exchange with sodium and potassium in
structural hydroxyl groups after conversion to uranyl hydroxide hydrate
(Stuart et al., "Solubility and Hemolytic Activity of Uranium Trioxide,"
Environmental Research, vol. 18 (1979), pp. 385-396.)  Embedded DU
shrapnel is amazingly harmless, and most of the veterans with symptoms
have only inhalational exposure, without any shrapnel.  Metallic U is
apparently not a serious hazard, perhaps because it is dissolved and
transported away for excretion by larger molecules before it oxidizes
to the bioavailable U(VI) form.

> Another point I probably shoud have mentioned earlier is that, in New York,
> Dr. Gatti presented a case of U being embedded in tissues, but the source
> was from a foundry or ceramics manufacturer that used natural U.  So, she
> has seen U in tissues, but did not see it in this sample of diseased tissues
> from a Balkan war population.

Chromosome damage is occurring at about the same rate in Balkan and
Gulf War I veterans:
   http://www.bovik.org/du/chromosome-abberations.pdf

Sincerely,
James Salsman