[ RadSafe ] Re: James Salsman on the Letter

[James Salsman]

Richard Urban wrote:

>... I have seen the Army training...  the same type of thing
> industrial workers get for  any hazardous substance....  Why
> should it be  different here?

Because uranium burns in air at a temperature right in the
middle of the range at which it's primary combustion product,
U3O8, produces monomolecular uranium trioxide gas vapor.  No
significant amount of UO3 has ever been detected in the dust
particulate combustion products, but it has, as reported just
last year, been found in soil and plated on the inside of
contaminated tanks, and plated on the walls of an armory
after a DU munitions fire:
   http://www.bovik.org/du/Salbu-uranyl-detected.pdf

The fact that I, without any training beyond an incomplete
chemistry minor, and after only a few days of library study,
am apparently the first to point out to munitions researchers
the fact that U3O8 produces UO3(g) at uranium's burning
temperature, speaks volumes about the competence of those
researchers, or lack thereof.  None of the munitions studies
were able to detect UO3(g), even if they had known to do so,
because its 5 Angstrom diameter will pass through the filters
they use to collect dust particles.

Gaseous UO3 is unfilterable from air, dissipates less quickly
than chlorine gas, and is instantly absorbed by the lungs.
That makes it different from any other kind of metal dusts
that workers are likely to encounter.  Although I agree very
strongly with Dr. Cherry that people ought to be doing actual
empirical research on this subject instead of just speculating
theory about it, I have calculated that absorption of a
milligram of elemental uranium from UO3(g) is likely a full
kilometer downwind, in a 5 km/h wind, from a 20-round shot of
pyrophoric 30mm ordnance, after only 20 minutes of breathing.

>... We don't let pipefitters go in to
> decontaminate a reactor cavity in a powerplant, rail engineers
> to clean up a derailed chlorine tanker, the same holds true
> for the Army. Specific training, protective wear and 
> preparations are made for responses by "specialist's".
>
> As for "Dr. Cherry... was "merely" a Radiation Safety Officer
> and Health Physicist"...  I can't possibly imagine how you 
> would want to insult probably 75% plus of this community...

Would it be an insult if you objected to surgery being performed
by a mere chiropractor?  You have answered your own question.
We don't let pipefitters decontaminate power plants, and we
don't let railroad engineers clean chlorine spills, so why do
we have radiation safety personnel making decisions about heavy
metal contamination?

> Why aren't there masses of civillians sick and dying all over the US?

Have there been any studies of the incidence of birth defects
among firing range workers?  In any case, the quantity of DU
munitions used in testing is a tiny fraction of the amount used
in 1991, 2002, and 2003, and from the very beginning all those
tests were performed with care to keep personnel upwind.

> There are thousands of us (including Bob Cherry) who have actually
> handled (and inhaled and injested) HIGHLY oxidized DU particles on
> military ranges like Yuma, Aberdeen, Nellis, Jefferson... Proving 
> Ground's, many for over 30 years, prior to there being special
> handling procedures like what are in place today, but yet there
> seems to be no irregularly high health effects....

Just how much inhalation do you think went on?  There is
essentially no cutaneous absorption of residue, and the
physiology of ingestion is biokinetically different enough
that GI tract absorption is substantially safer than inhalation.

> What about the miners and  fabricators of DU munitions...?

Those people aren't inhaling the soluble combustion products.
Mining dust is usually large enough (100 microns) that it is
flushed from the lungs into the esophagus by mucus before
being absorbed.  Nobody is going to inhale any metalwork dusts
because the pyrophoric nature of uranium means that all the
metalwork has to be done in a nitrogen atmosphere, so the
workers in the area have to wear air tanks and masks.

"Overall, the risk of any malformation among pregnancies reported
by men was 50% higher in Gulf War Veterans (GWV) compared with
Non-GWVs" -- http://ije.oupjournals.org/cgi/content/full/33/1/74

"Infants conceived postwar to male GWVs had significantly higher
prevalence of tricuspid valve insufficicieny (relative risk [RR],
2.7; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.1-6.6; p = 0.039) and aortic
valve stenosis (RR, 6.0; 95% CI, 1.2-31.0; p = 0.026) compared to
infants conceived postwar to nondeployed veteran males. Among infants
of male GWVs, aortic valve stenosis (RR, 163; 95% CI, 0.09-294; p
= 0.011) and renal agenesis or hypoplasia (RR, 16.3; 95% CI, 0.09-294;
p = 0.011) were significantly higher among infants conceived postwar
than prewar."
-- 
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12854660&dopt=Abstract

Sincerely,
James Salsman