Remains of toxic bullets litter Iraq.

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Remains of toxic bullets
litter Iraq

The Monitor finds high levels of radiation left by US armor-piercing shells.

By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Page 1 of 2 BAGHDAD – At a roadside produce stand on the outskirts of Baghdad, business is brisk for Lata Chalk Hammed. Iraqi drivers pull up and snap up fresh bunches of parsley, mint leaves, dill, and onion stalks.
But Ms. Hasid's stand is just four paces away from a burnt-out Iraqi tank, destroyed by -- and contaminated with -- controversial American depleted-uranium (DU) bullets. Local children play "throughout the day" on the tank, Hammed says, and on another one across the road.
No one has warned the vendor in the faded, threadbare black gown to keep the toxic and radioactive dust off her produce. The children haven't been told not to play with the radioactive debris. They gather around as a Geiger counter carried by a visiting reporter starts singing when it nears a DU bullet fragment no bigger than a pencil eraser. It registers nearly 1,000 times normal background radiation levels on the digital readout.
The Monitor visited four sites in the city -- including two randomly chosen destroyed Iraqi armored vehicles, a clutch of burned American ammunition trucks, and the downtown planning ministry -- and found significant levels of radioactive contamination from the US battle for Baghdad.
In the first partial Pentagon disclosure of the amount of DU used in Iraq, a US Central Command spokesman told the Monitor that A-10 Warthog aircraft -- the same planes that shot at the Iraqi planning ministry -- fired 300,000 bullets. The normal combat mix for these 30-mm rounds is five DU bullets to 1 - a mix that would have left about 75 tons of DU in Iraq.
The Monitor saw only one site where US troops had put up handwritten warnings in Arabic for Iraqis to stay away. There, a 3-foot-long DU dart from a 120 mm tank shell, was found producing radiation at more than 1,300 times background levels. It made the instrument's staccato bursts turn into a steady whine.
"If you have pieces or even whole [DU] penetrators around, this is not an acute health hazard, but it is for sure above radiation protection dose levels," says Werner Burkart, the German deputy director general for Nuclear Sciences and Applications at the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. "The important thing in any battlefield - especially in populated urban areas - is somebody has to clean up these sites."
More at:

http://csmonitor.com/2003/0515/p01s02-woiq.html
I find this, to say the least, very disturbing. I wonder if any the illnesses found among the gulf war veterans can be attributed to the use of this ammunition? It's use had previously been publicized however it had always been touted as being, from a radiation standpoint, harmless. That would seem to have been a big lie.

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I would like to know more about this AU. I have the vague recollection that Timber once posted an opposing view from what also seemed a reliable source. I do think the DU dust particles are a bigger hazard than any solid slugs and both may be quite persistant. I think this is one that is going to remain controversial for a while

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Roger
Whatever the extent of hazard this truly presents the perception by all involved both Iraqi's and Americans it is a health hazard. Therefore, if for no other reason than public relations every effort to clean it up as soon as possible should be undertaken.

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That seems to be taking an average of the various viewpoints. My feeling is that if the stuff is as safe as some sources indicate, we should leave it alone. If it is as toxic as others indicate, it might be time to find something else to shoot.

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Okay, here's timber's link, which includes a further link to a Rand study on the safety of the stuff. I continue to admit I'm not able to evaluate the materials from either viewpoint.

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Re: Remains of toxic bullets litter Iraq.

au1929 wrote:

I wonder if any the illnesses found among the gulf war veterans can be attributed to the use of this ammunition?

The levels of radioactivity in DU ammunition isn't something that would cause immediate illness. Prolonged exposure might cause things like lukemia or birth defects in children years down the road but the Gulf War vets were having problems within days or weeks and many of them that had problems were never near any DU weapons/ammo.

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Void out
AU

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Roger
First let me make the declaimer. I know nothing about the effects of the use of this armament. However, if you go to the web and address "Depleted Uranium Armament" you will find articles on the subject that dispute the Rand report. It would seem that the facts are still not in.

Fishin
Also voiced that some of the Gulf War Syndrome illnesses could have been indeed triggered by the ammunition.
If I remember correctly the government for years refused to acknowledge that there was such a thing as the Gulf War syndrome.
Could the DOD just playing CYA. They have done it before.

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Well, radiation is only part of the problem, perhaps. Plutonium is quite a toxic metal of itself, without regard to its radioactivity.

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1. The best information available tends to discount any negative effects from the use of depleted uranium. Not all uranium is radio-active, or even very toxic. It is a very heavy metal that makes for exceptional armor and armor-piercing rounds. Doubtless, public perceptions are that the use of DU are somehow remain inherently dangerous after being expended. That doesn't make it so, but you are correct that more should be done to educate the public. Is the public willing to be educated? There are some who will continue to cry "cover-up" no matter what is done.

2. I don't know how many DU rounds were expended during the conflict, but you can bet it is very great. Where does a bullet go once it leaves the barrel? If it strikes the target, it may shatter into thousands of smaller bits. So every DU round that struck a target has to be multiplied by at least hundreds, if not thousands. How many do you suppose that might come to? Many rounds fail to find their target, and may end up almost anywhere. They may be buried under the surface of the ground, or lying about hidden among the rubble, or rocks of the earth. To recove these errant rounds, we would need to know exactly where they were all fired from and the trajectory intended. DU is a heavy metal and may be located by good metal detectors, but the areas where such rounds might be found is extremely large. The cost in time, effort, and treasure would be prohibitive. Given the low level, or non-existent danger, there must be many higher priorities than recovering even a portion of the munitions expended ... even if it were possible.

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Asherman

Quote:

Given the low level, or non-existent danger, there must be many higher priorities than recovering even a portion of the munitions expended ... even if it were possible.

That is really the question. Is the danger low level or non-existant. Or is it a bomb waiting to explode?

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It's a little discouraging to get equally authoritative studies pointing in exactly opposite directions, isn't it?

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Au,

The links provided by Timber are from reputable sources. RAND does good work that is highly regarded for it's expertise and honest analysis. There is no reason to suppose that depleted uranium would pose a problem. DU armor and munitions are actually less radioactive than natural uranium, though they do remain toxic under some circumstances due to their being a heavy metal. Personally, I see no reason to suspect that DU remenants pose a significant health hazard to anyone.

Do you have any information that would credibly dispute the physical facts?

Let us suppose, for a moment that DU debrise MAY pose SOME health risk when ingested in quantity, though I fail to see how any dose large enough to cause significant risk might be innocently taken. Let us further suppose that a policy decision is taken to gather all the errant debrise from the environment. Alright?

Explain to me how that might be effectively accomplished at an affordable cost. The DU is scattered widely over an immense area, and there is no efficient means that I know of for locating it. Even to retrieve UXM materials would leave the smallest, and presumably the most dangerous residues unaccounted for. In short it seems to me that recovery of DU munitions is a practical impossiblity.

Now some might argue that we should not use DU in munitions, or for protecting our soldiers in battle. That would be to give up both offensive and defensive advantages that we currently hold over most, but not all, potential adversaries. Are you willing to make our troops more vulnerable merely because some believe that there is some degree of health risk?

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Asherman
The fact is there are links that dispute or at least are in conflict with the Rand corporations findings.
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/dhap/dhap992.html

http://www.hermes-press.com/depluran.htm

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For those interested, there's a YahooGroup which discusses DU concerns:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-watch/messages/1

There is considerable hysteria surrounding the subject, but really very little objective, hard data which indicates extreme threat. My own research has led me to conclude the greatest danger is not from radiation, but from heavy metal poisoning, an attribute of DU not dissimilar to lead. The radiation is quite low in DU munitions, and is chiefly alpha radiation, which has such low penatrative property that it is effectively blocked by street clothing. One study I read, but have lost track of, so no link, sorry, indicated a crewman in an Armored Fighting Vehicle using DU ammunition received more radiation from the CRT displays and luminous markers on instruments than from the DU. Au's links offer more conjecture than information, but do afford some data, despite their rather obvious bias. I would trust the objectivity of The Rand Corp and of The Federation of American Scientists somewhat more than the sites to which Au linked (a purely personal thing ... which does not per se invalidate the opinions of those sites ... just that those sites leave me unconvinced). The matter is one of considerable concern and controversy, but, as I said earlier, hard science does not support the hysteria, IMO. As more research is done, that may or may not change. I personally rather doubt it, and see it pretty much a non-issue

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I've reviewed the two links supplied. The first seems technically accurate, but doesn't dispute that fact that DU is less radioactive than natural uranium. It does shed some light on the heavy metal toxicity of the materials. I don't see anything in either part I, or part II of the first link that would lead me to believe that the amounts of depleted uranium associated with expended munitions is inherently dangerous. DU is that product remaining after the radioactive U-235 has been refined out of the U-238, rendering an end product less radioactive than the natural substance itself.

The second link didn't seem to me much more than an op-ed piece.

Still, even if the dangers were far worse than the alarmists would have us believe, there is no practical and effective way to remove such materials from battlefields in a country the size of Iraq.

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Remains of toxic bullets litter Iraq.

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