August 27, 2005
Nukes in the News: Radioactive Wounds of War
The Pentagon has expanded DU beyond tank and A-10 shells, for use in bunker-busting bombs, which can spew out more than half a ton of DU in one explosion, in anti-personnel bomblets, and even in M-16 and pistol shells. The military loves DU for its unique penetration capability—it cuts through steel or concrete like they’re butter.
The problem is that when DU hits its target, it burns at a high temperature, throwing off clouds of microscopic particles that poison a wide area and remain radioactive for billions of years. If inhaled, these particles can lodge in lungs, other organs or bones, irradiating tissue and causing cancers.
Worse yet, uranium is also a highly toxic heavy metal. Indeed, while there is some debate over the risk posed by the element’s radioactive emissions, there is no debate regarding its chemical toxicity. According to Mt. Sinai pathologist Thomas Fasey, who participated in the New York Guard unit testing, the element has an affinity for bonding with DNA, where even trace amounts can cause cancers and fetal abnormalities.
Dr. Doug Rokke, a health physicist at the University of Illinois who headed up a Pentagon study of depleted uranium weapons in the mid ’90s after concerns were raised during the Gulf War, concluded there was no safe way to use the weapons. Rokke says the Pentagon responded by denouncing him, after earlier commending his work.
story [in these times by way of truthout]
~Work-related illnesses. The VietNam War created a new medical/psychiatric sub-discipline out of stress-related injuries. "Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder" covered a vast array of symptoms. Today everybody has some idea of how stress can be harmful.
What name(s) might be given to the various cancers and birth defects that the unprecedented numbers of soldiers and civilians contaminated with depleted uranium will contract? DU Syndrome? Sand Disease? Rag Rot?
Does the Pentagon now have the public-relations machinery to insure diseases no longer become associated in the public's mind with their wars?
Veterans with PTSD can be dramatic; hundreds of hours of tv shows featured such characters. PTSD also 'explained' a wide-range of behaviors...hostage-situations, drug abuse, homelessness, gun-play, spousal abuse, suicide...both on and off the tube.
Cancer on the other hand is a silent killer, a 'wasting disease', and birth defects are heart-breaking. They aren't suitable subjects for blockbuster movies or primetime tv. The majority of Americans won't remember Operation Iraqi Freedom and the neo-cons foreign policy because of disease?
The question remains: how will the health of thousands of people, in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and the US, be affected by the Pentagon's use of depleted uranium?
[image via sky soldiers\ not above]