Depleted Uranium munitions cause concern near Oahu military base

Depleted uranium munitions cause concern near Oahu military base
by Bobby CommandWest Hawaii Todaybcommand@westhawaiitoday.com Thursday, April 26, 2007 8:37 AM HST

A number of Hawaii residents are calling for the governor to sign a bill that would test the soil within 500 meters of Schofield Barracks for depleted uranium.The legislation, introduced by Kailua-Kona Rep. Josh Green, calls for soil around the Army post to be tested quarterly and the results forwarded to the Legislature each year."There's been evidence already that the Army has been using depleted uranium in Hawaii," said Cory Harden, a Mountain View resident who is backing Green's bill. "There is also evidence that the depleted uranium causes birth defects and can get into the soil, water and air."West Hawaii Today also has received a number of e-mails asking for recipients to contact Gov. Linda Lingle and urge her to sign the bill.In 2006, a company conducting clean up operations at Schofield Barracks on Oahu discovered depleted uranium in the tail assemblies of obsolete ordnance that was used in the early 1960s.Prior to that, the Army had denied any use in Hawaii of depleted uranium, which is used in armor-piercing projectiles because of its density and ability to burn spontaneously.

Following the discovery, the Army said it did not intentionally mislead the public when it said the substance was not used in Hawaii.Harden said she is worried that the substance may be used at Pohakuloa. "I wouldn't be surprised, since many of the troops stationed at Schofield also train at Pohakuloa."

Green said his bill originally called for testing all military installations for such radioactive substances. "But these things take a life of their own once they leave my computer," he said."That being said, it will be a lot easier for us to expand the testing if this initial bill is passed," Green said. "And the bottom line is we just want to be sure that this is not getting into the environment, not just because it's radioactive, but also because it is a dangerous heavy metal."Kendrick Washington II, media relations officer for the U.S. Army Garrison Hawaii, said there are strict regulations regarding the use of the substance."Army policy prohibits the use of depleted uranium ammunition in training," Washington said. He did not provide any other comment.But Harden, who claims the United States is illegally occupying Hawaii, said she has opposed other military proposals and doubts the veracity of its statements."They haven't told us the truth in the past, so why should we believe them now?" said Harden, who added that the Army denied any usage of depleted uranium before it was discovered at Schofield Barracks.

Despite her statements, Harden said she is not necessarily against the military. "There are two sides to the issue. Some say they protect us and others say they make us a target," she said. "If they are here with the permission of the Hawaiian nation, then I think it is OK."

Dust up

http://tracypress. com/content/ view/8873/ 2/
John Upton/Tracy Press Saturday, 21 April 2007

Tons of mildly radioactive material could be blown up if an explosives testing permit is approved for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. By John Upton

Glenn Moore/Tracy Press - BLAST OFF:The 851 firing table at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Site 300 plays host to outdoor test explosions. A permit application filed with the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, if approved, would allow the Lab to increase the amount of depleted uranium and other materials exploded in outdoor tests.

Analysis of an air pollution permit application filed two weeks ago shows that tons of radioactive depleted uranium and other toxic heavy metals could be blown up in outdoor military test blasts near Tracy.

Yearly, 20 explosions could each vaporize 220 pounds of depleted uranium at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Site 300 testing ground, off Corral Hollow Road in the San Joaquin Valley air basin.

Lawrence Livermore has applied to detonate more than 4 tons a year of depleted uranium on outdoor gravel-lined Site 300 blast tables. The lab already conducts 60 to 100 smaller test blasts annually in which an unstated amount of depleted uranium is used “routinely,” according to a February letter sent to Tracy homes by Site 300’s manager.

Lab officials this week said they have no immediate plans to detonate much of the material listed in the permit application, including 20 grams annually of radioactive tritium, 1,450 pounds of lead and 1.3 tons of corrosive lithium hydroxide, a common ingredient in batteries.

Quantities of materials listed in the permit application were based on “back-calculations” of doses allowed by the Environmental Protection Agency outside Site 300’s border, according to Mike Dunning from the lab’s nuclear weapons program.

The lab applied for the highest limits possible to save time and money on later permit amendments and additions, Dunning said.

The executive director of lab watchdog Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, Marylia Kelley, described as “unrealistic” the lab’s assumption that just 9 percent — or up to 720 pounds per year — of the uranium that could be blown up outdoors at Site 300 would be light enough for the wind to carry it away from the 7,000-acre weapons testing site.

Lab spokeswoman Lynda Seaver said the rest — as much as 7,300 pounds annually — would settle on the ground at the 50-year-old site, which is already listed by the EPA as one of the nation’s most-polluted pieces of land.

Depleted uranium has advantages in military use, but its health effects are disputed. Some blame it for causing debilitating wartime illnesses, while others argue its radioactivity is so weak that it’s harmless.

Depleted uranium is used in munitions because it’s twice as heavy as lead and because it has characteristics that allow it to penetrate tank and other armor and then explode, according to Richard Muller, a Berkeley-based physicist. Muller, after a 34-year career, resigned last year from the 47-year-old JASON science and technology advisory group, which is sponsored by federal intelligence, energy and defense agencies.

“They make a hollow region in the explosive and they coat that with depleted uranium,” Muller said. “When they set off the explosive, the depleted uranium is pushed into the empty space at high speed, where it … goes forward with enormous velocity.

“They don’t use it for the radioactivity — the radioactivity is just a little bit of a pain in the neck. Depleted uranium is not terribly radioactive.”

Depleted uranium is used in American armor as well as grenades, bombs and armor-piercing bullets. U.S. forces have used it in both Iraq wars.

Army munitions director Col. Jim Naughton in a 2003 press briefing on depleted uranium said the powerful bomb material gives the U.S. military a big advantage on the battlefield.

“The Iraqis tell us, ‘Terrible things happened to our people because you used it last time,’” Naughton said. “Why do they want it to go away They want it to go away because we kicked the crap out of them.”

A 2002 report commissioned by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which summarized other studies, blamed the hundreds of tons of depleted uranium used in Iraq for the debilitating and widespread Gulf War syndrome, for a four- to six-fold increase in Iraqi birth defects after the first Gulf War and for a seven- to 10-fold increase in Iraqi cancer rates.

Specific individual deaths and serious illnesses were linked in the report to inhaled depleted uranium, which is toxic and emits low-level radioactivity for the average three to four years that it takes to leave the lungs, according to the report.

“The users of depleted uranium have tried to keep the effects of depleted uranium secret,” wrote report author Y.K.J. Yeung Sik Yuen.

According to a December letter to the Tracy Press editor signed by Lawrence Livermore health physicist Gary Mansfield, the health effects of depleted uranium are negligible.

“A key issue is that the health effects, if any, of a substance depend not on whether any of the substance is inhaled or ingested, but on how much of the substance is taken into the body,” Mansfield wrote. “Because it is so weakly radioactive, it is very difficult to take enough depleted uranium into your body to cause any harm.”

The Bush administration last month invited the $1.7 billion-a-year Department of Energy weapons lab, which will be partly managed by military contractors starting later this year, to design a new generation of atomic warheads. Lab officials have denied that their San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District permit application is linked to that mission.

To reach reporter e-mail jupton@tracypress.com.This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

Wolves of Water - by Dr Chris Busby

Wolves of Water

The sequel to Wings of Death

Click here for a 4-page flyer (a PDF file)
Index

---

This is a book about corporate responsibility as it is applied to national governments. Part biography, part textbook, part warning, part entertainment and part celebration of life, it is an account of what happens when we take on the might of the nuclear / military lobby using the methods of science and epidemiology.
Most of all it is a message to the planet and its inhabitants to take control of the policy/science interface before the products of science and scientific ways of thinking destroy us all.

The author is an international expert on radiation and health, a Fellow of the University of Liverpool, member of two UK government committees, expert witness in radiation court cases, Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, science policy leader of the EU Policy Information Network for Child Health and Environment (PINCHE).

This book provides evidence that radioactive pollution has killed and is killing hundreds of thousands of people through cancer and other diseases. It dissects the working of the official radiation risk committees and establishment using analysis, photocopied documents, letters, leaked minutes and personal statements. It reveals that at the highest levels there is a long-running and continuing cover-up of the cause of the present cancer epidemic.

Published by Green Audit, Aberystwyth, UK ISBN 1 897761 26 0
Price £12 / Euro20
Order direct from the publishers: Email christo@greenaudit.org.
Review copies may be requested from Dr. Busby at Green Audit.

Soldier Health Scare Back in News

(full report at: http://www.news- journalonline. com/special/ uranium/DUFOLO04 1507.htm

By AUDREY PARENTE
STAFF WRITER

Lori Brim cradled her son in her arms for three months before he died at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

N-J | Ji-Eun Lee

Lori Brim poses for a portrait holding up a button to promote a campaign to raise awareness of the depleted uranium at her office at Riverside Bank in Holly Hill. The Ormond Beach resident believes her son Dustin died from exposure to depleted uranium when he was serving in Iraq.

Dustin Brim, a 22-year-old Army specialist had collapsed three years ago in Iraq from a very aggressive cancer that attacked his kidney, caused a mass to grow over his esophagus and collapsed a lung.

The problems she saw during her time at Walter Reed, including her son screaming in pain while doctors argued over medications, had nothing to do with mold and shabby conditions documented in recent news reports. What this mother saw was an unexplainable illness consuming her son.

And what she has learned since her son’s death is that his was not an isolated case.

Lori Brim has joined other parents, hundreds of other sick soldiers, legislators, research scientists and environmental activists who say the cause of their problems results from exposure to depleted uranium, a radioactive metal used in the manufacture of U.S. tank armor and weapon casings.

Health and environmental effects of depleted uranium are at the heart of scientific studies, a lawsuit in the New York courts and legislative bills in more than a dozen states (although not in Florida).

News stories claiming negative signs of depleted uranium’s impact, including death and birth defects, are surfacing from Australia to England to the Far East. The controversy rages within government bodies and underlies the theme of TV shows like a recent episode of the medical series "House."

While the military continues to deny the connection of depleted uranium to sicknesses plaguing returning servicemen and women, a newly mandated study stemming from legislation signed by President Bush in October is just getting under way.

OPPOSITION

The new study, which began in March, follows several that have been completed by the military into depleted uranium, a byproduct left when enriched uranium is separated out for use in nuclear power and atomic weapons. The Department of Energy gives it to arms makers, where its extreme density is valuable in the manufacture of armor and casings.

Despite a 1996 U.N. resolution opposing its use because of discovery of health problems after the first Gulf War, the military studies have concluded there was no evidence that exposure to the metal caused illnesses.

To the military, the effectiveness of weapons and armor made with depleted uranium outweighs any residual effects. Their bottom line: Depleted uranium saves soldiers’ lives in combat.

Robert Holloway, president of Nevada Technical Associates Inc., a firm that specializes in radiation safety training, disputes any concern over depleted uranium.

"I have no financial interest in promoting depleted uranium," Holloway wrote in an e-mail to The News-Journal. "There really is no substitute for depending on the judgment of professionals in this field."

Holloway and others who believe depleted uranium is safe to use say the best authority in the scientific community would be individuals connected to the Health Physics Society.

Doug Craig of Ponce Inlet, a retired radiation biophysics scientist, is such a person. He doesn’t believe low doses of radiation from depleted uranium are a problem.

"Uranium occurs in a lot of places," Craig said, "and man has been exposed to low concentrations of uranium for a long time."

Canada Lets Iraqi doctor speak

by Jonathan Woodward - the Globe 14th April

VANCOUVER — A highly regarded Iraqi epidemiologist who wants to tell
>Americans about an alarming rise in cancer levels among Iraqi children
>will come to Canada instead because he couldn't get a visa to the
>United States.
>
>Unable to travel to the University of Washington, Riyadh Lafta -- best
>known for a controversial study that estimated Iraq's body count in
>the U.S.-led war in Iraq at more than half a million -- will arrive at
>Simon Fraser University in B.C. this month to give a lecture and meet
>with research associates.
>
>"The University of Washington wanted him, but the U.S. denied his
>entry," said his colleague at SFU, Tim Takaro. "They need to be able
>to collaborate, even if his results are unpopular with the Americans.
>Now he's at SFU, and the best they're going to get is a video feed."
>
>Once in Canada, Dr. Lafta will present estimates that paint a damning
>portrait of the war's ravages on children: that birth defects are on
>the rise since the war began, and that the number of children dying
>from cancers such as leukemia has risen tenfold.
>
>Dr. Lafta had tried for six months to get a visa into Seattle to speak
>in Washington, and was ignored a half-dozen times, Dr. Takaro said.
>
>The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services couldn't be reached for
>comment. But a spokesman for Seattle Democratic Congressman Jim
>McDermott said he couldn't understand the decision. "Jim's certainly
>more than a little unhappy about it. We don't know whether this was a
>snafu or more than that," Mike DeCesare said. "Certainly with the
>doctor not able to be on the campus, and engage directly with people,
>you've got to believe that's a net loss for everybody."
>
>Dr. Lafta was born in Baghdad in 1960, was trained as a physician at
>Baghdad University College and then worked for 14 years for the
>Ministry of Health under Saddam Hussein. He became the head of the
>communicable disease department and then the primary-care department
>of Diyala province in northern Iraq.
>
>Dr. Lafta, who is still in Iraq, couldn't be reached by e-mail
>yesterday. But Dr. Takaro shared a message from his personal
>communication. "The main point is that people outside Iraq do not
>realize the real disaster we are suffering," Dr. Lafta writes. "Only
>the Iraqi people know that, simply because the foreigners are
>listening to the news while we are living the events on the ground."
>

FROM RADIOACTIVE MINES TO RADIOACTIVE WEAPONS

FROM RADIOACTIVE MINES TO RADIOACTIVE WEAPONS (30 MINS APPROX) NOW AVAILABLE ON DVD.

This film (1999) chronicles how three large communities of people have been affected by uranium - the Navajo uranium miners, 1991 Gulf War veterans, and the Iraqi people. The film begins on the Navajo Reservation in the southwestern United States, where for years Navajo uranium miners and their families have been adversely affected by uranium mining and its continuing impact on the people and environment. The documentary then shifts to the 1991 Gulf War and the use of depleted uranium weapons. Gulf War veterans from the United States, Canada, and Great Britain along with Iraqi soldiers and civilians have been exposed to fallout from the use of depleted uranium weapons by U.S. and European forces during ground warfare. The film also interviews uranium activists and Navajo Nation attorneys, a human rights attorney raising the depleted uranium issues in the United Nations, and a university physicist with evidence of Gulf War soldier's exposure to depleted uranium and its results.
To order this video: please contact
danrobicheau@ hotmail.com
This CD is available for $20.00.

for more information, contact the American Depleted Uranium Study Team
http://health. groups.yahoo. com/groups/ AmericanDUST

New film on gulf veterans against the war

Reveille! Reveille!, featuring Dennis Kyne, Jimmey Massey, Pat Resta and many other veterans of Iraq.

to purchase your copy today - http://www.dennisky ne.com/reveiller eveille.html

In March 2005, the Iraq Veterans Against the War held their first national meeting in a hotel just outside Fort Bragg, NC. The small gathering proved too controversial to receive any notice from the mainstream media. Yet in less than a year, the organization grew from a handful of members to several hundred GIs and combat veterans of the “Global War on Terror.” As images of war crimes in Iraq began trickling back to the U.S. public these veterans emerged from the shadows to confirm atrocities committed in the name of freedom.
Reveille! Reveille! chronicles the Iraq Veterans Against the War in their earliest attempts to prevent further atrocities and regain their humanity. These films follow this generation of veterans from their initial gathering to their stand at the gates of the White House, which resulted in the largest mass arrest by U.S. Park Police since the Vietnam War. Reveille! Reveille! is an eye-opening experience for anyone who has questions about the war.

[input]
http://www.dennisky ne.com/reveiller eveille.html

Australian Gulf War Veterans contaminated with Uranium

Australian service personnel who served in the Gulf during 1991
have tested positive for uranium contamination. The Uranium Medical
Research Centre (UMRC) in Canada, working in conjunction with DUSK
Australia (Depleted Uranium Silent Killer) has tested a
representative from the Australian Navy and a representative from
the Australian Army. The uranium isotope analysis on their urine
was carried out at the J.W. Goethe University in Germany and
confirms depleted uranium
contamination.

To date, the Australian Government has not acknowledged the
possibility that Australian service personnel could be contaminated
with uranium. However, scientific research reveals that Iraq is
highly contaminated with the radioactive fallout from depleted
uranium weapons. The positive tests of these Australian veterans,
reveals that they are still excreting uranium through their
kidneys, fifteen years after their return from Gulf War 1.

The Australian veterans in this test case are ill. They exhibit
multiple health problems from their exposure to radiological
warfare. Their intimate partners suffer health problems and so do
their children. The contamination of Iraq has resulted in an
explosion of cancer, leukaemia and birth defects among the local
civilian population.

Depleted uranium is highly toxic and radioactive waste. It is a by-
product of the enrichment process that prepares uranium for use in
nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. This radioactive waste is
denser and heavier than lead. It is manufactured into bunker
busters that can penetrate deep into the earth and into the most
powerful anti tank weapons available in the arms market today.

The Australian debate about embracing nuclear power technology, has
omitted the inextricable link between uranium mining and uranium
weapons. The proliferation of nuclear weapons causes concern, but
depleted uranium weapons, are used daily in conflicts across the
world.

The nuclear industry exists on the understanding that radioactive
contamination is safely contained within nuclear facilities. The
ethics of recycling radioactive waste into weapons and shooting it
into another countries' backyard is missing from this debate. When
depleted uranium weapons are fired, they immediately flare off
uranium particles that can be ingested and inhaled. They lodge in
the lung and other organs, irradiating the victim from the inside.

There are repercussions for all Australians now that Australian
service personnel have tested positive for uranium contamination.
The Uranium Medical Research Centre is concerned about blood
products and organ donations from persons known or suspected to be
exposed to depleted uranium.

Uranium weapons are illegal. They fail the four rules derived from
the whole of humanitarian law regarding weapons.

1. Weapons may only be used in the legal field of battle.
2. Weapons can only be used for the duration of the armed conflict.
3. Weapons must not be unduly inhumane
4. Weapons may not have an unduly negative effect on the natural
environment.

Depleted uranium is radioactive for 4.5 billion years.

Therefore, uranium weapons cannot be contained on the legal
battlefield, nor within the timeframe of the battle. The birth
defects exhibited by babies born after the conflict and the
explosion of cancers afflicting civilians is evidence of the
inhumanity of these weapons. The radioactive particles will drift
across countries and around the world, contaminating air, water,
soil and all life forms.

Australians are at risk at home. The Senate Hansard reveals that we
have imported from the United States 34,000 depleted uranium
weapons. The Australian Navy has used these weapons in training off
the Australian coast. There are no records available to the public
to identify `when or where' these weapons were expended. Wind
patterns at the time of the training exercises would reveal
communities at risk of contamination.

In 2003 the Australian Government opened up all of our defence
training areas to the United States. There is ship to shore and air
to ground bombing near Perth in Western Australia at the Lancelin
Defence Training Area. In January 2006 the United States began
flying in from Guam for regular bombing of the Northern Territory.
This occurs just west of Katherine at the Delemere bombing range.
The Shoalwater Bay defence training area in Queensland includes a
section of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. It will host the
largest joint Australian US military training exercise in June,
Talisman Sabre 2007.

The Australian Government is adamant that no uranium weapons are
being used, however no testing of water and soil is being done to
reassure the public that uranium weapons have not and will not be
used. The Australian Defence Force has purchased the M1A1 tank that
is shielded in depleted uranium. The patent of the Hellfire 11
missile reveals a "dense metal" warhead of tungsten or uranium
alloy. It is being imported from the United States for use with the
Australian Tiger Helicopter, currently being manufactured in
Brisbane.

As a result of the uranium contamination of Australian Army and
Navy personnel, it is time for Australia to rethink the export of
uranium. Government safeguards assuring us that Australian uranium
is only used for `peaceful' purposes are simply an illusion of
protection. Once our uranium is exported, it can be mixed with
uranium from other countries. In the gaseous diffusion that
separates enriched and depleted uranium, it is not possible to
isolate Australia's uranium. We export uranium to
the United States, the world's largest manufacturer and exporter of
arms.

Estimates reveal that up to 800 tons of radioactive waste (depleted
uranium) was dumped on Iraq during Gulf War 1. There is an estimate
of about 1,100 tons used in Gulf War 2 and the bombing continues.

How many Australian service personnel are contaminated?
How will this affect the Australian civilian population?
It is time to take seriously the undiagnosed illnesses of
Australian Gulf War veterans who have been deployed to a
radioactive theatre of war.It is time to address the sickness of
their partners and their children.It is time to look carefully at
what is happening on Australia's defence training areas. From
uranium mines to uranium weapons: Has Australia's uranium
unleashed a public health catastrophe?

Pauline Rigby

Coordinator:
DUSK/ UMRC project to test Australian veterans for uranium
contamination
DUSK (Depleted Uranium Silent Killer) Australia www.dusk-qld. info

Uranium and the War

March 21, 2007 (for full article go to

http://uruknet.info/?p=m31556&s1=h1

In five billion years our sun will explode into a white dwarf and envelope the earth, according to NASA projections.

The half-life of uranium 238 is 4.5 billion years.

This means that by the time the Earth ceases to be a planet, only a little more than half of the depleted uranium (DU) that the United States Army is firing into Iraq and other countries around the world will be gone. The rest of the radioactive material will still be poisoning the Iraqi people.

The U.S. Army revealed in March 2003 that it dropped between 320 and 390 tons of DU during the Gulf War—the first time the material was ever used in combat—and it is estimated that more still has been dropped during the current invasion, though there have been no official counts as yet.

Depleted uranium munitions are extremely dense, toxic, and mildly radioactive. And despite mounting evidence of DU’s negative health affects for combatants and civilians alike, their use is increasing.

Naturally occurring uranium has three forms: uranium 235, 234, and 238. More than 99 percent of earth’s uranium is 238. Uranium 238 is much less radioactive than uranium 235, which is why it takes so long to deteriorate.

Nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants require highly radioactive uranium, so the uranium 238 is removed from the naturally occurring uranium by a process known as enrichment. Depleted uranium is the by-product of the uranium enrichment process.

Since so much of the natural uranium is 238—which is nearly useless for nuclear weapons manufacturing and use in power plants—uranium enrichment factories are left with large amounts of uranium 238, or DU. According to an estimate by the Kansas-based group Nukewatch, the United States has over a billion pounds of DU in its stockpile. This product is twice as dense as lead, and more toxic than it. DU is used to make numerous weapons systems, from shells to bullets to armor for tanks. DU munitions are commonly called Penetrators, a testament to the material’s density.

Belgian Parliament votes on DU Ban

117 Belgian votes for a ban on depleted uranium (DU) munitions
and armour

On Thursday 22th March the Belgian Chamber plenary sitting voted
the law proposal regarding depleted uranium munitions that was
unanimously approved by the Chamber Commission on National
Defence two weeks ago.
Again, the plenary sitting of the Parliament voted unanimously in
favor of this law proposal that will " prohibit the manufacture, use,
storage, sale, acquisition, supply and transit of inert munitions and
armour that contain depleted uranium or any other industrially
manufactured uranium ." Deputies Brigitte Wiaux (CdH), ZoëGenot
(Ecolo), Stef Goris (VLD) and Dirk Van der Maelen (political group
leader of SP.A and SPIRIT) appealed for a wide parliamentary
support of the law proposal.

All 117 parliamentarians, including extreme right, voted to ban
depleted uranium munitions and armor. Probably before the federal
elections, the law will be publicized in the Belgian Statute Book.

Willem Van den Panhuysen and Ria Verjauw, campaign leaders of
the Belgian Coalition 'Stop Uranium Weapons!' were surprised of
this tremendous political consensus to ban this type of weaponry.
Belgium is now the first country in the world to counter this
indiscriminate DU weapons relying on the precautionary principle.