(no subject)

[dikayasobaka]

От обедненного урана, используемого в боеголовках, уже, по некоторым сведениям, умерли тысячи человек только среди американских военнослужащих, побывавших в Ираке во время "Бури в пустыне" в 1990-91 годах. Пиздец какой-то...

Подробности здесь:
DU Death Toll Tops 11,000 (англ.)

Comments

[ygam.livejournal.com]

The death toll from the highly toxic weapons component known as depleted
uranium (DU) has reached 11,000 soldiers

Depleted uranium is uranium with lower percentage of U-235 than natural uranium (where it is 0.7%), so it is far less radioactive than natural uranium but has the same chemical properties. Uranium itself is toxic, like lead, mercury and other heavy metals, but it is not highly toxic; uranium miners got sick due to radon, not uranium.

Preventive Psychiatry

Hear, hear.

eminent scientist Leuren Moret

Google search for Leuren Moret shows http://www.zi-activism.net/downloads/nonZi/leurenbio.htm

> She has completed all but her dissertation for a PhD. in the Geosciences at U.C. Davis.

So this eminent scientist does not have a Ph.D. I don't see any mention of publications in peer-reviewed journals in her biography; a Google search shows her mentioned on a bunch of radical sites but not in any other context.

Of the 580,400 soldiers who served in Gulf War I, 11,000 are now dead, he said.

This is 1.9%. What percentage of civilians aged, say, 20 in 1991 are dead in 2005? What percentage of soldiers who served in World War II were dead 14 years later? Without this comparison, this statistics is meaningless. Note that we don't know, what they died from; some may have been run over by a car or have been murdered; just because 11,000 soldiers are now dead does not mean that "The death toll from [...] depleted uranium (DU) has reached 11,000 soldiers".

By the year 2000, there were 325,000 on permanent medical disability.

This is serious.

More than a decade later, more than half (56 percent) who served in Gulf War I have permanent medical problems. The disability rate for veterans of the world wars of the last century was 5 percent, rising to 10 percent in Vietnam.

This is also serious. Yet a question remains: how was disability defined then and now?

“The long-term effect of DU is a virtual death sentence,” Bernklau said.

People have been working with depleted uranium since the start of the nuclear age. I was not aware that they all died.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium There are lots of links to studies and articles that show that this issue is far from clear.

[ygam.livejournal.com]

Вот разумная статья про уран и его токсичность. Обедненный уран вдвое менее радиоактивен, чем природный уран, но химически от него неотличим.