Can it be proven that our use of depleted uranium in Iraq/Afgan war causes deformed babies there, and in US?.?

Question

From what I've read, and pictures viewed recently, tend to prove that it's a proven fact.

Answer 1

It depends on who you listen to. In government funded studies, the effects of depleted uranium are negligible. In privately funded studies, they are extreme.

The problem with most studies on DU is the delivery method. Simply placing someone in a room with a DU munition will have little to no effect. When that munition is detonated, however, it releases an aerosol of fine uranium oxide that is breathable and spreads great distances by wind until weighted down by rain, where it falls to the ground and is absorbed into soil or water sources.

The use of DU is illegal under all international agreements, treaties, and covenants and it is illegal even under U.S. military law regarding WMDs. It breaches the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Charter, the Genocide Convention, the Convention against Torture, the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, the Conventional Weapons Convention of 1980, and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907.

In the three-week Gulf War in 1991, just 467 U.S. personnel were reported as wounded. Of the 696,778 GIs who served in that war, more than 11,000 are now dead, at least 20,6861 have applied for VA medical benefits. As of May 2002, 159,238 veterans have been awarded service-connected disability by the Department of Veterans Affairs for health effects collectively known as the Gulf War Syndrome.. New cases are arising by an astounding 43,000 per year. Veterans of the conflicts in the Gulf, Bosnia and Kosovo have been found to have up to 14 times the usual level of chromosome abnormalities in their genes. That has raised fears they will pass cancers and genetic illnesses to their offspring.In the months and years following Desert Storm, thousands of babies have been born to vets with horrible deformities (missing limbs, one eye, missing ears, incomplete or missing organs - reminiscent of the Thalidomide babies of the 1950s - but in far greater numbers. In 1995, Iraqi health officials reported alarmingly high increases in rare and unknown diseases, primarily in children, and presented a study of this state of affairs to the United Nations. The increases occurred in leukemia, carcinoma, cancers of the lung and digestive system, late-term miscarriages, congenital diseases, and deformities in fetuses, such as anencephaly (absence of a brain), and fused fingers and toes, not unlike those found in the babies of Gulf War veterans.

edit:
Like someone after me said, DU radiation is blocked by the skin. But if DU dust is inhaled, consumed on food or in water, or in fragments in vets, the alpha, beta and gamma radiation cannot be blocked by the skin. Most studies have looked at the effect of DU outside the body, not inside. Some have said, like my "cut and paste" from gulfwarvets.com, that DU dust exposure is responsible for "Gulf War Syndrome". One thing is for certain, high levels of radiation inside the body leads to chromosone damage and cancer. The question is: How much is too much?

Answer 2

What you've read, and the photos you've seen, is called propaganda. Either deceptively using media, or outright lying, to influence your opinion. In the 1991 Gulf War, the majority of the DU expended by the allied forces was in Kuwait, and no increase in abnormal births has been experienced there. The photos of birth defects you saw from Iraq were most likely caused when Saddam used chemical weapons against his own people, which he did numerous times.

I have linked the World Heath Organization's factsheet on depleted uranium below. Their extensive studies have concluded that: "No reproductive or developmental effects have been reported in humans." I also have linked a page of an engineer who knows a little more about this sort of thing than your average television or newspaper reporter. Read them and make up your own mind.

Some points:

- DU itself is not radioactive enough to be of any concern. In fact, if you were to line your house with it, you would reduce your overall exposure to radiation because you would be blocking cosmic radiation that exists throughout the universe.

- The metal itself is toxic, much like other heavy metals such as lead. The dust that is produced in an explosion falls around 10 meters or so from the impact site, so there is no danger to nearby population areas.

- The use of DU has not been banned by any international agreement, and it is certainly not considered a WMD. It is, conversely, used often as armor.

Answer 3

Yours is a good question, but your assumption that depleted uranium causes birth defects is far from a "proven fact". And, yes, it does depend on whose study you want to believe. So, let's look at some provable facts:

Depleted uranium is 40% LESS radioactive than naturally occurring uranium.

Depleted uranium emits alpha, beta and gamma radiation. Alpha radiation is stopped by skin or a sheet of paper. Beta radiation can be stopped by clothing and a good pair of boots. Gamma radiation, while detectable, is very limited. Alltogether, the radiation from depleted uranium is less than, repeat LESS THAN, normal background radiation.

Some uranium oxide is released when a DU round strikes and penetrates a vehicle. Exposure is almost completely limited to the occupants of the struck vehicle. One of those "depends on who you believe" studies says, "...over 60 friendly-fire victims have been evaluated by the voluntary VA DU Medical Follow-up Program. Aside from the problems associated with their traumatic injuries, to date, this follow-up program has attributed no illness or other harmful effects in the evaluated veterans to DU."

As for the uranium oxide "blowin' in the wind" as some people imply, you would have to breath in a lot to be affected.

Of course, it you are one of those "US BAD, WAR BAD, ARMY BAD, US SOLDIORS BAD, BAD, BAD." people, your mind is already made up.

Think what you want, it doesn't make it true!

Answer 4

No - this cannot be 'proven.' Mostly because the human health effects of DU have been extensively studied and it is known that DU does not do this.

Hint: How can any of those pictures be used to determine cause/effect? All they are is something to grab your attention and fool you into thinking that a cause/effect relationship exists when it does not.

Hint #2: Iraq is extensively polluted from its years of oil production. Many of these pollutants (that are known to be in the drinking water) are known and have been proven to cause birth defects. Is it not more logical to assume that these birth defects resulted from exposure to known teratogens than from a substance where there is no scientific evidence that indicates it is a teratogen?

Answer 5

Someone would actually have to eat the uranium to get sick from it. As the previous poster said, it is less raidoactive than the solar radiation on the surface of Earth. It IS a toxic substance, but again, toxicity doesn't just jump across the space between a shell and a person. You have to touch it for anything to happen.

Answer 6

If you've seen any pictures of deformed babies out of Afghanistan they're probably due to poor sanitation reasons and etc. NOt depleted uranium.

Answer 7

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