depleted uranium weapons.?

Question

what do you think of america using them in iraq?

Answer 1

Enrichment of uranium for use in nuclear weapons and reactors produces various waste byproducts, including so-called "depleted" uranium (DU). For over twenty-five years, the U.S. Department of Defense has produced ammunition using this nuclear waste, which is both radioactive and chemically toxic. Evidence of environmental and human health damage caused by "depleted" uranium has steadily increased, despite Pentagon assertions that such impacts would not occur. There is now significant evidence that DU can cause or accelerate cancer, mutate genes, and affect the kidneys, immune system, nervous system, respiratory system, and reproductive system, The United Nations Human Rights Commission considers DU munitions to be "weapons of mass destruction or with indiscriminant effect" incompatible with international humanitarian law.

What is "Depleted" Uranium?

"Depleted" uranium (DU) is a waste byproduct of the enrichment of natural uranium for use in nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons.

Human Health Hazards

Both military personnel and civilians may be exposed to DU throughout its life cycle. Most public attention to "depleted" uranium has focused on its radioactivity. However, DU poses health hazards to people both as a radioactive substance and as a toxic heavy metal. DU emits alpha, beta, and gamma radiation, which can damage many parts of the body and cause cancer and genetic mutations.

Answer 2

It is very effective ammunition but it will be similar in effect (if not worse) than the many mine fields around the world.

Generally a nasty thing to have laying around a country. The effects will become evident in the next 10-20 years with all the cancer and crap in the population there.

Question is, how much of it is acutally used there--- It may not be enough to make a difference. DU shells are normally in anti-tank weapons and bigger weapons (e.g. 25 mm larger). So its not your typical M16 cartridge.

The danger is in the dust and people messing with it while its laying around.

Answer 3

i replaced right into a Tank Commander for 6 years and worked around sabot rounds with depleted uranium projectiles daily. It replaced into by no skill an argument. "the international well being employer, the directing and coordinating authority for well being in the United international locations that's in charge for placing well being study norms and standards, offering technical help to international places and monitoring and assessing well being tendencies, states that no possibility of reproductive, developmental, or carcinogenic consequences have been stated in human beings via DU exposure." - Wikipedia

Answer 4

Shows you that Americans are willing to risk the lives and the future of others for profits.

Right now I'm sure America dumped more harmful weapons on Iraq than Sadam ever did on the US.

And Iraq was a threat? How again?

Answer 5

these weapons are anti-armor warheads and are only useful in that capacity. So anytime you come up on tanks and the like it is quite okay to use them. Therefore I don't have any problem with it at this time as there are no longer any enemy tanks in Iraq to shoot.

Answer 6

Why would people have an objection to America using armor piercing shells?

Depleted uranium (note the word depeleted) are no more harmful to the environment than hundreds of other types of munitions commonly in use.

Answer 7

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 206,861 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.

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.

A military report prepared by the U.S. Department of Defense in 1974 stated: “In combat situations involving the widespread use of DU munitions, the potential for inhalation, ingestion, or implantation of DU compounds may be locally significant.” A contractor to the military, Science Applications International Corporation, noted in a July 1990 report that “aerosol DU exposures to soldiers on the battlefield could be significant, with potential radiological and toxicological effects.”

When a DU shell impacts, 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 half-life of the material is 4.5 billion years.

In 1998 the Department of Veterans Affairs examined only 33 of the hundrens of thousands of veterans exposed to depleted uranium. Some of these veterans continued to excrete depleted uranium in their semen and urine six years after the war. Of these 33, most had central nervous system abnormalities and one had a bone tumor removed.

Germany, Italy, Norway and the European Parliament have called for a moratorium on using DU ammunition. Dr. David McClain, the military's top depleted-uranium researcher, told a presidential committee investigating Gulf War illnesses in 1999 that "strong evidence exists to support a detailed study of potential DU carcinogenicity." A separate Army-funded study conducted by the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute in Albuquerque, N.M., found that depleted uranium caused cancer when implanted in laboratory animals.

Outside the body, DU poses little risk as most of the alpha radiation is blocked by the skin. Inside the body (through schrapnel, ingestion of uranium oxide, etc.) is an entirely different story.

In 1990, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) wrote a report warning about the potential health and environmental catastrophe from the use of depleted uranium weapons. The health effects had been known for a long time. The report sent to the UK government warned "in their estimation, if 50 tonnes of residual DU dust remained ‘in the region’ there could be half a million extra cancers by the end of the century [2000]." Estimates of depleted uranium weapons used in 1991, now range from the Pentagon’s admitted 325 tons, to other scientific bodies who put the figure as high as 900 tons. That would make the number of estimated cancers as high as 9,000,000, depending on the amount used in the 1991 Gulf War. In the 2003 Gulf War, estimates of 2200 tons have been given — causing about 22,000,000 new cancer cases. Altogether the total number of cancer patients estimated using the UKAEA data would be 25,250,000. In July of 1998, the CIA estimated the population of Iraq to be approximately 24,683,313.

Scary, scary stuff...

Answer 8

I think the depleted uranium rounds can penetrate armor better than almost any other round which makes our troops safer

Answer 9

you mean the radioactive armor piercing rounds that have pushed the background radiation levels up 100 fold in Iraq and the use of which has been denounced as a war crime by virtually every civilized country but this one?
Bad, very, very bad.
Almost as bad cluster bombs that kill and keep on killing when small children pick up the brightly colored unexploded bomblets then bring them home and killing their whole family when the finally detonate.

Answer 10

Actually, it's said that you'd have to hold a shell tightly in your hand for 50 years before it produced a negative health effect.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs257/en/

I think the World Health Organization is a little more in the know on this one.