Talk:Depleted uranium - Misplaced Pages

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Legal status in weapons

There is no specific treaty ban on the use of DU projectiles.

Has anyone proposed one? LossIsNotMore 16:48, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Almost certainly bans have been proposed. But since the main users of DU are France, US, and UK, all three of which are veto powers, they can obstruct any treaty from getting off the drawing board. Unless you can find a court which can rule against this new weapon under an earlier treaty (there are many candidates), the legal status will continue to be permissive. Clearly, because of the their direct influence on the lack of a treaty, any appeal by the US or UK as to the legality of these weapons is utterly specious.Goatchurch 19:20, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

How typical of a liberal not to mention Russia.

ICBUW has drawn up a Draft Treaty for a ban on uranium weapons (http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/en/i/13.html) - it is similar in form to the ICBL landmine treaty and will no doubt resemble the end result of the current Oslo process on cluster munitions. We are a few years behind the CMC but lobbying hard around the world. We've recently had our first domestic ban in Belgium - they are always the first with indiscriminate weapons:

On March the 7th, 2007, the Belgian Chamber Commission on National Defence voted unanimously in favour of banning the use of depleted uranium "inert ammunitions and armour plates on Belgian territory." Although Belgium isn’t a user of DU, it is the home of NATO and regularly has US DU shipments travelling through its port of Antwerp. (http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/en/a/118.html)

Please can you update the page accordingly - I'm not a regular contributor.ICBUW 15:57, 4 April 2007 (UTC)ICBUW

Most health physicists

"Most experts in health physics consider it unlikely that depleted uranium has any connection with the Gulf War Syndrome if such an illness exists at all.[citation needed"

I am going to delete this until a citation is found. Puddytang 04:50, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

How about this citation, from the Health Physics Society DU Fact Sheet: "A group of Gulf War veterans who have small DU fragments still in their bodies continue to be followed by government scientists to determine whether there will be long-term health effects. As of early 2005, only subtle but clinically insignificant changes in measures of kidney function have been observed. One common observation is a persistent elevation in the amount of uranium measured in the urine more than 10 years after exposure. This reflects the continued presence of DU in wound sites and its ongoing low-level mobilization and absorption to blood.

In summary, some minor health problems have been observed following exposure to DU, but ONLY with high levels of exposure. Exposures to airborne DU or to contaminated soil following military use are not known to cause any observable health or reproductive effects." Obviously the last sentence is the most direct and relevant, but I included more for completeness' sake. The entire document can be found here: HPS DU Fact Sheet.

I'd say the sentence should be put back in the article, especially since my quote agrees with every conversation I've ever had on the topic with any member of the Health Physics Society except one.--Hidesert 18:52, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Firstly, Health Physics Society publications are not the same as "most experts in health physics." Secondly, exposures of metallic U(0) from shrapnel, which oxidizes almost entirely in vitro to U(IV) is not toxicologicaly the same as inhalation of U(VI) compounds. I wonder if anyone in the HPS understands that, required as they are to have training in radiation protection but not biochemistry or toxicology. Thirdly, nobody knows what the amount of absorption from combustion product inhalation exposure even is, because nobody has yet measured the amount of particulates smaller than a tenth of a micron, including the amount of uranium oxide gases, produced by combustion, since Carter and Stewart reported that the gases comprised half of the combustion product in 1970. The fact that only one member of the HPS has ever even called for such studies speaks volumes about how much they want to know the answer to the question. Finally, the reproductive toxicity of uranium exposure has been known at least since 1953, is well-documented in more than a dozen peer-reviewed medical journal articles, and there are no peer-reviewed medical or scientific publications which deny or cast any doubt on that fact. Could the reason that all HPS publications deny the reproductive toxicity of uranium exposure be that some of the past and present officials of the HPS are the same people who have certified to the U.S. D.o.D. and other agencies that uranium combustion product exposure is safe?

I will recommend that any non-peer-reviewed publication denying the reproductive toxicity of uranium be removed because of the large number of peer-reviewed publications which claim the opposite, and the fact that there are no peer-reviewed publications which agree. James S. 03:53, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Didn't want to leave this standing unchallenged. The society in question seems to be *the* professional association for this branch of science and the DU sheet referenced above also briefly discusses DU inhalation which is pretty much as bad as breathing in regular uranium. TMLutas 21:32, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

On the contrary, several members of the HPS have specifically told me that their expertise if confined to radiation protection and not toxicology, which is the domain of industrial hygiene. None of the major IH organizations have any standards for uranium inhalation because it is so uncommon. James S. 04:13, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Used in improvised explosives?

Do Iraqi insurgents use abandoned DU slugs in their improvised explosives? James S. 12:00, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

No doubt some have been DU rounds used in IEDs just as a matter of statistics. After all, they've accidentally used Iraqi chemical weapons rounds so why not DU? TMLutas 21:34, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Health considerations section

I think that the "Health considerations" section needs some rewriting. This section is 1/3 of the article and the reader is left with the feeling that DU doesn't pose any significant threat to health. If this is so, who claims that (as stated in the introduction) possibly "depleted uranium is dangerous to human beings at the low quantities in which it could possibly be ingested from environmental contamination." and why?? I believe that either this section needs to be shortened or (better) to state the evidence which makes some experts believe that DU might be hazardous. 62.1.92.82 21:22, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

DU is hazardous -- nobody disputes that the bullets are designed to be, and that inhaling the fumes is unhealthy. The question is how much, and whether the downside is worth the upside. I think tungsten is more cost-effective. We will eventually reach a point where people know how dangerous it is. The fact that they haven't tried to figure out how dangerous it is is a shame. I think in twenty years, people are going to look back and wonder who would even suggest that DU munitions are reasonable weapons. Conventional military power is not as important as it once was. James S. 06:40, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

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