Cancer rise in Fallujah

[Sword_Of_Truth]

you seem confidant that the US army doesn't fire DU rounds at anything but tanks....is this a rule in the US army? I remember when I was in the army we were pretty much allowed to shoot at anything with anti-armor weapons like the little 66mm rocket launcher.

A DU round isn't like the 66mm LAW that you used. The two operate on completely different principles.

We used them a lot, never saw a tank....Is it a law in the current US army?

You should be grateful that you never saw a tank. Especially if you were under the delusion that a LAW would have done something to it.

Bottom line, unless Al-Qeada was deploying T-72s at Fallujah, there would not have been significant use of DU.

 

[Captain.Sassy]

Regarding no tanks=no DU

1) 7.62mm DU round (suggesting DU is not solely useful against armour)

2)

About 11 years ago, the company I work for was invovled in a project at a military range base. During that operation, I got to know some of the military personel in charge there and I was even invited to witness two training excercises; one was with 155mm canons and the other was with A-10's.

During the A-10 training excercises, they targeted armored vehicles and also other types of military vehicles. They also had several types of structures at the range for targeting practice. These buildings were concrete block and the A-10's used the 30mm guns on them during the training. I saw a concrete block building shreaded to pieces with the 30mm canon. A very impressive sight indeed.

I'm not saying that the military did use the A-10's against structures in Iraq, but I know that they did train for that possibility. One of those 30mm DU rounds(without it's powder charge) sits on a shelf in my office at home. A gift from the Major that I worked with, while doing work at the base.

 

[Virus]

Have they taken soil and water samples yet?

 

[The Fool]

A DU round isn't like the 66mm LAW that you used. The two operate on completely different principles.



You should be grateful that you never saw a tank. Especially if you were under the delusion that a LAW would have done something to it.

Bottom line, unless Al-Qeada was deploying T-72s at Fallujah, there would not have been significant use of DU.

glad to see its now "significant" use of DU....so you are not really positive anymore about flatout denial of DU use...

please don't try to piss in my pocket about the configurations of the weapons I used. Try to think beyong your copy of Janes..Of course a kinetic energy hard penetrator is different from a shaped charge. The point I was making was your apparent belief that Du rounds are not expended in the absence of enemy tanks. If you are aware of any US army regulations in effect at the time that told troops not to fire DU rounds except at tanks then please tell us all about it.


of course the US army could just tell us...I'm sure some clerical chaps have added up how many DU rounds were expended....sound like a reasonable idea?

 

[theprestige]

Regarding no tanks=no DU

Well, no anti-tank weaponry=no DU, really (though there are plenty of anti-tank weapons that use other armor-penetration technologies).

1) 7.62mm DU round (suggesting DU is not solely useful against armour)

Ironically, all the citations I can find for DU in this caliber indicate limited quantities for testing during the 1990s. Indeed, my primary sources indicate that this test round never went into production (suggesting that DU is not particularly useful in that caliber).

I admit, though, that as a military technology buff, I'd be fascinated to learn of a weapon system using DU ammunition in this caliber, commonly (or even rarely) deployed with U.S. infantry forces today.

Do you have any citations?

2)

The army trains for all sorts of possibilities. They hit the target confronting them with the weapons at hand. Why the U.S. Army would deploy a dedicated tank-hunter against soft targets, though, is a different story altogether.

They'd be much more productive deploying Apache helicopters, which fire explosive shells. Or using the A-10's extremely versatile bomb payload, rather than its highly-specialized anti-armor gun (if they even bothered to deploy A-10s in Fallujah; seriously, do you even know how many A-10 squadrons were deployed in Iraq at the time, where they were based, and what their tasking was?).

If you want to play the supposition game (which I guess you do, since even after insisting that you're not making any DU claim, you still insist on talking about it), then I have to say your suppositions are wildly implausible compared to mine.

I mean, seriously? The Army tested small-caliber DU rounds in the 90s? And some guy once saw a tankbuster bust a concrete building on a training range one time?

Please! I've seen video footage of helicopter gunships shooting real people really in Iraq with explosive shells. It looked like the guy was caught in a horrible, tragic popcorn popper. Seriously.

So which supposition is more plausible? Yours or mine?

 

[Sword_Of_Truth]

Regarding no tanks=no DU

1) 7.62mm DU round (suggesting DU is not solely useful against armour)

No, DU is dedicated anti-armor. The 7.62 DU round was made to give infantrymen with 7.62 mm weapons capability aginst light armored vehicles like APCs and IFVs.

Secondly, who exactly would be carting around all this 7.62 mm DU ammo in quantities sufficient to cause Iraqi babies to be born with two heads and eight testicles?

M-16's, M-4's and M-249s are all 5.56 mm. Sidearms and submachine guns use 9mm pistol cartridges. Tank coaxial guns and the M-240 for the loader are 7.62 mm, but giving them DU would be redundant given the commanders .50 cal and the main gun.

The only 7.62 mm small arm in use by US forces today that I can think of off the top of my head is the bolt action M24 sniper rifle. Not exactly your best choice for spraying DU around as a chemical warfare agent.

2)

Yes, the A-10 is a sexy beast, but the gun hogs all the publicity. First of all, not every round it fires is DU. It fires a mix of DU and high explosive (something like every 3rd or 4th round is a DU). This way, any target that get hit by a 20 round burst gets hit by several rounds that are unhealthy for it and several rounds that are really really bad for it.

And the A-10 is rated to carry nearly everything in the USAF inventory. Saying A-10s were used is like saying "guns" were used. It doesn't really tell us alot.

 

[WildCat]

No, DU is dedicated anti-armor. The 7.62 DU round was made to give infantrymen with 7.62 mm weapons capability aginst light armored vehicles like APCs and IFVs.

Secondly, who exactly would be carting around all this 7.62 mm DU ammo in quantities sufficient to cause Iraqi babies to be born with two heads and eight testicles?

M-16's, M-4's and M-249s are all 5.56 mm. Sidearms and submachine guns use 9mm pistol cartridges. Tank coaxial guns and the M-240 for the loader are 7.62 mm, but giving them DU would be redundant given the commanders .50 cal and the main gun.

The only 7.62 mm small arm in use by US forces today that I can think of off the top of my head is the bolt action M24 sniper rifle. Not exactly your best choice for spraying DU around as a chemical warfare agent.

I really doubt that there is any DU used in the field in small arms caliber, even in a sniper rifle. While you may get armor penetration at short range, you will lose range overall because a DU round would be heavier and thus leave the barrel at a lower velocity.

 

[Sword_Of_Truth]

I really doubt that there is any DU used in the field in small arms caliber, even in a sniper rifle. While you may get armor penetration at short range, you will lose range overall because a DU round would be heavier and thus leave the barrel at a lower velocity.

Aye.

And sabots would be a less than ideal solution as they are difficult to make work with a rifled barrel.

 

[Skeptic]

The only reason people think DU is the cause of birth defects is because of the magic word "Uranium", which, in the popular imagination, is the same as "deadly radioactive material".

Uranium is, in fact, at most mildly radioactive and less toxic and dangerous than lead. If anything, Depleted Uranium is less radioactive than natural Uranium. The WHO also notes that depleted Uranium in warzones where it was used extensively didn't (or hardly) raised the radiation level above the (extremely low) background level, nor does it absorb in the body if swallowed, nor are there any health risks associated with it.

I remember a usenet post where one DU conspiracy theorist noted "DU not radioactive, my ass!". Another poster, with physics training, noted that, yes, due to the fact that there are certain unstable isotopes of Carbon and other elements naturally present in all biological material with a much shorter half-life than Uranium (e.g., C-14), his ass is, as a matter of fact, more radioactive than depleted Uranium.

 

[PhantomWolf]

Is there direct evidence of pesticide exposure in Fallujah? Can you link to it?

Since you ask.... Is there direct evidence of DU use in Fallujah? Can you link to it?

 

[Sword_Of_Truth]

Another poster, with physics training, noted that, yes, due to the fact that there are certain unstable isotopes of Carbon and other elements naturally present in all biological material with a much shorter half-life than Uranium (e.g., C-14), his ass is, as a matter of fact, more radioactive than depleted Uranium.

Potassium-40 is a greater contributor to the radioactivity of the average persons ass than Carbon-14.

 

[Pardalis]

While everybody is focusing on DU, the real cause may be still out there making innocent people sick.

This is reprehensible, in my opinion, it's irresponsible for people to only consider one hypothesis solely for political and ideological reasons. If people really cared about the Fallujans, they would consider all alternatives, all avenues of research to find the cause, whatever it may be, and stop it from causing harm.

 

[Captain.Sassy]

I admit, though, that as a military technology buff, I'd be fascinated to learn of a weapon system using DU ammunition in this caliber, commonly (or even rarely) deployed with U.S. infantry forces today.

Do you have any citations?

http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/vo4/no1/research-recherch-eng.asp

Depleted Uranium used by US special forces and sniper teams in 7.62mm bullets.

your suppositions are wildly implausible

UN report detailing traces of uranium found in buildings targetted by DU munitions:
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=5326&Cr=uranium&Cr1=bosnia

Here's a list of some targets that were engaged using 30mm DU munitions by NATO in the former Yugoslavia:
http://www.nato.int/du/docu/d010124b.htm

You will notice that included amongst the armoured targets (t-55, a self-propelled gun, a vehicle repair facility) are warehouses, mortar positions and ammunition storage depots.

This guy http://www.unidir.org/pdf/articles/pdf-art2759.pdf
seems unreliable... his work was picked up by UNIDIR, so does that make it credible? I dunno. In any case, he seems to suggest DU might be used in the SMAW-NE. I haven't seen this corroborated elsewhere, however. The exact contents of the explosives used are likely to be fairly secret, I would imagine.

 

[Captain.Sassy]

I remember a usenet post where one DU conspiracy theorist noted "DU not radioactive, my ass!". Another poster, with physics training, noted that, yes, due to the fact that there are certain unstable isotopes of Carbon and other elements naturally present in all biological material with a much shorter half-life than Uranium (e.g., C-14), his ass is, as a matter of fact, more radioactive than depleted Uranium.

go back in the thread and click the links about uranium and genotoxicity

anyways
whateve.r

 

[Drewbot]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2003/apr/25/internationaleducationnews.armstrade

Our troops have been getting tested since 2003, so I'm sure an uptick in Cancer can be traced to DU rounds being fired and shattering on impact.

The wiki page for DU also says that it is the toxicity, not the radiation that is considered to be a high level.

The chemical toxicity of depleted uranium is about a million times greater in vivo than its radiological hazard.[67] Health effects of DU are determined by factors such as the extent of exposure and whether it was internal or external. Three main pathways exist by which internalization of uranium may occur: inhalation, ingestion, and embedded fragments or shrapnel contamination. Properties such as phase (e.g. particulate or gaseous), oxidation state (e.g. metallic or ceramic), and the solubility of uranium and its compounds influence their absorption, distribution, translocation, elimination and the resulting toxicity. For example, metallic uranium is relatively non-toxic compared to hexavalent uranium(VI) uranyl compounds such as uranium trioxide.[68][69]

 

[FireGarden]

http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/vo4/no1/research-recherch-eng.asp

Depleted Uranium used by US special forces and sniper teams in 7.62mm bullets.



UN report detailing traces of uranium found in buildings targetted by DU munitions:
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=5326&Cr=uranium&Cr1=bosnia

Here's a list of some targets that were engaged using 30mm DU munitions by NATO in the former Yugoslavia:
http://www.nato.int/du/docu/d010124b.htm

The UN report says that buildings were contaminated. That doesn't necessarily mean that DU was used directly against the buildings. An army barracks might have tanks in the area.

The NATO link doesn't open for me -- that might be down to the settings on my computer. But I've tried viewing the page as a txt file. "Warehouse" seems to be listed as target -- or at least it's in the field after "date" which seems to be "Target". If there was merely a tank outside the warehouse, then I would assume it would say "Tank" as the previous target is listed that way.

Let's see what the 'experts' say.

 

[FireGarden]

While everybody is focusing on DU, the real cause may be still out there making innocent people sick.

This is reprehensible, in my opinion, it's irresponsible for people to only consider one hypothesis solely for political and ideological reasons. If people really cared about the Fallujans, they would consider all alternatives, all avenues of research to find the cause, whatever it may be, and stop it from causing harm.

It's not that everybody is focusing on DU for the sake of showing there can be no other cause. Other causes have been suggested and accepted as possibilities.

This is a debate forum. We aren't out there doing the research one way or another. When people at the JREF claim to be experts in something but make claims that can be refuted with a google search.... Well what do you expect?

But you do have a serious point. The Iraqi government has dragged its feet on even doing the preliminary research: working out the size of the problem in the first place.

The Guardian had an article on this in 2009:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/13/falluja-cancer-children-birth-defects

While it says "may be linked to toxic materials left over from the fighting," other possible causes are also given.

People have been asking for detailed research for a long time. Why hasn't the Iraqi goverment got the numbers to describe what's going on? Why is the most detailed survey available the one I linked in the OP? The government should be able to manage much better by now.

Despite fully funding the construction of the new hospital, a well-equipped facility that opened in August, Iraq's health ministry remains largely disfunctional and unable to co-ordinate a response to the city's pressing needs.

Really? Even to the point of not being able to do a big survey and gauge the actual size of the problem? The international help would be there if they found cancer had actually increased 4-fold. (The article in the OP had confidence intervals of about 3 and 6-fold increase).

 

[Skeptic]

About toxicity, again, the same WHO reported I linked to above notes that DU is about as toxic as lead (in terms of how much one can safely take). But nobody thinks the lead in "regular" bullets caused the birth defects, apparently simply because it doesn't have the magic word "uranium" in it.

 

[Captain.Sassy]

1) Lead might be poisonous too, but is it as genotoxic as uranium?
2) Does lead burn? Depleted Uranium shells (or at least some of them) are incendiary and burn at a very high temperature.

 

[WildCat]

http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/vo4/no1/research-recherch-eng.asp

Depleted Uranium used by US special forces and sniper teams in 7.62mm bullets.

The article doesn't say that at all.