Depleted Uranium at the Pentagon

[DulceDecorum]

We have been told that a Boeing 757 crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. We have also been assured that the Boeing 757 does NOT contain any Depleted Uranium. We are being led to believe that NO BOEING actually contains Depleted Uranium, but probably simply carry "perfume and gift articles."
http://www.earthisland.org/eijournal/win2000/fe_win2000uranium.html

Therefore, we cannot help but wonder why the US Congress
has seen fit to pass and enforce this particular law.

10 CFR Part 40 Exemptions for Uranium Contained in Aircraft Counterweights
Addresses
All holders of licenses authorized to manufacture aircraft counterweights containing uranium, and organizations and end users who may possess such counterweights.
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/gen-comm/reg-issues/2001/ri01013.html

We take this to mean that
DEPLETED URANIUM IS INDEED BEING USED AS COUNTERWEIGHTS IN AIRCRAFT.

See:
The Pentagon Thread: Part 5.1
Post#8
Radiation Exposure from Depleted Uranium Counterweights
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=125&topic_id=3550#3561

[benburch]

1. Uranium is used because it had good engineering properties.

It can pack more mass into a smaller space than any other inexpensive heavy metal. In ordinary operation, this is not a hazard whatsoever - Depleted Uranium, which means Uranium from which all of the U-235 has been removed, is an alpha particle emitter, and not at all dangerous in an application such as this. However, if the counterweight is destroyed by fire or impact, the situation is a bit different. Not only is Uranium a toxic metal, but a particle of an alpha emitter in the lung could indeed cause cancer and premature death.

[DulceDecorum]

2. So if it IS being used

then it CAN and WILL be damaged when the plane crashes.

What does this mean for the people who visit the sites
where the planes allegedly crashed on September 11, 2001?

The Depleted Uranium dust has yet to cleaned up.

[benburch]

3. Usually nothing.

By now, the Uranium has oxidized and has mostly been stuck to the topsoil.

Distubing the topsoil, however, might be a bad idea.

The Amount of Depleted Uranium here is fairly small, nothing like the amount that even a small battlefield engagement would scatter.

[DulceDecorum]

4. Nothing that the Pentagon big-wigs care about

While DU does not burn readily, Starmet admits that its wing and tail-fin counterweights could "oxidize rapidly in a long-lasting fire" at temperatures above 500 C.
Batelle Laboratory experiments have shown that DU begins to oxidize at temperatures as low as 350 C. Above temperatures of 700 C, DU begins to burn on its own. Batelle estimated that an hour-long fire could vaporize from 4 to 20 percent of the DU and that, with the kind of "heavy turbulence" associated with larger fires, incineration losses could reach 30 percent. The kerosene-fueled inferno at Bijlmer reached temperatures around 1100-1400 C.

In an article in Nature, physicist Robert L. Parker estimated that a worst-case 747 crash could expose 250,000 people to health risks from inhaling uranium oxide particles.
http://www.earthisland.org/eijournal/win2000/fe_win2000uranium.html

Known Illnesses inflicted by internalisation of DEPLETED URANIUM PARTICLES
http://www.xs4all.nl/~stgvisie/VISIE/du-diagnosis-txt.html
OFFICIAL DIAGNOSIS by Governmental Bodies:
PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome)
stress

In London, UK, Mr Richard 'Nibby David' is bringing a personal injury case against his former employer Honeywell for depleted uranium (DU) poisoning. The hearing is scheduled for the 6th to the 17th December 2004 at the High Court in London City.
<snip>
PRECEDENT-SETTING CASE
Richard ‘Nibby’ David has been made an honorary Gulf War Veteran as he is suffering from uranium poisoning. One of his key witnesses will be Professor Malcolm Hooper, of the University of Sunderland, Chief Scientific Advisor for Gulf War veterans.
It is thought that many Gulf War Veterans are suffering from damage to their health which could be linked with uranium poisoning. It is estimated that 300 tonnes of DU was dropped on Iraq in the first Gulf War, and up to 1,000 tonnes in the recent conflict. This will lead to more of the troops suffering as also will the people of Iraq.
http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=14

The Pentagon.
Ongoing Pentagon resistance to investigations of depleted uranium ammunition represents the most significant impediment to a resolution of this issue. The Pentagon is primarily interested in safeguarding the use of depleted uranium ammunition, but it is also strongly influenced by a desire to avoid the financial obligations of cleaning up DU contamination and assisting ailing veterans and civilians.

Pentagon spokesmen have consistently asserted that Gulf War depleted uranium exposures were minimal in scope and severity, but US congressional investigators recently confirmed that the Pentagon has no data to support its position. This finding casts doubt upon the accuracy of the Pentagon-funded RAND Corporation report, which concluded that not one Gulf War veteran was exposed to enough depleted uranium to cause any health problems.

Inexplicably, the Pentagon has refused to comply with a 1993 congressional mandate to study the health effects of inhaled and ingested depleted uranium dust. In 1999, the Pentagon obstructed a United Nations investigation of the use of DU in Kosovo. The Pentagon is likely to continue impeding investigations of depleted uranium’s hazards.
http://www.miltoxproj.org/DU/Policy.htm

Professor Rokke said denials by the Pentagon and the UK Ministry of Defence that depleted uranium was likely to pose a significant risk were wrong.
He told BBC News Online: "To argue that there is little risk is to mistake the slight effect an inhaled particle of DU would have on the entire body with its effect on the lymph nodes.
"When a particle enters the lung, some lodges there. But 43% of it is soluble: it enters the blood, and can get anywhere in the body. The US Veterans' Administration has found DU in the semen of men who served in the Gulf, eight years after the event.
"That means chromosomal damage, and you would therefore expect birth defects. And there is some evidence of damage to veterans' children."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/568234.stm

When our soldiers risked their lives in the Gulf, they never imagined that their children might suffer the consequences--or that their country would turn its back on them.
http://www.life.com/Life/essay/gulfwar/gulf01.html

I thought I had a strong stomach--toughened by the minefields and foul frontline hospitals of Angola, by the handiwork of the death squads in Haiti and by the wholesale butchery of Rwanda. But I nearly lost my breakfast last week at the Basrah Maternity and Children's Hospital in southern Iraq.
Dr Amer, the hospital's director, had invited me into a room in which were displayed colour photographs of what, in cold medical language, are called "congenital anomalies", but what you and I would better understand as horrific birth deformities. The images of these babies were head-spinningly grotesque--and thank God they didn't bring out the real thing, pickled in formaldehyde. At one point I had to grab hold of the back of a chair to support my legs.
I won't spare you the details. You should know because--according to the Iraqis and in all likelihood the World Health Organisation, which is soon to publish its findings on the spiralling birth defects in southern Iraq--we are responsible for these obscenities.
During the Gulf war, Britain and the United States pounded the city and its surroundings with 96,000 depleted-uranium shells. The wretched creatures in the photographs--for they were scarcely human--are the result, Dr Amer said.
He guided me past pictures of children born without eyes, without brains. Another had arrived in the world with only half a head, nothing above the eyes. Then there was a head with legs, babies without genitalia, a little girl born with her brain outside her skull and the whatever-it-was whose eyes were below the level of its nose.
Then the chair-grabbing moment--a photograph of what I can only describe (inadequately) as a pair of buttocks with a face and two amphibian arms. Mercifully, none of these babies survived for long.
http://www.counterpunch.org/kershaw1.html

In early September 2003, Army National Guard Spec. Gerard Darren Matthew was sent home from Iraq, stricken by a sudden illness.
One side of Matthew's face would swell up each morning. He had constant migraine headaches, blurred vision, blackouts and a burning sensation whenever he urinated.
The Army transferred him to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington for further tests, but doctors there could not explain what was wrong.
Shortly after his return, his wife, Janice, became pregnant. On June 29, she gave birth to a baby girl, Victoria Claudette.
The baby was missing three fingers and most of her right hand.
Matthew and his wife believe Victoria's shocking deformity has something to do with her father's illness and the war - especially since there is no history of birth defects in either of their families.
They have seen photos of Iraqi babies born with deformities that are eerily similar.
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/236934p-203326c.html

"Now tell us what 'twas all about,"
Young Peterkin, he cries;
And little Wilhelmine looks up
With wonder-waiting eyes;
"Now tell us all about the war,
And what they fought each other for."
http://www.poetry-archive.com/s/the_battle_of_blenheim.html