Need to know tests are done to detect Depleted Uranium

[northerdar]

My step daughter and son-in-law were both in Iraq in 2003 for invasion. They married in October 2003 when they left Iraq. She is out now and he was out but back drafted back in Army. He was stop lossed and sent to invasion in Feb 2003.

NEITHER have been tested for DU. They want to be tested and have their baby daughter tested. What are the tests. Obviously the Army refuses to test them. Can they go to a private clinic and get tested? What are the tests. Would appreciate any direction you all can give. I googled this question and got 28,100 links. I looked through the first page and couldn't seem to find what the tests are.

Thanks all.

Impeach Bush and Cheney. Give them orange jumpsuits.

[shoelace414]

1. stop lossed for three years?

[northerdar]

3. stop lossed in feb 2003

released in October 2003 but back drafted in December 2004

[Pavulon]

2. Move killed my post..

yes there are tests. Heavy metals show up in peoples systems in urine tests. Most people show some trace exposure to this. Where and when they served is more important to them being exposed.

Most people show some exposure to radon and other radioactive elements.

http://www.deploymentlink.osd.mil/du_library/du_ii/du_ii_tabp.htm

[northerdar]

5. with much appreciation.

thanks for link.

[Avalux]

4. Here's a fact sheet from the World Health Organization -

it will give you the information you need and also explains DU and it's health effects. Good luck. :hi:

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

When an individual is suspected of being exposed to DU at a level significantly above the normal background level, an assessment of DU exposure may be required. This is best achieved by analysis of daily urine excretion. Urine analysis can provide useful information for the prognosis of kidney pathology from uranium or DU. The proportion of DU in the urine is determined from the 235U/238U ratio, obtained using sensitive mass spectrometric techniques.
Faecal measurement can also give useful information on DU intake. However, faecal excretion of natural uranium from the diet is considerable (on average 500 μg per day, but very variable) and this needs to be taken into account.
External radiation measurements over the chest, using radiation monitors for determining the amount of DU in the lungs, require special facilities. This technique can measure about 10 milligrams of DU in the lungs, and (except for souble compounds) can be useful soon after exposure.

[northerdar]

11. thanks so much

Friends on DU can always be counted on to help.

[fed-up]

6. This is older but may help

http://www.ccnr.org/du_hague.html

Medical Testing for
Depleted Uranium Contamination:
Prepared for the
Hague Peace Conference, May 1999
By Dr. Rosalie Bertell, Ph.D., G.N.S.H

Potential testing includes:

chemical analysis of uranium in urine, feces, blood and hair;
tests of damage to kidneys, including analysis for protein, glucose and non-protein nitrogen in urine;
radioactivity counting; or
more invasive tests such as surgical biopsy of lung or bone marrow.
Experience with Gulf War veterans indicates that a 24 hour urine collection analysis shows the most promise of detecting depleted uranium contamination seven or eight years after exposure. However, since this test only measures the amount of depleted uranium which has been circulating in the blood or kidneys within one or two weeks prior to the testing time, rather than testing the true body burden, it cannot be directly used to reconstruct the veteran's dose received during the Gulf War. However, this seems to be the best diagnostic tool at this time, eight years after the exposure.

Feces tests for uranium are used for rapid detection of intake in an emergency situation, and in order to be useful for dose reconstruction, must be undertaken within hours or days of the exposure. Blood and fecal analysis are not advised except immediately after a known large intake of uranium.

Whole body counting for uranium, using the sodium iodide or hyper pure germanium detectors, is designed to detect the isotope uranium 235, the isotope of uranium partially removed from depleted uranium. For lung counting, again it is the uranium 235 which is detected, and the minimum detection limit is about 7.4 Bq or 200 pCi. Since normally humans take in only 5 Bq per year, this is not a very sensitive measure. Seven or eight years after the Gulf War exposure, this method of detection is most likely useless for veterans.

Routine blood counts shortly after exposure, or during a chelating process for decontamination of the body are useful. This is not a search for uranium in blood, but rather a complete blood count with differential. This is done to discover potentially abnormal blood counts, since the stem cells which produce the circulating lymphocytes and erythrocytes are in the bone marrow, near to where uranium is normally stored in the body. The monocyte stem cells in bone marrow are known to be among the most radiosensitive cells. Their depletion can lead to both iron deficient anemia, since they recycle heme from discarded red blood cells, and to depressed cellular immune system, since monocytes activate the lymphocyte immune system after they detect foreign bodies.

[fed-up]

7. from this democracy now segment looks like you need independant testing

for accurate results and that it may have to be sent to a lab in Germany

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/30/1411222

JUAN GONZALEZ: One of the interesting things obviously is that there has been a lot of, in New York, quite a few of the political leaders, Congressman Eliot Engel, Senator Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer have gotten involved and actually Senator Clinton got a new bill passed just this summer requesting systematic testing of all soldiers when they return from Iraq as well as when they leave, and yet we have a situation with you where the army has lost a test that you gave them, a sample that you gave them five months ago. Senator Clinton issued a statement yesterday saying that she's still troubled by the failure of the army to be able to adequately screen troops when they leave, and when they return from Iraq. So, we'll be continuing to cover this issue of depleted uranium. The military continues to insist that no soldiers that they have tested who have returned from Iraq have tested positive, and yet in the Daily News now, we have out of 10 soldiers that we've tested -- and I should add in your test, we actually sent three different samples to a lab in Germany, two of reporters and one of Gerard's and we didn't identify any of the three. The two reporters came back completely negative, only Gerard's came back positive.

edited to add:
http://www.ngwrc.org/index.cfm?page=Article&ID=850
Depleted-uranium testing standards face scrutiny, Myers says
Jane McHugh
Army Times
Apr 26, 2004

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers promised to look into the methods used for testing soldiers redeploying from Iraq for depleted uranium. “We need to monitor and make sure we don’t overlook things that could create problems later on,” Myers said April 20 at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

...

But Army Col. (Dr.) Dallas Hack, chief preventive medicine officer at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, said recently that more than 1,000 soldiers that returned from Iraq had been tested for exposure to depleted uranium. Of those, he said, only three tested above the levels in the average U.S. population but the levels were not high enough to warrant medical attention.

But there’s a chance the soldiers who did not test positive for “DPU” could have it because the instrumentation methods used for testing it in the United States isn’t very accurate, the newspaper reported. Myers promised he would look into ways Japan and Germany, which have more advanced tests, might pick up signs of DPU that are not detectable in Army and federal government tests.

and these sites have lots of links:

http://www.ngwrc.org/index.cfm?page=search&nocache=0.567976936295&NoMenu=Yes
Displaying record 1 to 10 of 413 documents containing depleted uranium

http://www.gulfwarvets.com/du.htm

[northerdar]

9. thanks

I will try to find the German life because they are all in Germany now where he is stationed.

much appreciation.

[doublethink]

8. These people might get you on the right track.

Uranium Medical Research Centre.
http://www.umrc.net

Canada & International
Uranium Medical Research Centre
476 Parlament St., Suite 302
Toronto, Onatrio, Canada M4X 1P2

United States
Uranium Medical Research Centre
3430 Connecticut Avenue - 11854
Washington, DC, USA 20008

Phone
[phone]-1341

Fax
[phone]-5961

pdf format program: http://www.umrc.net/pdf/iraqi_freedom_bioassay_program.pdf

All the best. Peace.

[northerdar]

10. I live in Ontario so

I will call the number in toronto.

Thanks so much.

[MadHound]

12. Urine test!

Only way to get an accurate assesment of their exposure. I certainly hope that they haven't been, for if they're internaly contaminated, there is little you can do to help the situation except treat the symptoms. Good luck.

[Stephanie]

13. Here's some info -

Here are some names that may help.

The war's littlest victim
He was exposed to depleted uranium. His daughter may be paying the price.
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/236934p-203326c.html

<snip>

Earlier this year, The News submitted urine samples from Guardsmen of the 442nd to former Army doctor Asaf Durakovic and Axel Gerdes, a geologist at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. The German lab specializes in testing for minute quantities of uranium, a complicated procedure that costs up to $1,000 per test.

The lab is one of approximately 50 in the world that can detect quantities as tiny as fentograms - one part per quadrillionth.

[Stephanie]

14. Here's an interview with the doctor who did the test for the Daily News

http://www.democracynow.org/static/uranium.shtml

JUAN GONZALEZ: When we first began to get a sense that the soldiers might have a common problem, I contacted Dr. Asaf Durakovic who is a Gulf War veteran, a colonel in the Army Reserves and who is an expert in depleted uranium. He was one of the first doctors when he worked at a veteran's administration hospital in Wilmington in the mid-90's who identified soldiers contaminated with depleted uranium and we asked Dr. Durakovic if he would do some independent testing of the soldiers if they would volunteer to do so. He did, and back-- a couple of months ago, we did examinations of the soldiers, he took urine samples of them, and then we had them analyzed at a laboratory at Goethe University in Frankfurt. I'd like to welcome Dr. Durakovic to Democracy Now!.

DR. ASAF DURAKOVIC: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Durakovic, it's good to have you with us.

DR. ASAF DURAKOVIC: Yes. It's good to be back.

AMY GOODMAN: Can I start off by asking, why did you have to send the samples to Germany?

DR. ASAF DURAKOVIC: Well, our first laboratory for determination of uranium isotopes was in Newfoundland, Canada. And after our first results were published, the laboratory was closed, and the scientist who was operating the lab, and doing studies for us was fired. So, we went from Canada to England, and we continued at the British Geological Survey. Then from England we went to Frankfurt because of my personal connections with an outstanding scientist, Dr. Axel Gerdes, who is head of the Mass Spec Laboratory, it is at Goethe University in Frankfurt. It is one of the best laboratories in the world for the determination of aconite, special uranium isotopes.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Dr. Durakovic, can you talk about-- one of the things that there's a concern now is that the Army is saying they're going to test all of the soldiers, but there is a question as to the sophistication and the kind of testing that they do, as to whether they're actually going to get results or not, or whether they're going to be able to essentially clean the slate wihtout really identifying whether these men are contaminated with D.U. Can you talk a little bit about the kind of testing that's necessary?

DR. ASAF DURAKOVIC: Well, all results that are done by the government so far are inferior, because the methodology used was inferior methodology which could not distinguish between the different isotopes of uranium. Most of the studies done by the government teams included total uranium and most of those studies did not include the ratio between uranium 238 and 235, which is the single most important factor in determining depleted uranium contamination. In addition, government studies could not or did not want to perform their analysis of uranium 236, which although in very small quantities indicates that uranium in the patients we are studying, or they are studying, is not natural. Uranium 236 does not exist in nature. And we have been able to determine uranium 236 in the urine of current groups of American soldiers. So, the question is what is the government doing about testing of the people from the Iraqi conflict? I would say that studies have not been scientifically sound in most of the cases and most of the reports. The fact that they're going to start studies now on the large groups of the Iraqi veterans are a bit too late, because a question that I ask everybody is, why does not the government of the United States, which has funding and equipment and universities and laboratories, why are they not capable of doing proper studies? Why are independent institutions like our Uranium Medical Research Center capable of doing it, and the government is not capable? It is either desired not to present the true story to the public, or blame government incompetence of which I'm very familiar because I worked in the government scientific and health care facilities. I don't know, but I do know the fact that it's a little bit too late to start these studies after our work has been presented to the public.

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