Depleted Uranium Forums (DU-BBS)

Doug Craig, 74, of Ponce Inlet, is a radiation biologist/toxicologist scientist. He retired in 2003 and continues as a consultant for the Office of Emergency Management within the Department of Energy.

A South African native, Craig worked for the South African Atomic Energy Board. A naturalized American, he trained at the Brookhaven National Lab (Long Island) and worked at both the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (Richland, Wash.) and the Savannah River Site (Aiken, S.C.). He is a member of both the Health Physics Society and the Society of Toxicology.



Q: Do you believe inhalation of depleted uranium can cause cancer?
I don’t think anyone doubts inhalation of natural uranium ores in sufficient quantity causes cancer. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that at all. But it’s a longer-term effect.

Q: How would the dust cause cancer?
The poison is in the dose, and almost anything is toxic at a high enough dose or concentration — even water. One of the first questions is what was the dose? How much material did the person have in his system? For something like depleted uranium to have a biological effect, it has to be inhaled, ingested, injected or absorbed through a puncture wound. And it makes a big difference whether it is soluble, whether it will dissolve in body fluids. If it were radioactive, it could cause local effects. If it’s soluble, the primary target is the kidney.

Q: Is the use of depleted uranium in armor and weapons dangerous to the health of military servicemen?
Only if it is vaporized or dispersed in such a way that it can enter the human body. Uranium occurs in a lot of places, and man is exposed to low concentrations over a long time. For practical purposes, it has to be inside you to give you a dose. I don’t believe the radiation is what would give you the problem. With DU, it’s principally the chemical toxicity. Insoluble uranium in the long, long term, could give you lung cancer.

Q: The military is about to compile another study of the effects of depleted uranium on soldiers serving in Iraq. Can the military conduct a valid study?
I do know people who work for the military who are reputable scientists, but on the other hand, you have to ask questions. Just how independent can they be?

    They are using uranium weapons in Iraq because they are terrific anti-tank weapons. …

    When they used 360 tons near Basra in the attack on Iraq in 1991, my colleagues … noted a seven-fold increase in childhood cancer where children have been infected with radiation. …

    There have been anomalies like babies born with no brain, or no eyes, or single eyes, or no arms. The uranium they use has a half-life of 4.5 million years. So, America’s conducting nuclear war over there, and no one’s been asking about that either.

    They’ve used over 2,000 tons, I’m sure … and they shouldn’t be using it. It ends up punishing the children. It’s really wicked.

Lewis, director of the community environmental health program and College of Pharmacy has nearly completed a study (funded by the Department of Defense in 2001) about the potential health effect from exposure to depleted uranium on the brain, if inhaled through the nose.

Following are excerpts from a recent phone interview. (Hear the entire interview here.)



Q: In layman’s terms can you tell me what you studied?
We’ve looked at the ways in which people might have been exposed during the war... We focused on the metal because that was our area of interest...

We were looking at an animal (rat) model... What we were interested in doing was not only seeing if the uranium was taken up, but, if it was taken up, where it went inside the brain...

And we also interviewed some of the returning vets for the kinds of situations they encountered there.

Q: Where would the depleted uranium come from?
The tanks were shielded with depleted uranium... The issue with uranium is that, on combustion, it is actually pyrophoric so it starts to burn and when it burns is when you would expect to have the exposures.

Q: Can you answer if the soldiers were or were not exposed to depleted uranium long enough to have brain damage or have problems?
What we have ended up with, and we are still at this point analyzing data, so I can’t really give the full picture, but where we are to this point looking at just at what entered the brain. What we saw was that it was only detectable in 15 percent ... We do think that the 15 percent that we saw was a real number because we’ve done these measurements in a lot of animals.

The 15 percent that we saw is not an inconsistent number with the percentage of people who came back reporting neurological symptoms, so we think it may be a contributor.

Q: Is it enough of a concern to you that you are concerned about our soldiers?
I think that from my discussions with the returning veterans, I am concerned. I think there are probably many things that are contributing, and I think that we don’t really understand fully at this point what all those contributions may be. I think that there is probably a good likelihood from the results of our data that depleted uranium in some cases at least have been a contributor to the symptoms that people are experiencing.

It may not be the same with everyone . . . We don’t have the tools right now to be able to really fundamentally answer really important question of the people who have served in these arenas who deserve to know answers.

Q: What about the environmental exposure to all of us in the world. Is that any of your concern?
I guess if I am going to be concerned about that I am going to be concerned much more about the residual exposure to people who continue living in the areas that have been active war zones, because with most exposure to any kind of toxic chemical, the exposure is going to decrease with distance away from the source, but for the people that stay in those areas there’s probably the more intense, the more significant exposures.

Lawrence, a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Long Island University in Brooklyn, N.Y., is a recognized authority, involved in a special project to study how uranium can damage cells.


profile here

Could Dustin Brim have died from cancer caused by exposure to depleted uranium during his military service in Iraq?
I am not ruling out the possibility (depleted uranium) was involved.

What have you found in your research about depleted uranium?
My research here (at Long Island University) is looking at how uranium can damage cells. Depleted uranium is the cheapest - but uranium is uranium, it doesn´t matter whether it´s depleted or natural. A lot of the tanks destroyed (in Iraq), even in 1991, are still there and have depleted uranium. The fine dust gets into the lungs, and that is what is doing most of the damage. If it´s extremely fine, it can be absorbed quickly. The immune cells in the lungs can try to clear out some of the intermediate particles, but they get into the lymph system. Because cancer ran in the (Dustin Brim´s) family, he may have been more susceptible to it.

Do you believe soldiers are being exposed to depleted uranium in Iraq?
I will say it is happening and there are many people getting exposed to it. You don´t realize it.

Is the problem being recognized?
The Army is not giving them (soldiers) the proper testing and treatment. It´s the kind of thing a doctor should recognize and not chalk up to stress. I think soldiers do need to be tested.

Is there any treatment?
There possibly is a very simple treatment - citric acid, citrus juices, citrate salts, potassium, magnesium or sodium prescribed for people with kidney stones have been effective in reducing the toxicity in uranium shown in lab animals.

Human experience with uranium has spanned more than 200 years. In the early part of the 20th century, uranium was used therapeutically as a treatment for diabetes and persons so treated were administered relatively large amounts of uranium by mouth. Tens of thousands of persons have worked in the uranium industry over the past several decades and have been followed up and studied extensively, as have populations in Canada and elsewhere who have high levels of uranium in their drinking water. The types of illnesses apparently suffered by those exposed to depleted uranium from weapons have never been observed in these groups.
...
That their illnesses are attributable to their exposure to uranium is very, very unlikely. A truly enormous body of scientific data shows that it is virtually impossible for uranium to be the cause of their illnesses.

Ronald L. Kathren
Professor Emeritus
Washington State University
Past President, Health Physics Society
Past President, American Academy of Health Physics
From an HPS endorsed statement found here.

Articles & Publications on Depleted Uranium by Dr. Dietz
Contamination of Persian Gulf War Veterans and Others by Depleted Uranium
Methodology and the Difficulties of Testing for DU
Estimate of Radiation Dose from a Depleted Uranium Oxide Particle
DU's Global Spread Spurs Debate over Effect on Humans

Dr. Dietz was also a coauthor of many of our papers and abstracts.

A point that you and your colleagues should make forcefully with the powers that be is that there is a vast difference in health risks between natural uranium in soil or dust as compared with the DU in your dust samples.

Except for uranium mines, natural uranium always occurs in highly dilute  concentration, approximately 1-ppm in soils. It is locked up in non-metallic  form in minerals and is not readily available for chemical action in the body or in the environment. On the other hand, DU always appears in highly concentrated chemical form, usually as uranium oxides or metal, and is available for immediate chemical action in the body or in the environment. In your samples it appears as oxidized uranium aerosol particles that can easily become resuspended in air and inhaled. Potentially this is very dangerous.  

As for your question, each heavy metal is unique in the range of ways that it can damage DNA.  In the case of binding to DNA it is well established for chromium, and recently discovered (by us) for uranium, but does not happen with, for example, nickel, cadmium, arsenic, or lead.  It is my opinion that DU is a concern both as a heavy metal (chemical) and as a radioactive element.  And yes, I agree that a heavy metal binding to DNA is bad, and a heavy metal that binds to DNA and is also radioactive is worse.

Now however, Northern Arizona University biochemist Diane Stearns has established that when cells are exposed to uranium, the uranium binds to DNA and the cells acquire mutations, triggering a whole slew of protein replication errors, some of which can lead to various cancers. Stearns' research, published in the journals Mutagenesis and Molecular Carcinogenesis, confirms what many have suspected for some time - that uranium can damage DNA as a heavy metal, independently of its radioactive properties. "Essentially, if you get a heavy metal stuck on DNA, you can get a mutation," Stearns explained. While other heavy metals are known to bind to DNA, Stearns and her team were the first to identify this characteristic with uranium.

My previous research focused on chromium, which is a heavy metal that is known to cause lung cancer.  While we were pulling together our plans to apply for funding from NCI, we discovered that many Navajo (and in our case we currently have strongest ties with the Navajo Nation, the Hope tribe, the White Mountain Apache tribe and the Tohono O'odham Nation) had questions about uranium exposure.  A literature search showed that not much work had been done on uranium as a heavy metal, and it was an obvious extension of our work to start looking at uranium.

Below is the information from Joan Walker.
It is also expected that the DU resolution will be voted on at
the UN General Assembly on Dec. 5.
For your reference.

Kazashi Nobuo, ICBUW/NO DU
Hiroshima Project

*****
MEDIA ADVISORY

For Immediate Release: Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Contacts: Anne Rabe, 518-732-4538, annerabe@msn.com.
David Carpenter, 518-525-2661

REPORT SHOWS NEW YORKERS CONTAMINATED WITH DEPLETED URANIUM
OVER 20 YEARS AFTER EXPOSURE

Radioactive Uranium Found in Homes
After Federal Cleanup of NL Industries Pollution

For the first time, a report documents depleted uranium (DU) can be
detected in people more than two decades after exposure when using
high sensitivity urine tests. Scientists' data also reveal that
significant DU remains in some Albany and Colonie, NY household dust,
two months after the federal government ended a "clean up" of the
site and surrounding neighborhood and 27 years after the NYS Supreme
Court closed the NL Industries factory for illegal uranium emissions.
The isotope measurements - which have never before been conducted on
any community in the U.S. - are a joint initiative of U.S. and United
Kingdom scientists, led by Professor Randall Parrish. The results are
being published in an international journal, Science of the Total
Environment, in the near future (electronically available on-line).
WHEN: Wednesday, December 5, 2007, 11:00 AM.
WHERE: LCA Press Rm. 130, Legislative Office Bldg. State St. Albany,
NY 12224

WHAT: Biological and environmental test results show a significant
proportion of tested individuals have a proven DU exposure from NL
Industries factory near Albany, and household dust contains DU in
excess of site cleanup standards.

NL Industries emitted at least 5 tons of DU aerosols into a
residential and commercial area from 1958 to 1982 from its factory at
1130 Central Avenue (Rte. 5), Colonie, NY. DU is a toxic chemical
due to its heavy metal and radiological properties. NL used DU to
manufacture armor-piercing munitions.

**********************************************************

Community Concerned About NL Industries
Capital Region Action Against Breast Cancer Invite you to attend a Public Forum on NL Industries Depleted Uranium Contamination of Residents, Former Workers and Household Dust
Wednesday, December 56:30 PM
Sand Creek Middle School
329 Sand Creek Rd., Albany, NY 12205
(Near Ahl Ave. and Iris Lane)

Free Admission. Refreshments Provided.
Speakers
■ Randall Parrish, Professor, Dept. of Geology, University of
Leicester and NERC Isotope Geosciences Laboratory, British Geological
Survey, Keyworth, England.
■ David Carpenter, M.D., Institute for Health & the Environment,
University at Albany.
■ John Arnason, Assistant Professor, Earth & Atmospheric Sciences,
University at Albany.
■ Residents and a former NL worker who tested positively for
depleted uranium (DU).
Speakers will describe new environmental and health test results
relating to the NL Industries depleted uranium site
at 1130 Central Avenue, Colonie, NY.
¾ A new report finds depleted uranium (DU) can be detected in people
more than 20 years after exposure when using high sensitivity urine
tests. Radioactive DU has also been found in the dust of two homes
and a workplace after the NL site federal cleanup.
¾ The isotope measurement testing project, which has never before
been conducted on any U.S. community, is a joint initiative of U.S.
and British scientists, led by Professor Randall Parrish. The results
are being published in an international journal, Science of the Total
Environment, in the near future (electronically available on-line),
and will be released at a December 5th 11:00 AM press conference at
the State Capitol.
¾ The NL Industries factory emitted at least 5 tons of DU aerosols
from 1958 to 1982. DU is a toxic chemical due to its heavy metal and
radiological properties. NL used DU to manufacture armor-piercing
munitions.
For more information, contact Anne Rabe, CCNL at 732-4538,
annerabe - at - msn.com.

Saskatchewan uranium expert brings warning to eastern Ontario, western Quebec
Four city tour to reveal uranium’s long-term ecological and health pain for short-term private economic gain
by Lynn Daniluk

OTTAWA – An expert on Saskatchewan’s uranium mining industry will warn people against letting the industry establish itself in the Ottawa River watershed in a 5-day book tour Jan. 22-26, 2008.

“Don’t let the uranium industry set up shop in the Ottawa River watershed,” warned Jim Harding, author of Canada’s Deadly Secret: Saskatchewan Uranium and the Global Nuclear System, on the eve of his 4-city tour.

“Our toxic experience in Saskatchewan puts the lie to the industry’s promise that uranium mining is safe,” Harding said. “Even drilling for core samples in uranium-rich areas releases dangerous radon gases into the atmosphere. The reality is local residents and those downwind and downstream of mines are left to deal with the deadly legacy of increased rates of cancer and other health problems.”

“Radon gas, only one by-product of the uranium decay chain, is known as the second leading cause of lung cancer,” Harding said. “The Mississippi, Ottawa and Rideau River watersheds – and all those who live on or near them – are at risk of radioactive contamination if uranium mining is allowed to proceed.”

Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies. As Director of Research in School of Human Justice at the University of Regina, he headed up the Uranium Inquiries Project. Harding will visit Ottawa, Wakefield, Perth and Carleton Place from Jan. 22 to 26. There are approximately 30,000 acres of active uranium claims in eastern Ontario, which affect unceded Algonquin land and private property near Sharbot Lake. In Western Quebec, exploration companies have staked hundreds of claims blanketing tens of thousands of acres of land from Wakefield to Fort Coulonge. These claims include provincially designated wildlife habitats that have been staked by the Quebec government’s own Crown company SOQUEM Inc.

"We have plenty of direct experience with how aboriginal rights are handled when it comes to uranium mining," Dr. Harding said. "When the Saskatchewan government allowed the expansion of the uranium industry in the late 1970s it totally ignored aboriginal rights." "Then when a 1993 federal-provincial inquiry recommended against a uranium mine, in part due to cumulative effects on the aboriginal land base, the government simply ignored this and plowed ahead", he continued. "Furthermore, though the government guaranteed that our uranium would no longer be used for weapons, we now know this is not true," Harding added. "Uranium from Saskatchewan is the main source for both the U.S. and France, countries where the military and commercial nuclear systems are highly integrated. Our uranium has become the U.S.'s main source for depleted uranium (DU), which is used for a variety of military purposes", Harding continued.
STORY CONTINUES

"I'm horrified. The people out there - the Iraqis, the media and the troops - risk the most appalling ill health. And the radiation from depleted uranium can travel literally anywhere. It's going to destroy the lives of thousands of children, all over the world. We all know how far radiation can travel. Radiation from Chernobyl reached Wales and in Britain you sometimes get red dust from the Sahara on your car." LINK