It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
The world needs a public trial of political leaders for war crimes and genocide.
Depleted Uranium encased bombs that have been used since 1991 by US and NATO forces. These weapons were used in Gulf War 1 against Iraq, then in the Balkans and later, after 9/11 events, in Afghanistan, Iraq, North Africa, Libya and now being used in Drone bombings in Pakistan.
‘Depleted Uranium’ has nothing depleted about it: when this potent hard metal hits a solid surface like concrete or a battle tank, the temperature at the point of impact reaches over 40000C and turns the projectile into uranium oxide gas. These gases are picked up by the wind and carried all over the world creating vast areas of secondary contamination. Based on the population within the contamination map over 35% of India’s population received a heavy dosing of DU aerosolized uranium nano particles within months of the start of Afghan and Iraq wars.
DU was first manufactured in the United States early in the 1940s during the onset of the nuclear weapons program. The United States military first began equipping its forces with depleted uranium in the 1980s. The first things to be armed with DU were tanks, shells and rockets.
DU is 30% as radioactive as natural uranium. This toxicity is made evident in missile conflict. When a projectile composed of DU hits a target, up to 70% of the DU vaporizes through the intense heat into a fine dust, which in turn settles in the surrounding area. The size of these toxic particles is smaller than 5 microns, and a human being can inhale anything under 10 microns. The DU radioactive dust settles in the soil, water and air, which then can be moved great distances by plants, underground water and wind currents. Inhalation may lead to a protracted exposure of the lungs, blood and various other systems and begin to emit a dose of alpha radiation.
DU behaves both toxicologically and chemically like natural uranium metal. An Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute study of rats after the Gulf War found that DU exposure damaged their immune and central nervous systems and may have contributed to some of the cancers they developed.