More progress in Identifying “Depleted Uranium Deformaties” Images
October 17th, 2008
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As anyone here knows, I take a real lot of offense to the use of images which show deformed, injured, sick or dead young children and babies with the claim that they are depleted uranium related. They’re not and its very disrespectful and exploitative of these real examples of pain and suffering to use them for political gains or to try to silence critics by invoking gut wrenching images.
I recently was able to use the internet archive to demonstrate that a large number of images which are related to the topic can be sourced back to at least the year 2000. They were used at the time in an anti depleted-uranium page in the context of the 1991 Gulf War. This was before the majority of the insanity on the topic hit, but a few pages were starting the crusade of stupid.
Obviously simply showing that many of the common images were in circulation before the invasion of Iraq or Afgahnistan does not prove that they were not taken in countries where the munitions were used, but it does show that the majority of newer websites have misrepresented them, as they are often cited as relating to the more recent military activities.
It may not be possible to track down all of the images being used, as almost any photo of a deformed baby or stillbirth seems to be fair game for the liars and wack jobs out there, but a few, such as those on the above mentioned page have become the most commonly disseminated images which are used to enforce these false claims.
Anyone who sees images which are claimed to be from depleted uranium and recognizes the image as coming from a relief project, a medical textbook, a stock photo source, documentary etc or has any information, help is always appreciated.
While it is unpleasant to deal with these images, if they can be placed to their original source it may help in reducing their value in misinforming and obscuring the truth about life and health in war torn and impoverished regions of the world. Above all else, reducing the ability of these images to be used to reinforce lies and propaganda can help to restore dignity the injured and deceased shown and the families who’s suffering has been exploited.
This entry was posted on Friday, October 17th, 2008 at 4:15 am and is filed under Announcements, Bad Science, Depleted Cranium. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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October 17th, 2008 at 6:22 am
A pity that all of these images are likely to be in the public domain. It would be nice to see some of this misuse lead to a nice expensive lawsuit for the perpetrators of this fraud.
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October 18th, 2008 at 4:29 am
Well I followed a bunch of the links and hit up google. It seems like many of the same images are used repeatedly and the same text too. Anyone with an anti-America or New World Order or 9/11 troof website seems to just copy and paste most of the same stuff so I don’t know how many are making an effort and how many are just sheep to the whole conspiracy mentality and the faux progressive-humanist eco-stupid thing. It may be a large number.
The effort is commendable though (yours not theirs). Those are someone’s children and those images do have a story and value that should be respected. Think about how a parent would feel if they had just lost a child to a horrible deformity or they were having their child treated for a birth defect and one of the doctors asked them if they would connect to allowing a photograph of their child to be used in a medical textbook or a scientific report to help others and illustrate the condition. Then imagine if that parent found out the image, they thought was there to help educate and improve care for the condition, had been turned into a football to be kicked around by propagandists about an unrelated topic?
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October 18th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
Here’s a quote which I checked out and found accurate ( http://www1.va.gov/gulfwar/docs/GulfWarNov03.pdf ):
Dr. Kang (U.S. Veterans Administration Epidemiologist) “found that male Gulf War veterans reported having infants with likely birth defects at twice the rate of non-veterans. Furthermore, female Gulf War veterans were almost three times more likely to report children with birth defects than their non-Gulf counterparts. The numbers changed somewhat with medical records verification. However, Dr. Kang and his colleagues concluded that the risk of birth defects in children of deployed male veterans still was about 2.2 times that of non-deployed veterans.”
What proportion of those increased birth defects were likely to be due to depleted uranium contamination in the 1991 war?
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October 18th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Questioner said:
That is entirely possible. I really do not know but I could see how 2.2 to 3 times the number would be realistic. Of course there are ways this has to be qualified. We’d have to make sure the same criteria for what constitutes a “birth defect” is being used. Some minor birth defects might include something like an extra minor nipple or something. That might go unreported as a birth defect in many cases.
But in any case, lets say that the rate is indeed 3 times more. This would still be small. Multiplying a tiny percentage by 3 gives you a slightly larger tiny percentage. This could be caused by any number of incidental factors. The problems with battle fattigue and stress have health effects. It could be caused if, for example, perhaps being sent to war has negative effects on a person’s career and thus results in an overall lower average income and thus lower quality health care.
In the case of “deployed male veterans” the case seems to be obvious: The mothers are under signifficantly greater stress and since the father is not consistently there for the gestation, there would be more likelihood that they would have to take care of themselves and may not get as much rest toward the end of pregnancy.
Anything like this is meaningless when you just compared group A to the population or to others. What you must do is have rigorous demographic controls that account for all the possible differences and thus eliminate extraneous variables. Otherwise the data is meaningless.
Questioner said:
Most likely none
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October 18th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
Questioner said:
.
Absolutely none.
First a battleground is not an OSHA compliant workplace at the best of times, so attempting to single out one insult among hundreds is next to impossible. Coupled with this there is no real established mechanism that positively implicates DU exposure in these cases. Keep in mind that the picture of DU munitions being expended randomly about the theater is not consistent with the truth. This type of round is only used where necessary, so while there may be sites where the concentration of uranium oxides is high compared to background, this is not true of the whole area.
Second, a statement like this that is not put in context, sounds bad, but really can’t be analyzed for significance without the details. For example we need to know the sample space before a statement like “2.2 times” has any meaning. What are the intervals, what’s the spread in the general population interval over interval; in other words what is the swing over time of these events? What are they counting as birth defects. My daughter was born with a nevus pigmentosus (an angel’s kiss) on her forehead, by definition this is a congenital defect, in reality it was a small red dot that disappeared before she was three. Statements that are made like this without the whole story, without all the details, and drawing conclusions without any causational like other than some vague correlation to an event mean nothing.
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October 19th, 2008 at 1:58 am
When they first came out with the depleted uranium round in the 1970s I remember the talk was all about how it was going to be a huge improvement in safety and reliability. They called it “the dart” the depleted uranium round for tanks, and the thing that was supposed to be so great about it was that it was supposed to be very safe because it had no explosives in it except the charge so no worries about breach explosions or of it creating a chain reaction detonation in the magazines. It was supposed to make for low collateral damage and no bounce backs and fragmentation or secondary damage when it was in close quarters. That was the whole idea was that it turned the gun into a sniper-like weapon. They showed movies how it would slice through armor like a hot knife through butter. zap! No messes of bad shape charges or a standard round jamming in the gun and blowing everything up. No left over unexploded pieces.
They left out the part of how it gives you cancer and kills your kids years down the road. I guess it figures it would be too good to be true that there’s no price to pay. I got out before they started really using them on the ground and I guess I’m luicky from all the stories I hear.
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October 19th, 2008 at 2:28 am
Bob AZ 777 said:
Did you even bother to read the page before you commented?
Exposure to DU in these quantities doesn’t give you cancer or kills your kids years down the road. Try the benzene compounds produced by conventional conventional explosives if you really want to catch cancer.
Benzene, is a very powerful carcinogen. These compounds will be found in large concentrations when a gun is fired, or shell bursts, their role as a carcinogen has never been contested. The highest rates of cancer around heavy industry, are chemical factories and petrochemical factories.
I find it more plausible that if anything is causing cancer at all here, benzine made by the high explosives, is much higher on the lists of possible causes than DU.
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October 19th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Actually, Bob, the kinetic energy penetrator rounds are considered to be a major improvement in safety over other anti-armor rounds like shape charges and high explosive fragmentary rounds. This is for all the reasons you mention. They are just a rod of metal that is basically inert and harmless when it’s not being propelled at extremely high speed.
War is a messy and deadly business and depleted uranium rounds kill just like any other. If you want to make the case for safety though, they are probably the best because they can take out armor in one shot without dangers of unexploded ordinance or the other problems mentioned. You can’t do that as effectively with other materials like tungsten because it does not have the same kind of hardness and self-sharpening aspects as DU. DU is therefore what makes the kinetic energy one-shot one-kill round possible.
What you are wrong about is the cancer and birth defect thing. That is purely invented and has no scientific data to validate it.
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October 19th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Bob AZ 777 said:
Do you have any kind of evidence beyond the “stories you hear” to back this up? I am sure there are stories circulating about all kinds of things, but this is something that can be validated or invalidated by medical and scientific data. Can we see it please?
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October 19th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
I read some of this page on depleted uranium now. I find that this website is saying that it is not a danger or that it is a minimal danger and no more so than lead or some other generally low hazard material that is not usually harmful. It repeatedly says directly that DU has not caused any of the problems associated with it from cancer to birth defects and development problems.
Why should I believe this? I have never seen any other site quite like this that will stand up and condone DU as harmless. I have seen dozens or hundreds of sites that talk about the numerous problems. Who is to be believed? This site and the military sites? Or everyone else in thew world?? Are you telling me that everyone else is lying? Do you think I’m an idiot?
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October 19th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
Bob AZ 777 said:
No we think you’re a Troll
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October 19th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Here is a 10-page report released this month from the UN Institute for Disarmament Studies which goes into some of the details of the controversy: http://www.humansecuritygateway.info/documents/UNIDIR_UraniumWeapons_WhyFuss.pdf
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October 19th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Questioner said:
I note from this so-called report, the passage: “Uranium dust circulates in the atmosphere and is transported around the planet; therefore it is of concern far beyond the conflict zone. Uranium weapons produce an aerosol of uranium oxide particles that are very long lived in the environment.”
This ’scientist’ is apparently unaware that each typical coal burning power plant releases 5.2 tons of uranium (containing 74 pounds of uranium-235) a year. This was established by ORNL researchers J. P. McBride, R. E. Moore, J. P. Witherspoon, and R. E. Blanco in their article “Radiological Impact of Airborne Effluents of Coal and Nuclear Plants” in the December 8, 1978, issue of Science magazine.
Would you care to compare that amount times the number of coal power stations on the planet with the amounts released by the use of DU munitions? How does this researcher think he can identify the DU from weapons from the background created by burning coal?
What we have here is nothing but an article written for a disarmament magazine, without any peer review, and without any raw data. Hardly credible.
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October 19th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Questioner said:
Coal burning power plants blow TONS of uranium out their stacks each year, which totals many hundreds of tons annually – more than all the weapons ever deployed with depleted uranium. The uranium from coal plants is not just dust – it’s an atomized heated substance, mixed with a variety of other materials and blown into the atmosphere from tall stacks.
Uranium exists in numerous minerals and because of this every time phosphate fertilizer is used, significant amounts of uranium are in it. Globally, hundreds of thousands of thousands of tons of phosphate fertilizer is used.
Uranium is not an uncommon trace mineral. There is almost no place on earth where you will not find at least some uranium present in local minerals. In some areas of Canada, Australia, Central Africa and elsewhere there is a type of ore called ‘pitchblende’ which is a nearly pure naturally occurring uranium oxide and daughter product mineral. Due to the presence of decay products it is signifficantly more radioactive and toxic than depleted uranium metal.
Loose sand and dust in the American Southwest and in Central Australia, Kazakstan and elsewhere contains detectable amounts of uranium compounds.
Uranium, both depleted and otherwise, has been used (and continues to be used) in numerous consumer products. Uranium metal can be found in aircraft counterweights (most aircraft since late 1980’s use tungsten but there are many many aircraft flying with DU counterweights). It is used in the ballast of yachts. It is used in ’sinker bars’ used in drilling. It was once widely used in ceramics and is still very much avaliable in the cupboards of millions. It was popular in green colored glass, enamels and other products.
It has been replaced in many applications by cheaper alternatives, but there are still many uses. It is used in trace amounts in some semiconductors. It is used in special purpose enamels like high temperature enamels. Uranyl nitrate, uranyl acetate and other uranium compounds are very common lab chemicals that are used as stains, catalysts and for other purposes. Green uranium glass continues to be highly prized for its flourescent properties and is used in high end stained glass work, neon sign tubes and other such applications. It is still avaliable new, although the “new” glass is almost always recycled remelted uranium glass. I don’t believe it is still made new in the US, but there are several suppliers that sell it.
You can buy depleted uranium. At least in the United States you do not need a license for it. It has become harder to find at a reasonable price recently, but you can buy and transport up to hundreds of pounds of it without any special consideration.
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October 20th, 2008 at 3:44 am
Don’t go calling me a troll just because you disagree. I know that uranium is something that is natural in rocks but its not in the form of dust that is spread around and in the same kind of form. I’m not an expert on this but every news story on it has said there is a lot of reason to think it is harmful. Every website I have ever seen on the topic when I searched for it is saying that Iraqi doctors and traveling doctors and experts in it all say the same thing and so do some army personel too. They all say that it is very very dangerous and very toxic and causes all the problems we see.
Now you just are going to say that because you think that is not true, I should believe you. I support a strong military and going to battle when we have to for our own security and I want our troops to have the best, but i don’t want to put something out that is only going to hurt them later and hurt inocent inhabitants through contamination. Is that such a high goal? I don’t think so. That seems like being the better side in anything.
In would like to know why you can be so sure it is not the cause and tell me everyone else is making it up. If so, where did this come from? What is the truth and what do you have to back it up?
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October 20th, 2008 at 6:29 am
Bob AZ 777 said:
Please read the two comments 13 and 14, just above in this thread.
Uranium and it’s oxides are and have been aerosoled into the atmosphere in large amounts by burning coal for centuries prior to the use of DU in weapons. Sandstorms, loft and distribute tons of naturally occurring uranium into the air, which is then distributed about the globe by the actions of the weather,
It’s simply not credible that the small contribution of this material introduced by the use of uranium-based munitions would be significant against this background.
Given these, and an understanding of the toxic properties of uranium, (which is well understood) we can reject the contentions that DU in these theaters is responsible for the health issues some have claimed.
It is simply a matter of following the underlying science back, rather than depend on poorly supported conclusions made by those with a political ax to grind.
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October 28th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
drbuzz0 said:
DV82XL said:
What is the margin of error in the calculations by which “none” was derived? I want to see the math.
Because, and you know this as well as I do, if we had the math we could do more to put coal out of business and replace it with nuclear than we could with any other statistic.
People who say that they are in favor of nuclear power but yet resist study and rational discussion of the health effects of uranium make my head spin. We all agree that most uranium emission is a product of burning coal. We all agree that nuclear power is cleaner and safer than burning coal. Perhaps we have some disagreements about whether DU is superior to tungsten in combat, but even so, the only way we can figure it out is to do the science and do the math.
So why aren’t we all clamoring for more uranium toxicology studies with a unified voice?
Absolutism without reason is as antithetical to science as any homeopathic “remedy.”
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October 28th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Questioner said:
There is no indication that it causes any kind of birth defects and the levels of radiation emissions are extremely low and bellow those of noticable effects even if a given person is exposed to the highest dose reasonably possible from the rounds.
Now, as for “most likely none” statement. It is impossible for me ever to say with 100% certainty that there has not been even one birth defect that was caused by a mutation which was caused by a photon from a DU round making a less than one in a trillion hit on a neucleotide of someone’s DNA and that that neucleotide was not repaired or the cell destroyed and that that one little piece of genetic material was not responsible for a birth defect later on down the road.
This ***could*** theoretically happen. It is astronomically unlikely, however. Most birth defects are not caused by a direct mutation in the parent. Actually, only a tiny percentage are. Now of that percentage how many are caused by a radiation induced emission, I honestly don’t know, but likely a small portion. The odds of this happening are minuscule. If it does happen the ods that it is caused by a cosmic ray or terrestrial radiation are astronomically higher than DU.
However, I cannot tell you whether one did come from a photon from a DU round or not, because we are now deep into chaos theory and far far beyond the range of variables and measurements which could ever be tracked. We also have an element of true quantum randomness, which makes it impossible to know.
All I am left with is that the odds are astronomically small and probably lower than the odds of a given photon preventing a birth defect by stimulating cellular repairs.
Questioner said:
Well, it’s not exactly something we don’t have some good information on. Human experience with uranium goes back over 200 years and we do have some very good studies that have been done in the past as well as recent extensive studies and reviews of data. Sandia did a very extensive series of studies and a report on it and there is good toxicology data avaliable.
Do more studies? That’s fine with me. I’m never against studies in general other than to say it’s wasteful to beat a dead horse repeatedly. We really don’t need to do hundreds of studies a year to see if tobacco is really linked to lung cancer or to try to determine if eating pop rocks and soda will make your head explode. At some point it becomes just an excuse to burn money.
More importantly is the fact that studying depleted uranium and confirming what we already know doesn’t get much attention, and so in the name of sceintific study there are many who will use improper study techniques or outright lies to milk the system for money. You see this in any kind of politically charged issue: so-called scientists claiming they have found evidence and going on CNN then requesting more funding for studies which, in the end, turn out to be very very bad science.
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October 28th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
drbuzz0 said:
The coal industry thanks you for crushing any chance of nuclear power unseating them under your “no indication” boot.
“numerous unanswered questions about its long-term health effects … studies using cultured cells and laboratory rodents continue to suggest the possibility of leukemogenic, genetic, reproductive, and neurological effects” http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17508699
“the human epidemiological evidence is consistent with increased risk of birth defects in offspring of persons exposed to DU” http://www.ehjournal.net/content/4/1/17
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October 28th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
more: “normal functioning of the kidney, brain, liver, and heart can be affected by DU exposure” http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all?content=10.1080/10937400490452714
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October 28th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Questioner said:
Because uranium is not especially toxic and moderate exposure has not been shown to be linked to birth defects?
I’m really not concerned about the uranium in coal emissions. If you were to make a list of all the things in coal exhaust to worry about, uranium would be very low on the list. Yes, coal power does release more uranium than is used in munitions, but that’s nothing compared to the enormous amounts of sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain and health issues. It also releases huge amounts of particulate matter, soot and fine fly ash which can cause smog and respiratory problems. It releases mercury – considerably more than uranium, and mercury is much much more toxic than uranium. It also releases arsenic, cadmium, lead, thorium, thallium and various products of partial combustion that include reactive and volatile organics.
It also contributes to nitrous oxide emissions and to ground level ozone.
That of course does not include CO2.
It also does not include the massive amounts of damage caused by the process of mining coal or the gargantuan amounts of fly ash, scrubber precipitate, toxic slag and heavy ash.
If a coal fired power plant released five tons of uranium per year and that was all it released then I’d be all for coal power. Really, I’m not concerned about the uranium at all. It’s all the other crap that goes along with it.
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October 28th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
Hi James – trolling again and hiding under a new screen name.
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October 29th, 2008 at 2:29 am
Questioner said:
I looked at your information and I don’t know if you actually read these links, but I don’t see how they would reinforce the idea that depleted uranium munitions are somehow a major hazard. Two of them involve exposure of lab animals or tissue samples to extremely large amounts of uranium. This caused numerous problems, damage to the cells, bone development problems, kidney failure, calcium uptake issues.
This is not any kind of a surprise nor does it really mean anything other than uranium is mildly toxic and chronic exposure to very high levels will cause a buildup and will impact health. This is true of any heavy metal. It confirms that the most prevalent problem seen from chronic exposure is renal failure. This means that we would expect to see this first and that anyone who does not have kidney problems likely does not have other issues related to uranium, since that is the first to manifest.
Nobody will argue that uranium is not toxic and that it is not harmful if exposed to in extreme amounts and circumstances. This is true of lead as well, and yet we use lead bullets and solder. To take a step back, there are probably plenty of substances under your kitchen sink which would kill a cell culture if you poured it directly on to it. Does this mean they’re unsafe? no. Not under normal circumstances. Uranium is not very mobile in the enviornment. It is extremely heavy and usually forms stable oxides quickly. It is poorly absorbed by the digestive system and is unlikely to be inhaled in any significant amount except in extreme circumstances has low water solubility and the acute toxicity is extremely low.
Really to look directly at the local affects of a large amount on biological systems misses the context entirely and is not applicable to real world situations. Our studies of human exposure confirm this.
The third site you have linked to is really not a good source in any way. The interpretation of the data is poor and speculative. The data from Basra and the contention that it is uranium related is extremely misleading and I found an article about it on this website already here http://depletedcranium.com/?p=62
Please try to find more objective information and consider the whole picture. I assure you that nobody I’ve ever met in the field of radiation protection or toxicology would advocate poisoning children or using genocidal weapons or any of the other silly claims that are being made about depleted uranium.
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November 9th, 2008 at 12:01 am
Steven, what about http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a714111273&fulltext=713240928 do you find poor and speculative?
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November 9th, 2008 at 12:09 am
Questioner said:
What in the linked article indicates that DU is a major hazard James, or in any way support the wild claims that have been made about it?
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November 9th, 2008 at 12:12 am
Table 7
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November 9th, 2008 at 12:33 am
Ok…
So once again we have shown that it’s not good to eat toxic heavy metals.
First of all, the renal system seems to be the most directly effected by uranium. This just confirms that. Yes, it can cause renal tubular damage and this would lead to increased excretion of protein. This has been shown to be something that will generally heal. Permanent damage has been observed, however, in individuals who have chronic exposure to very high levels – again, no surprise there.
The brain, neurological area: Animal tests indicate that chronic exposure to large amounts does cause nerve cell damage. Again, no surprise there. The human study, is… well, I’m less than impressed with the quality of the data or the number of subjects, to say the very least.
It would not surprise me if it was discovered, however, that eating copious amounts of uranium on a daily basis did have neurological effects. Actually, I’d be surprised if it didn’t.
Now what I find interesting:
For reproductive health all they can find for humans is a fourty year old study which shows uranium minors have more first born females. That’s… totally irrelevant and probably coincidental.
Then the animal studies… well, the effects don’t sound that bad… “Moderate to severe focal tubular atrophy; vacuolization of Leydig cells”
But if you follow the study then you’ll find this:
Well, the effects are actually not nearly as much as I would have expected them to be. Actually they’re remarkably small, when you consider that the animal was getting up to 80 mg/kg/day! My god, that’s a hell of a lot of uranium, and not just uranium but a very easily absorbed organic uranium compound.
My god, that’s like me eating eight grams of uranal acetate per day! That’s… a hell of a lot all things considered. That’s more than half a kilogram in the time alloted for a human of my size. Nearly a pound! I have a jar of the stuff that is 250 grams and it’s relatively a large amount of it.
Sheerly amazing that you could get that big a dose of a heavy metal and only have such mild effects all things considered.
Now consider the respitory effects. For one thing, the human studies cited don’t find any effects. The animal studies find “Severe nasal congestion and hemorrage, lung lesions and fibrosis, edema and swelling, lung cancer”
Almost ANY dust will cause congestion, fibrosis, swelling and other problems if you suck down enough of it. Lung cancer? Geez… you fill your lungs with a toxic heavy metal that is mildly radioactive. Who woulda thunk?
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