DU: How to find out something useful.

[Note: for the time being we are confining ourselves to the idea of screening to demonstrate whether or not DU is causing or contributing to the diseases reported from exposed populations. The question of screening for treatment subsequently is, of course, vital but we do not address it here.
Some of the studies we recommend could show informative results quite quickly.]

The nature of the hazard

The use of depleted Uranium weapons creates large numbers of inhalable insoluble Uranium Oxides.

As we have been saying for several years, this is probably the greatest hazard from DU. White blood cells scavenge the particles in the lungs and deposit them in the tracheobronchial lymph nodes (TBLNs).

It is already well known [see this link] that the TBLNs can retain such particles for very long periods and at remarkable high concentrations. A single particle 0.5 micron in diameter gives a radiation dose to the tissue immediately surrounding it at a rate 10 times higher than Natural Background.

This chronic irradiation of lymph tissue may be causing mutation of stem cells with implications for leukaemia and other diseases of the immune system, even though radiation doses as assessed by advisers such as the National Radiological Protection Board may be very low - far below the threshold for chemical toxicity and heavy metal damage to the kidneys.

This type of contamination is hard to detect and might not show up at all in urine. [see this link for some authoritative support for our view]

Recommendations

• Recommendation 1: Post mortem analysis of TBLNs to test for DU
  Age of subjects and causes of death should be discovered.
  This study should include:
  • all veterans, both Balkans and Gulf War, who die over the next five years
  • as many people as possible from populations living near sites where test firing has been conducted
  • civilians from the war zones

• Recommendation 2: Health statistics and non-invasive testing of TBLNs in living subjects
  It is possible to test for the presence of DU in the lungs and lymph nodes by non-invasive means. This entails detecting the gamma rays emitted from the daughter isotopes to which Uranium decays.
  Substantial samples of the populations described in Recommendation 1 should be screened, and the results matched with reported symptoms
  NATO and the EU should provide funding to deploy enough instruments to do it. [See note below]

• Recommendation 3: Health statistics and urine analysis
  Urine may be a poor indicator of insoluble DU but it may be useful in a sufficiently large study. Results should be matched with reported symptoms.

• Recommendation 4: Health of veterans
  A morbidity study of soldiers and auxiliaries who served in ground forces in the Gulf and in the Balkans controlled against service people who were not deployed in those places;

---

Note: Non-invasive testing of TBLNs
We predict that the MoD and NATO will protest

1. that it's no good looking at the Gulf veterans as the Uranium will have cleared from their bodies.
   This is not true. The insoluble forms are remarkably persistent.

2. that the test is not sensitive enough to detect low levels of Uranium or to distinguish between natural Uranium and the depleted Uranium. We don't really believe this one, and we are looking into the technical possibilities further.

3. that there isn't any (or enough) suitable equipment. They'd have a point. 6 or 7 labs in the UK have such equipment, e.g. Sellafield, where there is a need to do whole body counts in case of internal contamination of Plutonium and Americium. It is highly specialised, intended for health physics work [i.e. radiation protection professionals mostly in the nuclear industry.] It's not available in hospitals. Maybe the present row will raise enough political will to develop the necessary instruments.