more glibness from Ministry of Defence

Even though the, MoD said they were waiting for the Royal Society to report,
they have issued a document which "summarises the facts" of DU and "addresses some of the misconceptions."
Dated 25 January 2001, it is on MoD's web site [now expired, though the MoD site offers help to find it - we haven't asked them.]

What MoD says	What we say
"DU is a lot less radioactive than naturally occurring Uranium to which we are all exposed every day in the soil around us etc. etc."	This is irrelevant, so its constant repetition is a constructive lie. It would make little difference if they made armour piercing shells out of naturally occurring Uranium. The exposure route of interest to public health following conflicts and test firing is the aerosols of insoluble particles of Uranium Oxide - particles less than 0.5 microns across. This fine dust can be inhaled and the particles are then scavenged by white cells into the lymph nodes, where they irradiate lymph tissue containing stem cells which are the source of the cells in both blood and lymph systems. Radiation rates at the local level from such particles are many times higher than Natural Background. (see this link) Since 1999 LLRC has been warning of this novel type of exposure ("novel" because effectively it did not exist until 1991 and the Gulf War). The most senior radiation biologists in the UK are now echoing us - see www.llrc.org/goodhead.htm The MoD's argument is like saying it's OK to throw pellets of arsenic around for children to play with, just because trace quantities of arsenic arise commonly and naturally in soil, vegetation and drinking water.
"A tank crew would have to spend about 1500 hours sitting in a tank fully loaded with DU ammunition before they would even reach the UK statutory whole body annual dose limit for employees aged 18 and over."	They are treating soldiers as nuclear industry employees now. The annual whole body dose limit for nuclear industry employees is 50 milliSieverts (50mSv). For members of the public it is 1mSv. So maybe we should divide 1500 by 50 = 30 hours. If you say it takes 30 hours sitting in a tank to reach a dose limit, it doesn't sound so reassuring.
"Similarly, a tank crew man would have to hold a DU round in her hands for 250 hours to reach the UK whole body dose limit for employees ... blah blah blah as above"	This is discussing the beta ray hazard. It assumes that the cladding around an unused shell is in place. After firing the cladding is lost. So, even if the shell does not convert itself to an aerosol by hitting a hard target, naked Uranium is lying around. The beta radiation is a serious thing especially, but not only, for children. Serious amounts of gamma emissions are also present. See below
" ... no scientific evidence that du has caused ill health" "Indeed, a scientific study has shown that a slightly smaller percentage of Gulf War veterans has died ..."	This is just the culture of denial. They deny anecdotal evidence, but is anybody doing respectable epidemiology on the exposed populations? Their "Indeed, a scientific study..." was in the Lancet. Early in the study there were questions about limited access to data; and one of the team of three researchers left the UK half way through. But above all it is a study of mortality, which is highly questionable in view of the fact that most of the Gulf War veterans who are complaining about illness are still alive - to complain! What is really needed, if we are to resolve the dispute about the health effects of DU is a morbidity study, matched with the results of proper monitoring for the presence of DU, which is not being done either, as Goodhead and Wright are saying. Urine analysis won't show up the insoluble U; whole body monitoring won't reveal the lymph node burdens.
"The US government has very carefully monitored the health of some of its soldiers who ... still have DU shrapnel embedded in their bodies ... no signs [of] ... health problems."	The US veterans who have du shrapnel are irrelevant. This is a completely different exposure route from the one which the most highly respected radiation biologists are saying should be checked out.

Gamma emissions

Three Kosovo residents have kept a DU shell in their house.
Two have leukaemia and one is suffering from an unspecified disease.
This shell has been monitored using a highly accurate Rotem DA3 geiger counter. It's giving off a packet of gamma rays.
Packed in a wooden box, wrapped in vinyl inside a metal ammunition box it gives off 70microSv per hour measured outside the box.
So first point is that the packaging mimics the cladding that would stand between the DU and the tank crew, and the radiation dose from this ONE shell [let alone the others in the ready use rack] would be 105 milliSv in the 1500 hours operation the MoD uses as its yardstick. [70 x 1500 =105000 microSv = 105 mSv] This is 105 times annual Natural Background Radiation [NBR].
The hourly rate is 600 times NBR.
Out of the box, measuring near the surface of the metal [i.e. equivalent to the shell minus its cladding] it gave off 1000 microSv per hour [8766 times NBR].
So if children are playing with these things - and there's plenty of anecdotal evidence that they are - then for every hour they are near their toy they are getting a gamma dose equal to the whole of annual NBR, and equal to the entire annual dose limit for members of the public.
Betas are in addition.
The radioactivity of the shell discussed here has been confirmed by independent measurements of shell fragments in the Balkans using a Nuclear Instruments Electra instrument, which is a micro-processor controlled scaler and integrating rate-meter together with a DP2/4 49sq:cm area dual phosphor scintillation probe calibrated on Americium 241 for alphas (33% efficient at 5.5MeV) and Strontium-90 for betas. The system can distinguish between alpha, beta and gamma counts.
14.7mm penetrator cores of 30mm shells fired by A-10 aircraft are lying about in Iraq. They are very radioactive, giving 12000cps or more beta radiation, equivalent to tissue doses of 0.48mSv/hour - half the annual dose in 1 hour. There is a wide range of gamma readings from spent shell fragments and impact / penetration holes, strongly suggesting that the composition of DU weapons varies. Some may contain reprocessing products - i.e. it's dirty Uranium

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