"No one has warned the vendor in the faded, threadbare black gown to
keep the toxic and radioactive dust off her produce. The
children haven't
been told not to play with the radioactive debris. They gather around
as a Geiger
counter carried by a visiting reporter starts singing when it nears a
DU
[depleted uranium] bullet
fragment no bigger than a pencil eraser. It registers nearly 1,000
times
normal background radiation levels on the digital readout. ... In
the first
partial Pentagon disclosure of the amount of DU used in Iraq, a US
Central
Command spokesman told the Monitor that A-10 Warthog aircraft - the
same planes
that shot at the Iraqi planning ministry - fired 300,000 bullets.
The
normal combat mix for these 30-mm rounds is five DU bullets to
1 - a mix
that would have left about 75 tons of DU in Iraq. ... In the
first Gulf
War, US forces used 320 tons of DU, 80 percent of it fired by A-10
aircraft."
-- Christian Science Monitor. May 15, 2003. Emphasis added. http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0515/p01s02-woiq.html
It is the exploded DU shell dust everywhere that is most dangerous.
Especially when in
drinking water, or when eaten or when breathed in. As a heavy metal DU
is dangerous like lead and
other heavy metals. Alpha radiation inside the body is also
dangerous to health. Alpha radiation outside the body can be blocked by
a piece of paper.
