That said, the key thing from that Wikipedia link that jumped out at me is: "...DU is about 60% as radioactive as natural uranium..."
Natural Uranium is not very radioactive at all, IIRC. (I used to work with and handle nuclear isotopes, but it has been a few decades now) You can even walk around in a Uranium mine without protection and be at little risk because the presence of U-235 is less than half a percent of the total Uranium istopes existing in nature (U-238) which is why we hear the word "centrifuges" lot in various non-proliferation endeavors. They have to refine the Uranium ore and process it in special centrifuges that separate the fissile U-235 from the largely benign U-238 (which does have alpha emitters, but its half life is so long (Seven Hundred and Four Million Years) it isn't considered to be especially dangerous, again, unless you inhale it and are spending a LOT of time around the ore, and even then.
Given the depleted uranium is only 60% percent as radioactive as uranium ore, that brings the radioactivity level down even more, and because it is part and parcel of a solid uranium round, it isn't in its gaseous form.
On top of all that-if a magazine of these depleted uranium rounds went up in smoke, unless you are in the dense smoke, you are still at low risk. The non-radioactive smoke will be far, far more harmful than any puff of air floating around carrying an alpha emitter with a half life of Seven Hundred and Four Million Years.
Granted...there is no "threshold level" for exposure to radiation, which if you stay below that level you won't get cancer. One magic bullet of an alpha particle in your lungs could theoretically cause cancer, but...so could that one photon of Gamma radiation that passes through you.
In my opinion, it is being intentionally overblown to scare people. And Radiation does that to people, even normally sensible ones, because it is mysterious, you cannot taste it, and you cannot smell it. (Of course, the same could be said for a deadly virus too, and the people pushing both this narrative and the COVID narrative know that quite well.
Thank you for that. Very informative.
Alpha particles emitted by Depleted Uranium cannot penetrate skin. You must be thinking of Alpha Rays which are quite different.
Countless thousands of tankers have sat in close proximity and handled depleted Uranium shells - not to mention the workers who made and assembled Abrams’ Depleted Uranium armor. They did not get sick they did not die.