Herbert Reed, seen with his medicines, believes
depleted uranium has contaminated him and his life.
He's a leading figure in a fight against the Pentagon.
Posted on 08/13/2006 6:36:02 AM PDT by yankeedame
Is an Armament Sickening U.S. Soldiers?
By DEBORAH HASTINGS, AP
Herbert Reed, seen with his medicines, believes
depleted uranium has contaminated him and his life.
He's a leading figure in a fight against the Pentagon.
NEW YORK (Aug. 12) - It takes at least 10 minutes and a large glass of orange juice to wash down all the pills - morphine, methadone, a muscle relaxant, an antidepressant, a stool softener. Viagra for sexual dysfunction. Valium for his nerves.
Ammunition coated with depleted uranium leaves behind
a fine radioactive dust with a half-life of 4.5 billion years.
It is 60 percent as radioactive as natural uranium.
About 30 percent of the 700,000 soldiers who served in the first Gulf War still suffer illnesses similar to Reed's. Depleted uranium has long been suspected as a possible contributor.
Four hours later, Herbert Reed will swallow another 15 mg of morphine to cut the pain clenching every part of his body. He will do it twice more before the day is done.
Since he left a bombed-out train depot in Iraq, his gums bleed. There is more blood in his urine, and still more in his stool. Bright light hurts his eyes. A tumor has been removed from his thyroid. Rashes erupt everywhere, itching so badly they seem to live inside his skin. Migraines cleave his skull. His joints ache, grating like door hinges in need of oil.
Depleted uranium is also used as a protective shell on
tanks. The U.S. has an estimated 1.5 billion pounds of
the material sitting in hazardous waste storage sites
There is something massively wrong with Herbert Reed, though no one is sure what it is. He believes he knows the cause, but he cannot convince anyone caring for him that the military's new favorite weapon has made him terrifyingly sick.
In the sprawling bureaucracy of the Department of Veterans Affairs, he has many caretakers. An internist, a neurologist, a pain-management specialist, a psychologist, an orthopedic surgeon and a dermatologist. He cannot function without his stupefying arsenal of medications, but they exact a high price.
"I'm just a zombie walking around," he says.
Reed believes depleted uranium has contaminated him and his life. He now walks point in a vitriolic war over the Pentagon's arsenal of it - thousands of shells and hundreds of tanks coated with the metal that is radioactive, chemically toxic, and nearly twice as dense as lead.
Iraqi doctors reported significant increases in birth
defects and childhood cancers after the 1991 invasion,
when bombs with depleted uranium were used there.
A shell coated with depleted uranium pierces a tank like a hot knife through butter, exploding on impact into a charring inferno. As tank armor, it repels artillery assaults. It also leaves behind a fine radioactive dust with a half-life of 4.5 billion years.
It took the Pentagon 25 years to acknowledge that
Agent Orange -- a corrosive defoliant used to melt the
jungles of Vietnam -- was linked to severe illnesses.
Depleted uranium is the garbage left from producing enriched uranium for nuclear weapons and energy plants. It is 60 percent as radioactive as natural uranium. The U.S. has an estimated 1.5 billion pounds of it, sitting in hazardous waste storage sites across the country. Meaning it is plentiful and cheap as well as highly effective.
Reed says he unknowingly breathed DU dust while living with his unit in Samawah, Iraq. He was med-evaced out in July 2003, nearly unable to walk because of lightning-strike pains from herniated discs in his spine. Then began a strange series of symptoms he'd never experienced in his previously healthy life.
The U.S. tested an atomic bomb in the Marshall Islands in 1946. Forty years later, the military compensated sick World War II vets exposed to radioactive blasts.
At Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C, he ran into a buddy from his unit. And another, and another, and in the tedium of hospital life between doctor visits and the dispensing of meds, they began to talk.
"We all had migraines. We all felt sick," Reed says. "The doctors said, 'It's all in your head.'"
Then the medic from their unit showed up. He too, was suffering. That made eight sick soldiers from the 442nd Military Police, an Army National Guard unit made up of mostly cops and correctional officers from the New York area.
But the medic knew something the others didn't.
Dutch marines had taken over the abandoned train depot dubbed Camp Smitty, which was surrounded by tank skeletons, unexploded ordnance and shell casings. They'd brought radiation-detection devices. The readings were so hot, the Dutch set up camp in the middle of the desert rather than live in the station ruins.
"We got on the Internet," Reed said, "and we started researching depleted uranium."
Then they contacted The New York Daily News, which paid for sophisticated urine tests available only overseas.
Then they hired a lawyer.
Reed, Gerard Matthew, Raymond Ramos, Hector Vega, Augustin Matos, Anthony Yonnone, Jerry Ojeda and Anthony Phillip all have depleted uranium in their urine, according to tests done in December 2003, while they bounced for months between Walter Reed and New Jersey's Fort Dix medical center, seeking relief that never came.
The analyses were done in Germany, by a Frankfurt professor who developed a depleted uranium test with Randall Parrish, a professor of isotope geology at the University of Leicester in Britain.
The veterans, using their positive results as evidence, have sued the U.S. Army, claiming officials knew the hazards of depleted uranium, but concealed the risks.
The Department of Defense says depleted uranium is powerful and safe, and not that worrisome.
Four of the highest-registering samples from Frankfurt were sent to the VA....
======================
--YankeeDame: This is a long article. It goes on for two more full-length pages. The finial lines of which are
=========================
...No one in the military talked to him about depleted uranium, he said. His knowledge, like Reed's, is self-taught from the Internet.
Unlike Reed, he has not gone to war over it. He doesn't feel up to the fight. There is no known cure for what ails him, and so no possible victory in battle.
He'd really just like to feel normal again. And he knows of others who feel the same.
"I was an artillery scout, these are folks who are in pretty good shape. Your Rangers, your Special Forces guys, they're in as good as shape as a professional athlete.
"Then we come back and we're all sick."
They feel like men who once were warriors and now are old before their time, with no hope for relief from a multitude of miseries that has no name.
Seems a lot more likely than DU contamination.
As a Korean Vet, 1965-1967 I was subjected to many of these claims and, I have many health problems. However I do not contribute these illness to my being around missiles and tanks
that were laden with chemical and biological weapons.
I wonder if the VA has ck. Mr. Reeds family history of illness's?
Many who were in Korea 1960-68 were exposed to agent orange
but the military denies this. When they sprayed the perimeters of our compounds, the chems. would stick to your throat for days.
Many illness's can be attributed to this, but also many of my illness's can be inherited, as others must confess.
I suspect they think the longer the half-life the more dangerous the stuff ~ it's actually the other way around.
I would dismiss his claims because DU is not as hazardous as he claims. We have been using DU for years. Is there no DU used at all on the tank and aircraft gunnery ranges in the states?
Another thing. All those Iraqi tanks used radium in their gauges. Some of them also had radiation detectors inside which also contain a radioactive source.
"The AMCCOM personnel also surveyed captured Iraqi equipment being prepared for shipment to the US. According to the person in charge of the survey operation, the most acute radiological hazard on these Soviet-built tanks was radium used in their gauges, which were often leaking. These gauges had to be removed prior to shipping. One T-72 tank had substantial internal and external DU contamination.[103] It was not shipped, but its ultimate fate is unknown.[104] "
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du/du_tabg.htm
The anti-DU crowd want you to assume that any radiation present is a result of DU when it's not.
The other thing the author is using as a scare line is the fact that DU is 60% as radioactive as natural uranium. What do people do who live where they mine uranium? I see that as a plus. I worked around the stuff for ten years. I don't believe I ever got "dusted."
The army also identified about 120 people who had significant exposure to DU. They are being tracked. How many of these guys have developed problems? They worked extensively around these destroyed vehicles. If somebody was going to get sick what about these guys? It would certainly be more likely that these guys would experience a problem than somebody who passed through or camped in an area.
Here is the real word on DU in the gulf.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du/
With the kind of medications he is taking he must be flying high.
While he may be wrong in what he thinks has caused his illnesses he certainly deserves some answers and compensation. If he was gassed by Iraquis then it is the responsibility of our Goverment to find that out and hold the Iraqi Goverment accountable.
""It takes at least 10 minutes and a large glass of orange juice to wash down all the pills - morphine, methadone, a muscle relaxant, an antidepressant, a stool softener. Viagra for sexual dysfunction. Valium for his nerves.""
Back in the 70's, I would take that on a Saturday night before going to studio 54. I washed mine down with Jack Daniels though. The man is a lightweight.
DU is also used in jet airliners.
I agree. They guy in the article sounds interesting when you consider some of the stuff he is taking regularly, like Viagra, methadone, and Valium. It didn't sound like any of them were doing anything, as he still suffers from all the supposed ailments, and pain.
Yes it is.
Its just a heavy metal
And heavy metals do come with some health risks if consummed, but making this stuff out to be radioactive is just goofy.
You get more radiation from the sun
OK, this article is saying that 210,000 people are taking that drug cocktail for all of those things?!?!?! How is that possible? Or is it saying that 210,000 people have one of the symptoms that he has reported? Big difference between the two (thousands of people have migraines? My God! We need to ban the military! </s>)...
The only radiation detectors that have a built in source are those that detect Neutron radiation (the detector is coated internally with usually U235).
I can not imagine why a tanker would need such a device.
Did he say radiation? Although the DU does have a potential radiation hazard (upon impact, DU components get pulverized to dust, and the inhaled dust allows the radiation to bypass the outer skin's natural protection, as well as reduce exposure distance), it's not the main toxicity that can result. The powdered DU forms toxic salts, and it's this part that many people are concerned about.
See http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/faq_17apr.htm for some info, too. Civilian populations in Iraq and Afghanistan have also had elevated levels of DU in their urine samples, but the assumptions made about the routes of exposure, etc., are complex.
Disclaimer: I am not a toxicologist or risk assessor.
You know, it is interesting that the same crowd that is crowing that DU is harmful completly dissmised the 500+ 155mm cyclosarin rounds that we found in Iraq as "harmless"
you are correct about the "salts"
And the same thing woulds occur with lead or copper
Heavy metals in the body isnt a good thing
But it's not just the radioactivity that is potentially the main problem. As the reporter states, it's also chemically toxic. Everyone hears "uranium" and thinks "radioactivity," but potassium cyanide is a toxic salt without being radioactive...likewise, salts of uranium ions can be toxic without any connection to being radioactive (not that I'm implying the mechanism is the same as with KCN).
My point isn't that there's any proof of a problem, but just that the potential can't be dismissed so easily as some might suggest.
Although I'm very well aware of the dangers of chronic heavy-metal toxicity, is that the only component or mechanism of the U(IV)/U(VI) toxicity? Like I said above, I'm not at all a toxicologist, risk assessor, etc.
Excellent point.
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