More On DU (Two Graphic Images Linked)

Alrighty then let's take this one at a time here..

Originally posted by PeanutButterJellyTime
If DU was so harmful there would be all kinds of PPE (personal protective equipment) required to handle it

I take it you were allowed to read this document then?

64.233.187.104...:XnWpikPGJbgJ:134.11.61.26... pleted+uranium+reads+cpm+geiger+counter&hl=en

Just the DU from a Plane Crash is pretty serious contamination. In Canada and from the Pentagon 'Object'....

us.altnews.com.au...
"A 747 may contain as much as 1,500 kilograms 3,300 lbs. of the material," the Canadian Press reported. It took 60 firefighters and 20 trucks about three hours to control the fire.

Fowler said: "there is no threat or concern" about DU exposure to those working on the wreckage.

"Thatâ??s baloney," Marion Fulk, a retired staff scientist from Lawrence Livermore National Lab, told American Free Press. Fulk, 83, is currently researching how low-level ionizing radiation causes cancer, birth defects and a host of other health problems. Burning depleted uranium creates a "whole mess of oxides," Fulk said, "which is what makes it so wicked biologically."

In 1988, American physicist Robert L. Parker wrote that in the worst-case scenario, the crash of a Boeing 747 could affect the health of 250,000 people through exposure to uranium oxide particles. "Extended tests by the Navy and NASA showed that the temperature of the fireball in a plane crash can reach 1,200 degrees Celsius. Such temperatures are high enough to cause very rapid oxidation of depleted uranium," he wrote.

"Large pieces of uranium will oxidize rapidly and will sustain slow combustion when heated in air to temperatures of about 500 degrees Celsius," Paul Lowenstein, technical director and vice-president of Nuclear Metals Inc., the company that has supplied DU to Boeing, wrote in a 1993 article.

Originally posted by PeanutButterJellyTime
Your hand is more radioactive than DU. That is simple scientific fact.

I find this particularly disturbing given that you are one of the guys acutally handling this stuff. No Offense but that is some serious not knowing. I sincerely hope this is your own speculation and not something they told you because here's the reality.

www.stopthenato.org...
Rokke and his crew were measuring significant levels
of radiation up to 50 meters away from affected tanks:
up to 300 millirems an hour in beta and gamma
radiation, and alpha radiation from the thousands to
the millions in counts per minute (CPM) on a Geiger
counter....
Within 72 hours of their inspections, Rokke and his
crew started getting sick.

But they continued with their work. They went back to
the U.S. to perform tests on Army bases. They
deliberately blew up tanks with DU rounds, then ran
over and jumped on the tanks while they were still
burning. They videotaped the uranium-oxide clouds
pouring out, and they measured the radiation being
thrown off.

In the past decade, Rokke said 30 men out of 100 who
were closely involved in these operations dropped
dead.

Rokke's lungs and kidneys are damaged. He believes
that uranium oxide dust is permanently trapped inside
his lungs. He has lesions on his brain, pustules on
his skin. He suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome. He
has reactive airway disease, which means he can't stop
wheezing and coughing, and experiences a loss of
breath when he exercises. He also has fibromyalgia, a
condition that causes chronic pain in his muscles,
ligaments and tendons.

The VA tested Rokke for uranium levels in his body in
1994. He got the results back two and a half years
later. His urine had 5000 times the amount of
permissible uranium....
The problem with DU, he said, is the stuff that's
given off when a round is fired. The projectile begins
burning immediately, and up to 70 percent of it
oxidizes. This aerosolized power—uranium oxide—is the
really dangerous stuff, Rokke said, particularly when
it is inhaled.

Rokke insists that he and his men were wearing
protective equipment—or equipment they thought would
protect them. But their face masks were capable of
straining out particles of 10 microns or larger.
That's as big as the DU particles get, according to
the Army and the Pentagon.

Rokke, however, insists that he has measured particles
as small as .3 microns, and that scientists at the
Livermore laboratories have measured them as small as
.1 micron.

www.disasternews.net...
Dated March 1, 1991, the memo was written by Lt. Col. M.V. Ziehmn at the Los Alamos Laboratories in New Mexico.

"There has been and continues to be a concern regarding the impact of dU [sic] on the environment. Therefore, if no one makes a case for the effectiveness of du on the battlefield, du rounds may become politically unacceptable and thus, be deleted from the arsenal," the memo reads. "If du penetrators proved their worth during our recent combat activities, then we should assure their future existence (until something better is developed) through Service/DoD proponency. If proponency is not garnered, it is possible that we stand to lose a valuable combat capability. I believe we should keep this sensitive issue at mind when after action reports [sic] are written."

The meaning of this memo is quite clear, Rokke said. Since DU munitions are so effective, they must continue to be used in combat, regardless of the environmental or health consequences.

Here's what the UN says...

indypgh.org...
According to a August 2002 report by the UN subcommission, laws which are breached by the use of DU shells include: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the Charter of the United Nations; the Genocide Convention; the Convention Against Torture; the four Geneva Conventions of 1949; the Conventional Weapons Convention of 1980; and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, which expressly forbid employing 'poison or poisoned weapons' and 'arms, projectiles or materials calculated to cause unnecessary suffering'. All of these laws are designed to spare civilians from unwarranted suffering in armed conflicts.

Here's what the UK Atomic Energy Authority had to say...

indypgh.org...
In 1991, the Allies fired 944,000 DU rounds or some 2700 tons of DU tipped bombs. A UK Atomic Energy Authority report said that some 500,000 people would die before the end of this century, due to radioactive debris left in the desert.

If you plan to have kids and have been handling that crap, you might want to have yourself tested by a civilian doctor... Seriously.

www.sundayherald.com... or
indypgh.org...
The use of DU has also led to birth defects in the children of Allied veterans and is believed to be the cause of the 'worrying number of anophthalmos cases -- babies born without eyes' in Iraq. Only one in 50 million births should be anophthalmic, yet one Baghdad hospital had eight cases in just two years. Seven of the fathers had been exposed to American DU anti-tank rounds in 1991. There have also been cases of Iraqi babies born without the crowns of their skulls, a deformity also linked to DU shelling.

A study of Gulf war veterans showed that 67% had children with severe illnesses, missing eyes, blood infections, respiratory problems and fused fingers.

Well if the Army won't educate you on how to safely handle DU, you can always turn tot he provate sector for information. For your sake...
extranet.urmc.rochester.edu...

And yes it oxidzes and pulverizes into a fine dust, as fine a 1 micron... BREATHABLE...

www.nuclearpress.com...
Breathing Uranium Oxides: Global Medical Crisis of Depleted Uranium

Also since you handle this yourself, you may want to look into this site...
DEPLETED URANIUM: SCIENTIFIC & TECHNICAL REFERENCES
INTERNATIONAL NUCLEAR INFORMATION SYSTEM (INIS)
Database of the International Atomic Energy Agency
www.iaea.org...

Sorry about the edit earlier, I clicked the wrong button and lost about twenty minutes of typing...

Originally posted by PeanutButterJellyTime
DU doesn't turn into dust on impact either.

Yes it does. It is burning, "oxidizing" the moment it leaves the barrel and up to 70% of the round is dispersed as fine particulate through the air and on impact.

For the particles formed when a DU penetrator impacts on armour plate, a larger fraction, about 25%, dissolves quickly. Other tests have shown that in both situations, the particles consist mostly of two uranium oxides (U3O8, with some UO2) both of which are relatively insoluble. Experiments carried out on industrial forms of these oxides indicate a long-term dissolution rate in the lungs of the order of 0.1% per day.

It really is frustrating to go through all this posting and research and then somebody comes along and tries to say DU is as radioactive as your hand.
There are Congressional Reports available, tons of research published by a variety of sources raning from international entities to our own Government and Military Commissioned Studies. There are memos, letters, retractions, you name it. Read, for god's sake and apparetnly your own sake, read the truth about DU before you accept what Sgt. So and So tells you.

I personally served in the Gulf War and during the time I was overseas, I didn't actually notice damage to the soldiers themselves because of any type of weapons used there.

When I returned stateside, I worked at Lackland Air Force Base at Wilford Hall Medical Center, what I did notice, which no one would make a connection between directly, is that the babies of the servicemen that were concieved after they had returned had severe deformities in numerous cases.

We had babies being born with their insides on the outside, extra appendages, missing appendages, cleft palate and other more severe maxiofacial deformities, to only mention a few. There were so many premature babies born it was devastating. Babies born at 2 pounds or less had very little chances of surviving, and there were just so many.

One of the charge nurses who had been at the hospital for many years once said to me that she had never seen such an influx of "sick babies" being born. This is when I was working in the Neo-Natal ICU, which was constantly full.

Now, I have a clinical background...definately not an expert in weaponry of any sort, but just seeing so many babies that were born so sick gives me reason to believe that it had to be connected somehow to the war, or weapons used there. I would say that 95% of the deformities and premies born were children of men and women who had served in Iraq.

I, luckily, was stationed in Germany during the war, and my child is perfectly normal (for which I thank God every single day of my life) and healthy. A personal friend of mine though, who was in Iraq when it all went down, has had three children, and all three were severly deformed, and one died within weeks after birth, as she had so many problems, not to mention a hole in her little heart and a portion of her intestines on the outside of her body, that the surgeries and treatments that were attempted were not sucessful. She was born a full 7 years after her father returned from the war.

I pray for the troops that are over there now, and hopefully they will not be exposed to anything that will effect their children, but I think there is a chance of course. I just will not be able to see the direct "fall-out" on children this time around, as I left the military years ago, and no longer work in clinical medicine. I just hate that this sort of thing not only effects the soldiers themselves in a detrimental way, but also impedes their ability to have healthy children in some way, shape or form.

Wow coolthing thank you for bringing this information forward. I wonder statisticly how the deformaties of the Soldiery and Civilians would compare, I mean if a hundred people came in and had deformed kids, 95 of which were exposed to DU, you may have access to definitive statistical evidence. I wouldn't post it here though, that I would put in RATS.

Originally posted by PeanutButterJellyTime
DU is dangerous in quantities that are impossible to breathe in. It causes heavy metal poisoning, like lead does, if you ingest large quantities of it. DU is not a radiation hazard. The longer the half life, the less radioactive a substance is. If I hand you an artillery shell made out of DU, in 4.5 billion years half of it will still be there. That is not very radioactive. It's very stable. The radioactive decay of gold is much higher than that of DU and yet people don't get cancer from gold jewelry.

I know you posted this a couple of months ago, and have already been taken to task, but to summarize:

The gold in gold jewelry contains almost no radioactive isotopes precisely because the half life of those isotopes is short - less than an hour. The odds of finding even a single nonmanufactured radioactive gold isotope (one atom) on earth is close to zero for all practical purposes. Gold has already decayed to a stable nonradioactive form.

You have it backwards. The longer the half life, the greater the number of radioactive isotopes found in nature, and the longer it remains a problem. If the half life of uranium were on the order of a few minutes, it would quickly kill anything nearby, but then stabilize rapidly and cease to be a problem in less than a year.

Depleted uranium contains not only uranium istopes, but since it is processed nuclear waste, it also contains neptunium and plutonium, which are thousands of times more carcinogenic than uranium.

But further, DU is pyrophoric. When a DU shell impacts at high velocity, it vaporizes and creates tiny radioactive particles capable of penetrating gas masks. The amount of remaining radioactive isotopes in depleted uranium does not need to be very high to cause major health problems for this reason.

Originally posted by PeanutButterJellyTime
People hear depleted uranium and instantly think dirty bombs, nuclear weapons, and massive doses of radiation. That's just not true.

From this article,

In the area around Basrah where DU was used extensively in the first war, the incidence of childhood leukemia has increased by 700 percent, overall cancers by 1000 percent, birth deformities by 2000 percent. People also experience immunodeficiency disorders, AIDS-like syndromes, kidney and liver dysfunction, neurological problems, rashes, vision degradation, sexual dysfunction, and psychological disorders – to name a few of the problems. In effect, the people of Iraq are suffering as though they are the victims of a nuclear war. They are. The United States has inflicted a low level, slow motion nuclear war on the people and country of Iraq.

Keep in mind that these ordinances vaporize on impact. Those vapors are carried by the wind. Dust from the middle east travels with the air currents to the southeast coast of the US, so some of this stuff ends up in Florida. The negligence of the US federal government is putting the entire world at risk, including our own people. Could DU be a contributing factor to the massive increase in lung cancer in Florida since 1990?

Re: Cause of Lung Cancer...
I recently read a long piece of Pro-Tobacco information that I was about to shrug off as ridiculous piece of coporate propoganda, until I came to the last several pages. It was showing the dramatic rise in lung cancer rates increasing right along with our escalation of Nuclear testing in Nevada and other areas. It showed demographical data that correlated the Lung Cancer Rates and the Windfalls of the test reigons and everything. I wish I could remember where I found that at, it was very interesting. Have any of you guys seen that site, it may have been through an ATS link somewhere.
Radioactive Material belongs deep in the earth, not flying around the troposphere in the form of miute iridum particles and crap. And we aren't just poisoning ourselves now, we are screwing with people for generations to come. Radiation can alter DNA, cause horror show defects and for all pratical purposes, it never goes away. DU has to stop, for the concern of all nations, radiation is a threat to our SPECIES for crying out loud. Imagine your kids comming home to tell you they were playing in DU contaminated field all day? We have been studying how to contaminate areas with it since the 40's, even then we were drawing up plans of literally weaponizing depleted uranium then as a terrain contaminant. I have worked with Vaseline Glass with my glass work and hell, even a few marbles of that 2%-3% content emit up to 100 CPM, and even at 3% is still an oxide so more like 1%. Don't be fooled into thinking that depleted means it isn't radioactive, it is very radioactive. What makes me sick is that we already told people we had no intentions of cleaning it up over there, can you imagine being on the receiving end of that statement?

A bit more on the DU weapons of mass destruction


Testing for depleted uranium in La. soldiers passes into law

Snip~~

By Jan Clifford, Contributing Writer
June 27, 2005


Louisiana became the first state in the nation to pass a bill to give to all military veterans returning from Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom the right to be tested for depleted uranium (DU) contamination. The bill received unanimous bipartisan support, and Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco signed it into law on June 16.

The bill, Act 69, was introduced in the Louisiana State House of Representatives by Rep. Juan LaFonta and co-sponsored by Rep. Jalila Jefferson-Bullock. Retired Army Command Sgt. Maj. Bob Smith, who served three tours of duty with the Green Berets during the Vietnam War, is responsible for bringing the issue to the attention of the legislature. Advocates testifying for the bill were Smith of New Orleans and Army veteran Ward Reilly of Baton Rouge.

Among some military health experts, DU contamination is believed to be responsible for the varieties of symptoms associated with Gulf War Syndrome. They say it can cause leukaemia, various other cancers, DNA breakdown and an unusually high occurrence of severe birth defects in offspring of soldiers who have come into contact with it. Current mandatory testing by the Veterans Administration and the Department of Defence has been shown to be ineffective due to the lack of adequate testing procedures.

www.louisianaweekly.com...

[edit on 27/7/2005 by Sauron]

Originally posted by twitchy
What makes me sick is that we already told people we had no intentions of cleaning it up over there, can you imagine being on the receiving end of that statement?

It can't be cleaned up. It's an environmental disaster intentionally released on the entire world (though mostly on Iraq) for short-sighted military advantage against a nation that never posed any real threat to the US.

I found another article related to the pro-tobacco thing I mentioned in my last post, it may have cited this article specificly.

www.newscientist.com...
Radioactive fall-out from the world's nuclear weapons tests during the Cold War has killed 11,000 Americans with cancer, according to a new report by US scientists. Experts say that many thousands more are likely to have died in other countries.

The report, prepared by the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHSS) for Congress, is the first attempt to estimate the total number of cancers caused by the atmospheric testing programme. Between 1951 and 1963, 390 nuclear bombs were exploded above the ground, 205 by the US, 160 by the former Soviet Union, 21 by Britain and four by France.

The fall-out from these explosions circulated the globe and exposed the world's population to radioactivity. Scientists have long assumed that this would result in extra cancers, but until now no government has tried to estimate how many.

The new report concludes that the number of fatal cancers attributable to global fall-out amongst Americans alive between 1951 and 2000 is 11,000. This includes deaths from leukaemia caused by exposure to strontium 90 and from a host of other cancers triggered by other isotopes.

"This is a useful estimate of the long term effects of global fall-out on the population of the US, but it is only part of the story," says Dudley Goodhead, a leading radiation specialist with the Medical Research Council in Harwell, UK.

The link has an extensive expose on some of the scarier things I have ever read about the dangers of Depleted Uranium, have no doubt this is really nasty stuff we are aresoling around 'over there'...

Source
John Hanchette, a journalism professor at St. Bonaventure University, and one of the founding editors of USA TODAY related the following to DU researcher Leuren Moret. He stated that he had prepared news breaking stories about the effects of DU on Gulf War soldiers and Iraqi citizens, but that each time he was ready to publish, he received a phone call from the Pentagon asking him not to print the story. He has since been replaced as editor of USA TODAY.

Dr. Keith Baverstock, The World Health Organization's chief expert on radiation and health for 11 years and author of an unpublished study has charged that his report " on the cancer risk to civilians in Iraq from breathing uranium contaminated dust " was also deliberately suppressed.

The information released by the U.S. Dept. of Defense is not reliable, according to some sources even within the military.

In 1997, while citing experiments, by others, in which 84 percent of dogs exposed to inhaled uranium died of cancer of the lungs, Dr. Asaf Durakovic, then Professor of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine at Georgetown University in Washington was quoted as saying,

"The [US government's] Veterans Administration asked me to lie about the risks of incorporating depleted uranium in the human body."

DU is a National Epidemic. Over 320,000 soldiers are said to have PTSD. Honestly, I believe it is not just PTSD- I believe they are infected with Depleted Uranium Poisoning and other chemical and possibly biological agents. Honestly, I really don't give a fk- You see I am sick, I am suffering constantly and daily from this and for what??!!
Because my dumb azz volunteered~?! I did, I did, I did~ but why, must I suffer? This is ridiculous-
And now honestly, I am terrified because at truth.arv or org or something like that I read that a soldier died of his organs "melting together" from the radioactive poison.. That scares me to death because half the time- I feel like they are melting together- or something wants to inhibit me..
I am unable to collect much from disability at this time- I am unemployed and I am uninsured and I am extremely sick~and I am a young female; so now I have to listen to people attempting to solicit me into the adult industry-puh lease! Just because I can not work consistently or go to school, does not mean I am willing to sacrifice my pride for a buck~!

I would like to know more about the effects of DU. My husband spent two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, but seems to show no side effects. I wonder if there are any others besides the deformities and cancers I've heard about.

"I disagree heartily with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." --Voltaire

Originally posted by Puschka
just for everyone's edification, because their seems to be some innocent ignorance as to what DU ammunition actually is...
...The depleted uranium penetrator rod is an anti-tank round used to kill other tanks. It is a sabot round, meaning that it basically looks like a two foot long dart. There are no explosives in this munition. It destroys its target through sheer kenetic energy

Correct.

Originally posted by Lamagraa
warthog uses DU dont it????

Also correct.

So is this next bit. And this is the problem (bolded)

Originally posted by bookie
According to Dr. Doug Rokke, U.S. Army health physicist who led the first clean-up of depleted uranium after the Gulf War, "Depleted uranium is a crime against God and humanity." Rokke's own crew, a hundred employees, was devastated by exposure to the fine dust

"devastated by exposure to the fine dust"

DU is only a problem when it becomes a dust that can be inhaled or ingested and generally spread around the place by something like, say, those famous desert winds.

Lots of things are safe until turned into a fibrous or otherwise powdered form, asbestos, H5N1-laden chicken #, cement...Depleted Uranium...


[edit on 28-4-2008 by HowlrunnerIV]

Originally posted by HowlrunnerIV


DU is only a problem when it becomes a dust that can be inhaled or ingested and generally spread around the place by something like, say, those famous desert winds.

The alpha particle isotopes from DU aren't capable of long term travel and are capable of being stopped/absorbed by something as simple as a sheet of paper. In terms of Gamma radiation it isn't too much.

Now that isn't saying I would jump into a burned out T72 hours after a direct hit from a sabot DU round, but in terms of maybe setting a camp a football field away I could live with the "potential risk".

Originally posted by Agent47
The alpha particle isotopes from DU aren't capable of long term travel and are capable of being stopped/absorbed by something as simple as a sheet of paper.

Yeah it's a darn shame lung tissue doesn't have a piece of paper to absorb the radiation... You're partially right though, DU is inanimate, and doesn't move very far on it's own, of course then you factor in wind, smoke and dispersal. Depleted Uranium is deadly, it was studied as a weaponized soil contaminate as early as the Manhattan Project, but hey if you say it's harmless, then you must know something 'they' don't.

Originally posted by twitchy

Originally posted by Agent47
The alpha particle isotopes from DU aren't capable of long term travel and are capable of being stopped/absorbed by something as simple as a sheet of paper.

Yeah it's a darn shame lung tissue doesn't have a piece of paper to absorb the radiation...

However, a simple particle mask, with a good seal, should be all you need to protect yourself from the potential hazard while working on or near it.

The problem isn't for the servicemen who are moving across the battlefield, or even for those idiots who worked clean-up without even as basic a precaution as a particle mask, but for the local populations. Local populations of generally lower education and with no clue as to what DU, U235 or even basic industrial toxins are.

I find it remarkable how stupid supposedly educated westerners can be. If we have Occupational Health and Safety laws concerning the protective wear needed for such an everyday activity as painting, if we wear particle masks and shatter-proof safety glasses when cutting wood with a power tool, how can you possibly accept the argument that Depleted Uranium is inert and perfectly safe after it has blown up a Lion of Babylon and there are no precautions that need to be taken?

Hello, U-ra-ni-um, you know, as in Hiroshima, Bikini, Maralinga, ring a bell? No? How about this one: Chernobyl. Hello?

What's really sad is that despite all the studies, all the irrefuatble evidence, all the medical problems that have come out in the last fifty to sixty years, we still have people actively trying to mitigate the dangers of this stuff. Uncle Sam literally gives it away to ammunition manufacturers, because it's a cheap way of disposing of hazardous waste. It's reallty that simple, and disgusting. Why pay millions of dollars to store this stuff in safe containers with all it's environmental and political reprocussions, when you can just spread it around on indigeous people a couple thousand miles away. Doesn't it seem strange that we are literally dumping on them the very material we invaded Iraq over supposedly having? Jesus.
Mankind just wasn't mature enough to handle this technology and all the flag waving and pride you can muster cannot decontaminate or undo the damage of this nuclear age we're so proud of. I cannot imagine a more befitting and ironic end to our species than this self destructive trend of warfare and greed.

reply to post by CoolThing

I unfortunately, became very ill. It began during the beginning of my deployment. My arms became very numb, like "numbing spells". I began getting very bad "IBS" "NIGHTSWEATS/MARES" "PHOTOSENSITIVITY" oh goodness, the lists just goes on and on. I really have these problems and from the Army to now; no one is addressing this problem!
I strongly believe they want me to just die.
I will eventually but between now and then... what can we do?!

Now that the war in Iraq is 'over', and with all the international pressure to discontinue using weaponized DU, I'm thinking they had to find a better use for it as dumping it safely is terribly expensive and therefore probably out of the question...
FDA to irradiate green leafy veggies
FDA: OK to zap spinach, lettuce with radiation
Reckon they are using it for irradiating food now? I hope not...

Source
As much as irradiation kills food bacteria, it also strips it of its vitamins and minerals leaving minimal to no nutritional value. Irradiation changes the chemical structure of food, depleting so many nutrients up to the point that it is just little more than empty calories. Irradiation can destroy up 90% of vitamin A in chicken, 86% of vitamin B in oats and 70% of vitamin C in fruit juice.

The longer the food stays on the shelf, the more nutrients are lost. The consumer is deceived in believing what one purchases delivers the full nutritional value it claims. Over the long run, the human body will suffer serious effects if it does not receive the adequate amount of nutrients it needs to survive. One can only assume the risk of diseases due to low immune system b/c of lack of essential vitamins increases the more irradiated foods are consumed over an extended period of time.

As mentioned, irradiation changes the chemical composition of foods. The long-term effects of ingesting irradiated foods on humans are not yet completely proven. However, initial laboratory research, where animals were fed irradiated foods over a period of time, indicate potential health complications to human beings. The animals developed mutations, had premature deaths and nutritional deficiencies, reproductive problems, fatal internal bleeding, suppressed immune systems and stunted growth....

Irradiation blasts food with radiation equivalent to hundreds of millions of chest X-rays. These high levels of energy initiate a complex sequence of reactions that, in addition to killing bacteria, literally rip apart the molecular structure of the food. This process creates new and unidentified chemicals that have not been adequately studied as safe to consume.

One of these new chemicals, called 2-DCB, has been shown to cause cellular and genetic damage in rats and in human cells. The chemical has never been found naturally in any food on earth. Ironically, it is a well-known “marker” for determining if a food was irradiated.

The slap in the face of all this is that they don't even have to label these foods as irradiated anymore.
Google It

I don't have a source handy, but I also read recently that they are now requiring that all imported greens and vegetables are to be irradiated and they no longer have to be labeled as such? Jesus, what a great way to dump your hazardous waste, make laws to require it being used, and deregulate it so nobody will be the wiser.

I think they are also dumping a buttload of it through glass manufacturers... I blow glass as hobby/profession now and have been purchasing custard and vaseline glass cullets for some of my work and I've seen a marked increase in the amount of scrap custard glass being given away to the public by the few companies still liscenced to make it. I was curious about the COE of this glass so I emailed Fenton to ask them about it, and was ignored completely, so I called, and was put on hold, given a voice mail and then ignored completely. They don't mind telling you about this or that, but ask anything specific about their scrap custard glass and all of a sudden, mums the word? Crazy.