"Safe" Uranium That Left a Town Contaminated

"Safe" Uranium That Left a Town Contaminated

They were told depleted uranium was not hazardous. Now, 23 years after a US arms plant closed, workers and residents have cancer - and experts say their suffering shows the use of such weapons may be a war crime.

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In a paper to be published in the next issue of the scientific journal Science of the Total Environment, a team led by Professor Randall Parrish of Leicester University reports the results of a three-year study of Colonie, funded by Britain's Ministry of Defence.

Parrish's team has found that DU contamination, which remains radioactive for millions of years, is in effect impossible to eradicate, not only from the environment but also from the bodies of humans. Twenty-three years after production ceased they tested the urine of five former workers. All are still contaminated with DU. So were 20 per cent of people tested who had spent at least 10 years living near the factory when it was still working, including Ciarfello.

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In 1984, having bought the factory from NL for $10 in a deal that meant the firm was exempted from having to pay for its clean-up, the federal government began a massive decommissioning project, supervised by the Army Corps of Engineers. The clean-up did not finish until summer 2007, having cost some $190m. Contractors demolished the buildings and removed more than 150,000 tons of soil and other contaminated detritus, digging down to depths of up to 40ft and trucking it 2,000 miles by rail to underground radioactive waste sites in the Rockies. All that is now left of the NL plant is a huge, undulating field, ringed by razor wire.

Despite this colossal [clean up] effort, Parrish and his colleagues found high concentrations of DU particles in soil, stream sediments and household dust in the vicinity of the site, deposited long ago when the factory burnt the shavings and chips produced by the weapons manufacturing process: the study estimates that, over the years, about 10 tons of uranium oxide dust wafted from the chimney into the surrounding environment.

This is for all you who keeps claiming that depleted uranium is not dangerous, a low radioactive material that only radiates alpha particles, whithout ability to penetrate skin.

In other words, you have to get it under your skin to be radiated, and it very easily does so in the form of tiny particles released by the heat of impact. On the battlefield warheads literally evaporates at the impact, and in this very sad story from Colonie, a suburb of Albany in upstate New York, they simply let it escape through the chimney.

Of all the stupid things man has done in his ignorance, to advocate this material for spearheads is by far the worst. The arms race of the cold war came across DU as a material of high kinetic energy that was able to penetrate the armor of Soviet tanks. The material itself was considered harmless in the 1970s, but so was watching nuclear detonations in the 50s. By now it is established that to radiation, no matter the kind, there are no lower limit.

As late as in 2002 the then-director of the IAEA, Pier Roberto Danesi stated that "There is a consensus now that DU does not represent a health threat". And so it was all the way through and still is in military circles. Not sure whether to call it conspiracy or ignorance. Finally this Colonie study will prove that it's a lie, in anyway to render DU "safe". Nobody ever imagined what just one particle of this 'low radioactive' stuff can do inside a body. The particle radiates only a few millimeters, but the blood passing it have its cells damaged and transmits that damage to other cells nourished by that blood. Imagine if you have thousands of particles stock in your body. And they are stuck there forever.

And then the worst thing is not what it does to the huaman body, but what it does to the DNA, to further generations. There are picture documentation on the net of newborn Iraqi babies that in horror surpases anything any imagination could ever make up, whether it be alliens or reptilians or any other fantasy monster. These are real and at least for a while living human beings. I'm not gonna search them for you, find them yourself if you wanna see. I can recommend a documentary by Australian filmmaker David Bradbury: Blowin' in the wind. It has won prizes and it has been effectively surpressed from airing on any main news outlets, but it is there. If you still have any doubts on the issue, watch it and keep your eyes open through the part showing photo documentation of Iraqi babies. It's awfulll. Anyone have a link for download of this docu, I would be grateful. There's another movie on the subject I've seen mentioned here on ATS, "Gone with the wind" I think the title is. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Here I'll just give you the story of one of your servicemen and his newborn baby.

www.mindfully.org...

In early September 2003, Army National Guard Spec. Gerard Darren Matthew was sent home from Iraq, stricken by a sudden illness.

One side of Matthew's face would swell up each morning. He had constant migraine headaches, blurred vision, blackouts and a burning sensation whenever he urinated.

The Army transferred him to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington for further tests, but doctors there could not explain what was wrong.

Shortly after his return, his wife, Janice, became pregnant. On June 29, she gave birth to a baby girl, Victoria Claudette.

The baby was missing three fingers and most of her right hand.

Maybe Matthew only had inhaled few particles that damage his DNA. But what about the kids in Iraq?

TV footage shot in Baghdad in 2003 shows children playing in the remains of tanks coated with thick, black DU oxide, while there have long been claims that the DU shells that destroyed Saddam Hussein's tanks in the 1991 Gulf war were responsible for high rates of cancer in places such as Basra.

Parrish's team includes David Carpenter, an environmental health expert from Albany University. 'DU burns, it releases particulates that can be breathed in, and it doesn't go away,' he says. 'The issue does not concern military personnel as much as civilian populations in theatres where they are used. Now we know that we can still find measurable levels of DU among the people of Colonie, we need a much bigger study to establish whether they have suffered disproportionate ill-effects such as cancers as a consequence. If they have, it would raise a serious ethical challenge to the use of these weapons. Arguably it could constitute a war crime.'

It is a crime against humanity, more horrendous than any other ever commited. The real 'armagedon' part of it is that these DU particles have a halflife of 4,5 billion years. If there ever was a plan to depopulate the earth, this is the mean to do it by. If so, may the elite be rottening away in their bunkers and safe heavens, be it in Paraguay or wherever they chose to enjoy their privileges.

For further reading

Wiki
AT S search 650 hits

this is bull# they need to change the name to uranimsol then it will be good for you.

PS take your mercury shots i mean thermisol

Consultation done by ATSDR, Agency for Toxic Substancies & Disease Registry, tells the official story.

From 1937 to 1984 National Lead, a Houston based company, operated a plant in Colonie, NY, originally a foundry soon to become a munition factory.

In 1958, the nuclear division of NL began producing items manufactured from uranium and thorium under a license from the Atomic Energy Commission.

The consultation states:

From 1958 to 1984, NL operations used radioactive materials consisting mostly of depleted uranium (DU), although smaller amounts of thorium and enriched uranium were also used between 1960 and 1972. Operations reduced depleted uranium tetrafluoride to depleted uranium metal which was then made into shielding components, ballast weights, and projectiles. In addition, from 1966 to 1972, NL manufactured fuel from enriched uranium for experimental nuclear reactors (USACE 2001b).

Other processes at NL included an electroplating operation for plating uranium with nickel and cadmium. Chemicals used included: nickel sulfamate, sodium cyanide, ferric chloride, nitric acid, silicate phosphate, iridite (a chromium brightener), cadmium metal, nickel metal, boric acid, and perchloroethylene (PCE). There is little or no information about how or where most of these materials were disposed because there are no disposal records. However, letters from NL to the Atomic Energy Commission indicate that about 55 cubic yards of graphite, slag, refractory, uranium oxide, insoluble oil, metal scrap, and combustible trash were buried in the Patroon Lake in 1961, as per their license. Other chemical wastes and packaged chemicals used at the site included acids, bases, degreasing agents, carbon tetrachloride, benzene, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), cyanide, heavy metals, and asbestos (USACE 2001b).

Nice stuff they have been handling in a suburbian upstate NY.

The core of the story is, as the company name indicates, people (was made to) believe it was 'only' lead for bullets they were handling on the plant down on Central Avenue - when in reality it was all these nasty compounds.

Interviews hints not even former employees knew it to be radioactive materials, hardly uranium to the fact it went for 'lead'.

This consultation also reveals it's not just NL Industries' property that has been cleaned up.

Between 1984 and 1988, DOE remediated DU contaminated soil at 53 vicinity properties, including both commercial and residential properties.

No wonder under COMMUNITY HEALTH CONCERNS it is stated under #1

The community is concerned that past emissions from the site have caused adverse health effects such as various types of cancer, birth defects, Down syndrome, rashes, and endometriosis. ATSDR will evaluate the potential exposure pathways discussed above and review available literature to determine the plausibility that those exposures, if found, may have resulted in disease.

It is understandable, as it is clear the area has through decades been a popular recreational ressource of the community.

A community group is concerned about exposure to DU, lead, and other possible contaminants in the surface water of the Patroon Creek in and around Tivoli Lake while swimming and wading. The watershed is located in an industrial area and is subject to contamination from several point and non-point sources of pollution. Although not classified by New York State for primary contact recreation, it is reported that some parts of the Patroon Creek have been used for many years for swimming and wading by people living nearby. Some uranium and lead have been found in sediments in the Patroon Creek watershed downstream of the Colonie Site.

It is worth pointing out that this official version of a piece of industrial history of contamination in the course of the easiest obtainable profits, in no way acknowledges any further taints of DU to enviroment and health.

Already in the introduction it puts its main declaration inside a question:

Were people exposed to harmful levels of lead in the past, present, and future and depleted uranium (DU) in the past by contacting soil when playing or gardening?

My emphasises. What it says, yes, contamination is there, but concerning DU it is of the past. Which is a blatant lie this consultation then communicates.

Read it yourself, it's easy and light reading and as far as I know the only government 'study' done.

www.atsdr.cdc.gov...

When will they make a real study that scientifically evaluates the long time health implication? ...
Of course they already are, it's just not a public study.

First there would have to be an officially recognision of the connection between DU and rare cancers. With this case history going more than fifty years back enough material in stastics of the health care system should be aviable to draw some conclusions and plausible connections.
Again I think it might be a closed government study.

Still the official stance on the issue is to deny any connection as circumstantial. No prove. But secret bodycounts are done, I'm sure, that's what black-op studies are for, but content is not there before half the world is contaminated and populations die off because they're no longer able to reproduce.
Because THAT, I'm afraid, is a conclusion they are looking for, IMO, the secret agenda of DU.

In Albany, NY State they have a fully controlled live theater for study of the long time effects. After all it was about 10 tonnes, 10,000,0000 grams of DU, I don't know how many trillion potential doses remaining active for millions of years, that accounts in, they let out through the chimney during 3-4 decades.

It's a disgrace, a betrayal to the public and its greater interests that this story never have hit mainstream. Big media to blame, but as we all know they sleep with goverment, so it is unfortunately expectable.

Haven't been able to find any breaking news on this. The closest I come is a note of sunshine in the local Hearst paper, concerning the end of two decades of cleaning operations. It's over, now everybody can live forever happy, is its message of disinfo.

timesunion.com.../14/2007&navigation=nextprior&category=ALBANY&storyID=623412

COLONIE -- After more than two decades and $190 million, the federal government says its cleanup of soil tainted with uranium and lead at the former NL Industries munitions plant on Central Avenue is complete.

Nobody cries out to hold the authorities responsible, I don't believe it.
This story must have send tremors through the local society to a degree more than reflected in a government consultation.

*HEALTH DISASTER TO HIT UPPER NY -- SCANDALE!* is what I think the headlines should read.

Local ATS'ers of the area, please chime in if you have any information on this story, which I'm afraid over the next decade might evolve in a health disaster of dimensions before unseen.



[edit on 23/11/2007 by khunmoon]

The history of DU goes much further back than I thought

The Groves memo makes it clear that in 1943, U.S. scientists recommended using radioactive poison gas weapons in order to contaminate the air, water, soil, food, environment and the blood of exposed populations. The long-term contamination is permanent, since uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, making contaminated areas uninhabitable for eternity.

For populations that must continue to live in contaminated areas, the long-term effects are lingering illnesses and mutilation of their DNA. Widespread depleted uranium contamination of DNA in populations results in the potential mutilation of future generations. Mutations induced in the DNA of a single egg or sperm which form a fertilized egg are expressed and repeated in every cell of the developing organism, and defects are passed on to all future generations.

We must thus believe DU to be a well tested and well considered weapon with that long a history.

According to this 17 paged article it is a very well considered weapon of war in the longtime agenda of depopulating the world.

F rom Hiroshima to Iraq, 61 years of uranium wars: A suicidal, genocidal, omnicidal course

Depleted uranium poison gas weaponry, used on a regional scale, meets U.S. National Security Council goals as stated in the “Global 2000 Report: Vision of a Gloomy World” (1980). This report recommended that depopulation in third world countries was imperative to the U.S. government purpose of securing mineral and other strategic resources.

Global atmospheric pollution from depleted uranium particulates will result in massive depopulation on a global scale. By increasing death rates and decreasing birth rates globally, more than 2 billion people will be eliminated.

Even in Diablo Canyon near San Luis Obispo on a fine spring day, nuclear power plants are not safe. They emit the same lethal fission products as a nuclear bomb.This has been an ongoing secret project since World War II of the global ruling elite – such as the Bilderberg Group and the Club of Rome, Skull and Bones, as well as U.S. National Security Council and U.S. State Department policy under Henry Kissinger.

Depleted uranium is the ideal weapon to bring about the New World Order, which is global depopulation. In just a few years it has turned Planet Earth into a Death Star.

The following is the depopulation policy thesis set out in this paper: Intentional depopulation and massive genocide are the core policies by which ruling elites drive international relations, economic aid development, strategic weapons development and the design of engineered wars.

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The New World Order depopulation policy was consciously accelerated during World War II with the Manhattan Project. During World War II, the Manhattan Project developed three illegal and infamous weapons of mass destruction: the atomic bombs dropped on the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, a defoliant developed as Agent Orange for the Vietnam War, and depleted uranium radioactive poison gas weaponry used in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Lebanon since 1991. These weapons of mass destruction were developed specifically for the purpose of depopulation.

The 1980 report mentioned in the link“Global 2000 Report: Vision of a Gloomy World” is subject of this paper from 1985.

Have a page of 250+ YouTublinks to nuclear related vids. www.energy-net.org...

It's hard to believe no one replies. With 650 posts touching the topic you might say it has been debated. Yes, but this is a case from your own backyard, not some babies of nomades in a far off land. Sooner or later it'll break, but not before a recognised connection between alpha particles and leathal damage to tissue organs.

I thought it was established with the Litvinenko case. Polonium210 works in the same way as uran238, it is just much more active, so what it did in Alexander Litvinenko's body in weeks DU will do in years.

Both emits alpha particles, normally harmless outside the body, takes nothing more than a sheet of paper to stop. Inside the body in contact with body fluids it's another story, as deadly as any other radiation. It is known, been recognized for years, why else take the trouble to use it as a killing agent on Litvinenko?

All it takes is a recognition from the scientific community. From deep down the bunker of NWO someone is preventing that.

Anyway here's a link summing up the story.

www.wise-uranium.org...

reply to post by khunmoon


I have heavy metal toxicity and I want to share my story with those of you who believe the spoon-fed propaganda that HMs (like depleted urnaium, arsenic and others) are safe for you:

I grew up in the Denver Metro area of Colorado most of my life near in a development that used to be an old military training ground, there was an arms manufacturing site not far away, a pesticide manufacturing plant, uranium mining in the mountains, plus rocky mountains nuclear flats facility was within a short drive of our house. So there were a lot of harmful heavy metals in the air, ground, water, especially urnaium and arsenic.

I started having problems in my mid 20s -- first, complete kidney failure caused by "unknown factors" (luckily I was able to recover partially), then I got chronic fatigue syndrom, then an endocrine disorder affecting the thyroid, adrenal and pituitary glands. Even though I did every thing I could to be healthy - diet, exercise, yoga, meditation - I couldn't understand why my body kept spirally downward. Finally, I found a good nutritionist who was very knowledgeable and she got me tested for heavy metals. Sure enough I had over 100 times the normal amount of uranium in my body and over 50 times that of arsenic, as well as other toxic HMs. It turns out, it was the heavy metals at the base of ALL my health problems.

I did some research into it, and found out that the area I grew up in is only now reporting massive amounts of health care problems related to heavy metal toxicity -- cancer, autism, alzheimers -- and especially multiple sclerosis which has the highest incident of it than any other state -- plus various other disorders of the endocrine, nervous and immune systems. They had made a correlation between these illnesses and the heavy metals in the earth, water and air, but it took a number of years for symtoms to develop on a scale that would be taken seriously.

To make matters worse, heavy metals can be tricky to remove, especially if they have settled into the hard tissues in the body, especially bones. And if there are other problems, like kidneys or allergies or endocrine problems, you can forget traditional treatments.

So, I definitely would take the problem of depleted uranium and other toxic heavy metlas that affect our bodies very seriously. DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH. Don't take anyone's word for it - RESEARCH it YOURSELF. Read scientific and medical journals - and you'll really have to DIG to get the good information - but if you want the truth, it is there, and it is irrefutable.

Cheers,
Chutso