?According to former Laurence Livermore geoscientist Dr. Leuren Moret, the invisible particles can reach sensitive targets, including the lymph nodes, spleen, heart, and central nervous system.? (8)? They can be found in the semen, bone marrow, and lungs.? (9) DU can give rise to a range of fata cancers as well as more than 100 serious illnesses from fibromyalgia to Lou Gehrig?s disease. (10) ?In other words, in her view, ?depleted uranium is a death sentence.?? (11)?

• Protective gear does not protect.

?There are several myths about DU. One is that the protective gear issued to soldiers actually does protect them from ingestion and contamination. ?Dr. Moret advises that DU ?will permeate a standard gas mask filter in quantities large enough to be extremely damaging.” (12)?U.S. Army Health Physicist and Nuclear Medicine Sciences Officer Dr. Doug Rokke goes further.? Rokke was the man in charge of the ?clean-up? after Gulf War 1. He says the protective gear were ineffective in saving soldiers from DU ingestion.??When I talked to senior Manhattan Project scientists that were expert particle physicists, they said ? ?Hey, we knew when uranium breaks up like this, it was going to be down in the .1-.2 micron range.?? ??No doubt about it.? The gas masks, the respiratory protection issued to the troops ? there?s no way it can protect against inhalation.? Well, that?s what happened to myself and my team.? We wore the respiratory protection during Gulf War I, inhaled it, and got sick.?? (13)?

• Simple exposure to unfired DU weapons can contaminate.

Another myth is that simple exposure to unfired anti-tank shells and bunker-buster bombs will not result in radioactive contamination.

?In the video, Beyond Treason, Lt. Col. John Karl Marks, 303rd Fighter Squadron, offers this view: there is ?a very minor amount of radioactivity [in an unfired shell], but it?s not anything. ? As long as it?s in its bullet form it can be stored and it?s not any type of hazardous material.? ?(14) ?

But in fact, according to Dr. Moret, many veterans have been reporting illnesses through proximity to unfired shells and bombs. For instance, gunners in Bradley vehicles who sat on boxes of DU shells are now reporting rectal cancer. (15)

• There is no safe-exposure limit to DU.

A third myth is that there is a threshold, a safe-exposure limit, below which one can contact DU and not suffer. This too is in fact not true.

?According to Dr. Moret, ?the amount necessary to cause death to a person inhaling the material is extremely small.? ?It is estimated that one millionth of a gram accumulating in a person’s body would be fatal.? (16)? ?

Dr. Moret points to National Academy of Sciences studies that indicate there is “no safe level of exposure” for DU. (17)

• DU infects spouses/mothers through semen transfer and familiy members through contact with contaminating objects.

?According to Dr. Moret, because a soldier?s semen is contaminated from DU particles, when he returns home he can contaminate his wife or partner.? (18)? Whole families can be affected.? Staff Sergeant Bob Jones, a former Army Ranger and veteran of Desert Storm, is now retired and disabled due to Gulf War Illness.? Not only is he ill, but his entire immediate family all suffer from mycoplasma fermentans incognitos. (19)? The manner in which they were treated by the Veterans Administration should also be noted. ??It wasn?t so much my illness, but my family was also ill and they required medical attention and medical treatment ? real medical treatment.? I retired in June of last year ? June 2003.? As soon as I retired my family was completely dropped from the military medical system.? ?? Although I begged and pleaded? they would not let my family re-enroll back into the Womack Family Practice.? ??So in essence, my wife was completely cut off from all the medications and all the treatment that she had received for the past seven years. ? ?Cause she was also a victim of these exposures that I brought home from the Gulf War ? from my equipment and my personal exposure, as I eluded to earlier ? from personal bodily contact? and uh that to me is the greatest travesty.? I just can?t imagine how ? you have innocent family members and loved ones that never put their hand up and swore allegiance to fight and defend the constitution of the United States and they get kicked to the curb and nobody cares.? (20)?

• DU leads to horrible birth defects in babies.

?Even minute trace amounts of DU in semen can bond with DNA, ?where they wreak havoc with cells ? especially the cells of developing fetuses.? (21) In some cases there are no indications that the baby is not healthy and yet it dies. Said Staff Sergeant Jones:??Some of us that conceived children after the war ? and I know of at least two individuals where their children were born perfectly healthy according the hospital - and within six months after their return their hearts literally exploded in their chests.?? (22)?Birth defects have skyrocketed in every DU-contaminated region.? They are quite elevated in Afghanistan since the invasion:? children “born with no eyes, no limbs, tumors protruding from their mouths … deformed genitalia.” (23)?

• Women and children are the most susceptible

?British researcher Dai Williams states that ?women and children ? are most vulnerable to internal radiation and chromosome damage owing to higher rates of cell division.? (24) ?

The first signs of children succumbing to DU poisoning are herpes on the mouth and skin rashes on the back and ankles.? These cases develop into childhood cancers, leukemia, Hodkin?s disease, and lymphomas.? (25)

Pedriatic examination of Iraqi children confirm? that:

?Childhood leukemia has risen 600% in the areas [of Iraq] where DU was used. Stillbirths, births or abortion of fetuses with monstrous abnormalities, and other cancers in children born since [the Gulf War in] 1991 have also been found.? (26)

• DU has a half life of 4.5 billion years.

We must keep in mind that the conditions we are describing will not go away. DU has a half life of 4.5 billion years, the same as the age of the Earth itself. (27) ?It is a problem which, far from lessening over time, will likely increase by orders of magnitude as the DU particles travel around the globe. ?

• DU travels globally on the winds.

According to Dr. Moret, DU is everywhere.?

?DU does not respect sides in a battle. For instance, Israel, an ally of the United States, lies downwind of Iraq and is suffering from large increases in breast cancer, leukemia and childhood diabetes. ?(28)? Britain recorded the highest levels of DU ever measured after the Tora Bora bombings and the ?Shock and Awe? assault of 2003. (29)?

Moreover, it does not take long for DU to travel. Within 7-9 days of the ?Shock and Awe? campaign, very fine particles of DU were captured by filters 2400 miles away in Britain. (30)

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I’m a former Member of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada and a former Historian at the National Museum of Man in Canada. I am now retired. As a Member of the IRB, my job was to evaluate refugee claims. As a Historian, I specialized in racism and historical theory. I have also published in cross-cultural spirituality.

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