New Study Documents Depleted Uranium Impacts on Children in Iraq | Hacker News Reader

New Study Documents Depleted Uranium Impacts on Children in Iraq

ahtribune.com

80 pointsumadon38 comments

All these images are terrible, but it doesn't match my understanding of radioactivity. I thought the lessons learned from Hiroshima and Nagazaki was that radioactivity was causing very few mutations (far less than expected), but instead was causing mainly sterilities. I am not an expert, but teratogene effects are generally caused by chemical products. If uranium is similar to lead, it should cause neurologic diseases, not this kind of pictures.

I do not want to minimize the consequences of war, but this article has no plausibility.

Agreed. It's much more likely the deformities are the result of chemical exposure or other factors. The scary sounding "4.5 billion year half life" of DU is synonymous with it not being very radioactive at all.

DU is toxic, but the main hazard is inhaling the dust. That's likely not a big issue unless you're near impacting rounds...

What the heck? The article clearly says: Every round of DU ammunition leaves a residue of uranium dust on everything it hits.

We talk about semi-desert environment where dust flies all around, and it doesn't become easily locked in soil like in more humid environment. If you live a kilometer downwind from place where an A-10 smashed some iraqi tanks with DU ammunition, you have clear source of exposure.

>If you live a kilometer downwind from place where an A-10 smashed some iraqi tanks with DU ammunition, you have clear source of exposure.

Sure, depending on how well the extremely dense (1.7x the density of lead, remember?) dust remains airborne. Also, the dust concentration is likely to be so low that far away that it's extremely low exposure.

Don't lose sight of the fact that the article provides zero factual evidence that DU caused those deformities. It's strictly guilt through association.

Living in Vietnam, I see kids on the street clearly suffering from the effects of agent orange, all the time.

With a “half-life of 4.5 billion years” does that mean these areas are going to be permanent toxic waste lands?

Regardless why isn’t there a growing movement to call the perpetrators of this war criminals?

> Regardless why isn’t there a growing movement to call the perpetrators of this war criminals?

You're kidding right?

Before the US invasion, the largest protests in the world happened all over the world against it and it didn't do anything.

> Social movement researchers have described the 15 February protest as "the largest protest event in human history"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_prot...

Thankfully the war in Iraq was the last time our intelligence agencies mislead the public.

It's fascinating to reread just how bad these stories were:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_uranium_forgeries

> In March 2003 [..] it reportedly took International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) officials only a matter of hours to determine that these documents were fake. IAEA experts discovered indications of a crude forgery, such as the use of incorrect names of Nigerien officials.

The CIA and foreign intelligence services did do some good work to try to correct that particular false narrative - something originally spread from Iran's intel service no less (which sounds a lot like the discredited 2016 'dossier' which came from questionable Russian sources). But they clearly didn't do enough. Probably because they were on the brink of getting new massive sweeping powers.

This one's my favourite CIA story from that era, just straight-up blatant disregard for the law with zero repercussions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_CIA_interrogation_videota...

I sincerely hope I never hear the phrase "Russian dossier" again in my lifetime. The CIA seems to follow every place this phrase shows up.

Unlikely. With today's social media, AI boom, deep fakes, and ever increasing processing power, they can do their PSYOPs even better.

I'm sure the comment was an attempt at sarcasm.

Don't forget that the vast majority of US citizens supported the invasion [1] while the rest of the world protested.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/2008/03/19/public-attitudes-towa...

Yeah, I recall meeting a US guy in Nepal high on Annapurna circuit trek (meaning the person was not as close-minded as many that didn't travel much, he did intensively over whole world before) around 2008, he was praising US invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan stating something about how local population would make great christians. He was a Texan and big supporter of GW Bush. That left me speechless for a while.

Sample of 1, but it clearly showed me that with some people, you just can't get the message across. Doesn't matter how smart they are, what they experienced, it just doesn't work. I tried (not too hard though) and failed.

If the half-life is that long, exposure to direct environmental radiation is probably not that big of a concern- the sieverts will be very low- and the main harm comes through ingesting, inhaling, etc. I would wonder if things like dust abatement, water filtration, and food washing would be used to manage the issue in the future.

As a point of comparison, regular U-238 is present at low levels all over the place in Colorado, it's naturally in the rock & soil. As long as the amounts are low, the radiation is low, and it mostly stays put, it's not a big problem.

this is a factual comment. most of DU's toxicity is chemical in nature. that doesn't make the pictures of deformed babes any easier to behold, tho. also, alpha emitters are basically harmless until they're ingested/inhaled.

Yes, I hope my comment is not taken as defending DU as being OK. I was specifically replying to the idea of this becoming some kind of new Chernobyl exclusion zone.

"Dust abatement" is quite a different story in the deserts of Iraq than in Colorodo.

Probably because Obama said we have to look forwards and not backwards, and Europe was probably in love with him that they just said "ok!", and Russia and China were thinking "that's fine with us because it means we'll get away with doing similar things!"

Obama seemed to have the dream of stopping the partisan bickering and reuniting the country, prosecuting the former presidential administration would not have helped with that (not that this dream/mission got anywhere close to reality in his 8 years).

Another reason was prosecuting them would've meant subsequent administrations would look for any wrongdoing they could use against the previous admin. (Well, this is what the GOP did anyway, say with Benghazi).

As far as I know, the US have never investigated a member of their government for war crimes, and have always shielded any US army person investigated in another country. It is a very simple policy: by definition, the US is carying out just wars, so there can be no war crimes perpetrated by the US army. At most, regrettable mistakes can be admitted to.

This applies even when international courts have found the US guilty, since the US does not recognize the authority of international courts against them. See the case of the mining of Nicaragua's harbors https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua_v._United_States

What war crimes were committed?

I don't like articles this blatantly manipulative; it is an unfortunate character flaw if anyone thinks the most important part of a military invasion are photos of 10s of mutated children.

This particular instance is horrible but also unimportant. The US killed literally thousands of civilians when they invaded in 2003. There is a long, long list of worse things that the US military has done; even ignoring anything prior to the Iraq invasion in 2003.

Looks like depleted uranium bullets probably have similar to effects to lead bullets.

https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2016/09/29/the-toxicit...

when you say "lead bullets" do you mean gun bullets, or armor piercing bullets / projectiles? a normal bullet does not vaporize and contaminate the whole area in the same way vaporizing projectiles do...

I suppose whatever metal is used in a cumulative charge, a significant amount of it gets dispersed far and wide while a jet of the molten metal is piercing several inches of armor.

Copper, lead, whatever else, should contaminate all around as fine dust.

Depleted Uranium is not designed to vaporize. It has a boiling point (3818°C) more than twice that of lead (1740°C). It's atomic mass of 238 is considerably higher than Lead's 207.5. It packs quite the punch when put into a slug, but does not reach temperatures where it could vaporize. Certainly particulate matter would be ejected from the impact, though as with most slugs.

That said, what was done here is despicable and it is clear evidence of a war crime.

> It's atomic mass of 238 is considerably higher than Lead's 207.5.

Atomic mass has little to do with an element's boiling point.

But it has to do why it packs quite a punch. I agree it's worded awkwardly.

The DU projectiles are intended to fragment in ways that lead does not, as on impact parts of the projectile shear away and it "self-sharpens" when penetrating.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4004-safe-alternative...

The energy involved is also more than sufficient to hit that temperature. When a high-velocity shell impacts something it will deform and convert a lot of the kinetic energy to thermal.

The whole thing doesn't melt, but parts of it do, and the vehicle it hits gets absolutely thrashed.

These things cut through pretty much any armor like it's not even there. During the Iraq war they'd even hit tanks by firing through the tops of sand dunes, aiming using thermal imaging.

>Depleted Uranium is not designed to vaporize.

when an uranium projectile hits the armor, some of the uranium burns into uranium oxide, a dust of which gets dispersed all around. Big problem in Serbia too - in 1999 NATO used 30K+ units of uranium ammunition there.

Your link does not support what you are saying. The linked article says that: (i) there aren't enough studies for the toxicity of depleted uranium (ii) we know that uranium is chemically somewhat similar to lead (iii) there are a lot of studies about the toxicity of lead, so (iv) because of (i)-(iii) for the time being it and for modelling purposes it may be useful to assume that depleted uranium has similar toxic effects to lead.

In other words, the article admits that the author does not really know about the toxicity effects of DE and uses lead only as a best guess.

Furthermore, the article clearly distinguishes between the toxic effects and radioactive effects. Depleted uranium is less radioactive than the usual uranium, but it is still plenty radioactive. And the effects of radioactivity are pretty bad when you are breathing the stuff in.

And this is why China is hated passionately in the West. Because it is the only credible potential deterrence in the future against the West doing whatever they want on whomever the want (outside their territories that is). It is of course possible that China itself will turn into another hegemonic military power with scant regard for non-Chinese lives the way the US has been for decades, but nevertheless in a multi-polar world it will be more problematic to simply invade whichever country you wish, when other significant powers have economic/geopolitical interests in those countries.

> And this is why China is hated passionately in the West

No it isn't, it's the government that we find deeply grubby. And this subject is unrelated to china.

I wonder where is a deep hate for other brutal dictatorships du jour like Saudi Arabia, a great friend of US no matter how many atrocities they do internally or externally.

China deserves all the bashing it gets (and some more), but news of past weeks are very biased only and precisely against it. Like it would be, I dunno, orchestrated or something.

> like Saudi Arabia

It gets some hate, whether it's proper measure thereof, I dunno. Good question.

> China deserves all the bashing it gets

For clarity it would be helpful not to conflate the entirety of china with the chinese govt.

> are very biased only and precisely against it

Probably talking about "crushed bodies and broken bones". Rather sets the tone, don't you think?

OK, genuinely: give us some good news stories that are genuine (ie. not chinese government propaganda). It would be nice to hear another side.

@saiya-jin: You complained about anti-china news, I asked you for something more positive - I'm still interested.

I don't have any china-positive news per se and I don't follow them closely enough. Just pointed some feelings I have about China being all over the news these days. I do care more about stuff like Turkish offensive into Syria or continuous Yemen massacre orchestrated by Saudis.

Don't know about any Chinese external meddling like this, I guess we can call it a positive story considering these days.

Right but of course for the Western world China's largely non-violent crackdown on the Hong Kong protestors (with even the proposed law being repealed today) is a much more heinous atrocity than millions of Yemeni children literally starving to death because of SA's arrogant assurance of Western backing at any cost.

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