Posts
What follows is the continuation, in serial form, of a central chapter from my book A Primer in the Art of Deception: The Cult of Nuclearists, Uranium Weapons and Fraudulent Science.
SCAM NUMBER THIRTY-TWO: When all else fails, simply lie.
Spokesmen for the US military profess tirelessly, to all who will give them ear, that depleted uranium weapons pose no radiological hazard to health. In making such statements, they contravene safety guidelines openly endorsed by other government agencies. The Federal Aviation Administration’s Advisory Circular 20-123, written December 20, 1984, bears witness to this embarrassing contradiction. That memo, authored by M.C. Beard, Director of Airworthiness, is entitled "Avoiding or Minimizing Encounters With Aircraft Equipped With Depleted Uranium Balance Weights During Accident Investigations." The warning contained therein was directed to airline crash site investigators who inadvertently might be exposed to depleted uranium amidst the wreckage of destroyed commercial airplanes. Caution was urged due to the fact that aircraft manufacturers had begun routinely to utilize depleted uranium coated with cadmium plating to balance ailerons, rudders and elevators on certain jet aircraft, and rotor blades on certain helicopters. The advisory contained the following warning:
“While the depleted uranium normally poses no danger, it is to be handled with caution. The main hazard associated with depleted uranium is the harmful effect the material could have if it enters the body. If particles are inhaled or digested, they can be chemically toxic and cause a significant and long-lasting irradiation of internal tissue” [1].
Following this warning, the recommended precautions were delineated: .
"a. Avoid contact with balance weights using depleted uranium. On arrival at accident scenes of aircraft suspected of containing balance weights made of depleted uranium, determine if balance weights have been damaged or lost their cadmium plating coating. Request specialized assistance if balance weights have been damaged or lost their cadmium plating. No penetration of the plating is allowed.
b. Avoid breathing or swallowing particles of balance weights found damaged or with cadmium plating damaged or lost.
c. If it becomes necessary to handle balance weights, the following precautions should be observed.
(1) Personnel handling the balance weight should wear gloves.
(2) Industrial eye protection should be worn.
(3) Respirator mask should be worn to ensure no radioactive dust particle ingestion.
d. Gloves, wrapping material, wiping cloths, respirator filters, or any other articles used in the handling of damaged balance weights should be discarded and appropriately labeled as radioactive waste and disposed of accordingly".
Clearly, depleted uranium is identified in this circular as radioactive waste that poses a threat to health. And yet, this same radioactive waste is freely dispersed across the modern battlefield where our own soldiers and those of our allies, enemy combatants and civilians are left vulnerable to hazardous internal contamination. They are denied the luxury of calling for “specialized assistance.” In most instances, they are not forewarned to protect themselves with gloves, eye protection and respirators or lack such specialized knowledge and equipment. They have no opportunity to regather the radioactive dust liberated from a tank kill and package it in red containers to identify it as radioactive waste. Rather, it is set free in the environs to be deposited in the tissues of living creatures where it will irradiate their cells. Circulating through the environment via wind and water, the DU dust will remain a hazard to life for billions of years.
While on the subject of lies and liars, it would be informative to rehearse some of the statements made in Kiev in 2001 at the second World Health Organization conference on the health effects of Chernobyl. Abel Gonzalez of the International Atomic Energy Agency, with shameless audacity, stood before a room of Russians and Ukrainians and spouted the following drivel:
“The known effects of the Chernobyl accident are 31 deaths in liquidators and 200 thyroid cancers in children. Whether any other effects have occurred is an epistemologically insoluble problem, we just don’t know. There are no other internationally agreed effects” [2].
Lending two part harmony to this mockery to intelligence, Norman Genter of UNSCEAR stepped to the microphone and chimed in:
“The risk of leukemia does not seem to be elevated even in the liquidators. I agree with the IAEA, positive perspectives exist. For those who believe, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not believe, no explanation is possible. We use the most rigorous possible data so that the people and the decision makers can get the right information” [2].
Incensed by these malicious fairy tails, Professor Alexey Yablokov, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and an advisor to Presidents Gorbachov and Yeltsin on environmental issues, rose and bellowed the following admonition:
“This is Shocking, Shocking! An impudent presentation of nonobjective data. What scares me is it’s said openly, presented as scientific conclusions. There were irremediable falsifications of official health data. Don’t you know that the leaders of the State Committee for Statistics were arrested two years ago for falsifying data. UNSCEAR knows it. They know the data were falsified! They use these to say that the consequences of Chernobyl were not so serious. They say there are no genetic effects after Chernobyl, but the genetic effects are the most serious. Tens of papers in serious scientific journals show this. Bandashevsky shows the effects in children, sudden deaths, organ damage. Increases in mortality, cancers, congenital malformation, immune system disorders, exhaustion, slow growth. How is it possible to reject this? Silencing these facts is incorrect. It is science” [2].
Bibliography
[1] Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Avoiding or Minimizing Encounters with Aircraft Equipped with Depleted Uranium Balance Weights During Accident Investigations. Advisory Circular 20-123. December 20, 1984. http://www.faa.gov/fsdo/orl/files/advcir/AC20-123.TXT.
[2] CERRIE Minority Report. Minority Report of the UK Department of Health / Department of Environment (DEFRA) Committee Examining Radiation Risk from Internal Emitters (CERRIE). Aberystwyth: Sosiumi Press; 2005.
