The main risk from depleted uranium is chemical poisoning from uranium oxide (U-238 is only weakly radioactive). It is a heavy metal and any inhalation of such things is adverse to health. A battlefield is a playground for all kinds of toxic compounds resulting from detonations and fires. (One of our first jobs on the ROLAND 2 propulsion unit was to eliminate asbestos from the combustion chamber liners.)
Everyone likes to blame cancers and birth defects on radioactive materials. The question is whether there is any causality truly at work. A battlefield is also littered with copper-based shell casings with propellant residue, which corrode and get into the surface water. Has anyone done a study of those effects? There are more important things to worry about than depleted uranium---like who prevails in the conflict.
You have some very good points here, there may be worse pollution than DU in battlefields.
I still think DU needs to be banned from military use, even if it's main toxicity is chemical.
It's generally not good to ingest any metal: iron, aluminum, tin, zinc, copper, brass...the list goes on. Unless you make a practice of confusing them with a lollipop, there is no trouble co-existing with metals. My wedding ring is tungsten, one of the heaviest of heavy metals and I am perfectly fine. All the precious metals are heavy metals. Silver is effective against bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. I have titanium sutures in my heart and sternum from open-heart surgery; it is ideal for human use because it is totally inert to the body's environment. Depleted uranium is used in a lot of applications where high density is useful, and it is excellent radiation shielding because of that. (Not against neutrons, however. That's playing with spice.)
If the narrative is a blanket condemnation of an element, what do we do? Question the narrative. Find out how much hype is going on here. A tank is a bad place to be if things go wrong, so I tend to trust the Army in making sure any innovations are not a worse cure than the problem.
Because depleted uranium causes radioactive pollution when it catches fire.
The US used depleted uranium rounds in iraq an Serbia and now there are cancers and birth defects.
The main risk from depleted uranium is chemical poisoning from uranium oxide (U-238 is only weakly radioactive). It is a heavy metal and any inhalation of such things is adverse to health. A battlefield is a playground for all kinds of toxic compounds resulting from detonations and fires. (One of our first jobs on the ROLAND 2 propulsion unit was to eliminate asbestos from the combustion chamber liners.)
Everyone likes to blame cancers and birth defects on radioactive materials. The question is whether there is any causality truly at work. A battlefield is also littered with copper-based shell casings with propellant residue, which corrode and get into the surface water. Has anyone done a study of those effects? There are more important things to worry about than depleted uranium---like who prevails in the conflict.
You have some very good points here, there may be worse pollution than DU in battlefields. I still think DU needs to be banned from military use, even if it's main toxicity is chemical.
It's generally not good to ingest any metal: iron, aluminum, tin, zinc, copper, brass...the list goes on. Unless you make a practice of confusing them with a lollipop, there is no trouble co-existing with metals. My wedding ring is tungsten, one of the heaviest of heavy metals and I am perfectly fine. All the precious metals are heavy metals. Silver is effective against bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. I have titanium sutures in my heart and sternum from open-heart surgery; it is ideal for human use because it is totally inert to the body's environment. Depleted uranium is used in a lot of applications where high density is useful, and it is excellent radiation shielding because of that. (Not against neutrons, however. That's playing with spice.)
If the narrative is a blanket condemnation of an element, what do we do? Question the narrative. Find out how much hype is going on here. A tank is a bad place to be if things go wrong, so I tend to trust the Army in making sure any innovations are not a worse cure than the problem.